President’s Proposal to Raise Rents on Nation’s Poorest Households Would Cause Serious Harm
By Barbara Sard
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
“The President’s budget proposes to raise the rents charged to more than 500,000 of the nation’s poorest families. It would do this by raising to $75 a month the ‘minimum rent’ charged to the poorest families in the rental assistance programs that the Department of Housing and Urban Development administers and eliminating state and local housing agencies’ discretion to set the minimum rent below that level.
“Half a million families with incomes below $250 per month, or $3,000 per year, would face rent increases that many would have difficulty affording. For the vast majority of these households — about 400,000 of them — rents would increase by 50 percent or more.
“A substantial number of families in every state would face rent increases (see Appendix I), although the severity of the impact would vary due to differences across the states in such factors as joblessness and the strength of other safety-net programs (see Appendix II). The affected families include 725,000 children, and are disproportionately minority.
“This proposal comes even as a study by leading poverty researchers finds that the number of U.S. families with children living below a standard the World Bank uses to measure serious poverty in third-world countries — income of less than $2 per person per day — has more than doubled since the mid-1990s, to 1.46 million families with 2.8 million children”
Proposed Rent Increase Would Further Impoverish Poorest Recipients of Federal Housing Assistance
Over 13 million American kids will be bullied this year. The new documentary film BULLY,
directed by Sundance and Emmy-award winning filmmaker Lee Hirsch, brings human scale to
this startling statistic, offering an intimate, unflinching look at how bullying has touched five
kids and their families.
According to their website Bully is a beautifully cinematic,
character-driven documentary. At its heart are those with huge stakes in this issue whose stories each
represent a different facet of America’s bullying crisis.
Filmed over the course of the 2009/2010 school year, BULLY opens a window onto the
pained and often endangered lives of bullied kids, revealing a problem that transcends
geographic, racial, ethnic and economic borders. It documents the responses of teachers and
administrators to aggressive behaviors that defy “kids will be kids” clichés, and it captures a
growing movement among parents and youths to change how bullying is handled in schools, in
communities and in society as a whole.
Because the movie is about real life and reflects real life stories, the Motion Picture Association has given the movie an NC17 rating, making it harder for young people to see. It also means that it cannot me shown in schools where it could find it’s best audience. There is a movement started by a teen named Katy Butler to change the rating to PG13 with a petition circulating online.
Please look for the movie Bully in your neighborhood or find a way to bring it to your city or town. And sign the petition.
In the video below young people tell their stories in order to help us to better understand what it is like to be a teen living on the street. The video was created by the Mass Coalition for the Homeless to help inform the public about the issue of “unaccompanied homeless youth” and build support for H Bill 3838.
According to the film’s makers….
The Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless is the lead organization behind House Bill 3838, An Act Providing Housing and Support Services for Unaccompanied Homeless Youth. This bill, sponsored by Representative James O’Day, will reduce youth homelessness and its adverse effects by funding a continuum of housing and support services geared specifically for unaccompanied homeless youth. The goal of these efforts is to improve housing and residential stability, reduce the risk of harm and improve educational, physical and mental health outcomes for this population.
An “unaccompanied homeless youth” refers to a youth between the ages of 14 and 22, who does not have access to stable, adequate housing and is not in the care of a parent or guardian. The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education estimates that nearly 6,000 high school students are homeless and on their own. Thousands more homeless youth are not reflected in these numbers because they have already dropped out of school and cannot be accounted for.
Call your Massachusetts legislator today and ask him or her to support House Bill 3838. Send an email Here.
Welcome to Promise the Children! We are a Unitarian Universalist organization. We help Unitarian Universalists advocate for and with children and youth.
Our blog provides legislative updates, reprints of ally’s blogs related to issues important to Promise the Children, stories about what is happening in UU congregations, and news about our programs.
Please post comments or e-mail .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) with feedback.
Facebook
Twitter
Blog