Poverty's Face: Effects of Great Recession make it harder for kids to succeed

Published: Monday, August 01, 2011, 5:00 AM

 By The Post-Standard Editorial Board 
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Children who start their lives malnourished, without health care and emotionally stressed from their parents’ homelessness, poverty and unemployment face huge challenges in succeeding in school and life. A new report (PDF) from the Children’s Defense Fund says that America’s children fared especially badly during the Great Recession, creating roadblocks to success.

Child poverty increased by almost 10 percent between 2008 and 2009 — the largest one-year increase since 1960, according to the State of America’s Children 2011. The report is stuffed with hundreds of distressing statistics that paint a grim picture of how conditions for America’s children have declined.

A total of 15.5 million children in America — one in five — lived in poverty in 2009, the report says. Almost half of all poor children lived in extreme poverty, in families struggling on annual incomes of less than half the poverty level, which is an annual income of $22,050 for a family of four. The average income for the bottom 90 percent of households is at its lowest level in a decade.

Although the number of uninsured children is the lowest in 20 years, one in 10 children still does not have health insurance, the report says. In 43 states and the District of Columbia, more than one in 10 households does not have access to enough food. The number of children receiving food stamps in 2009 reached a record high of 15.6 million. Since the recession began in late 2007, participation in the federal free or reduced-price school lunch program increased by 1.2 million children.

The report also highlights racial disparity; children of color are behind on nearly every measure. Babies of black mothers are almost twice as likely as babies of white mothers to be born at low birthweight. While one in 10 white children lives in poverty, one in three black children do. Black and Hispanic children are significantly more likely than white children to be overweight or obese.

In 20ll, the share of federal funding for children dropped by nearly 10 percent. Food aid and other safety-net programs are at risk in current budget negotiations. As the economy limps along, many families will need help from state and federal programs.

Too many children start life with the cards stacked against them. Poverty, homelessness and hunger threaten not only their health as children, but their potential to grow into educated, successful adults. For the country to succeed, we must invest in our children.

Original Wall Treatments

Take a good look at the wallpaper on this blog site. Lose your job because of downsizing, outsourcing, or technological improvements and  your home is no longer yours. You wander to the nearest viaduct for shelter. The wall covering is an original, designed by a local tagger or gangbanger. I live and sleep in a constant state of fear, "siege mentality." Does it turn me into a ticking "time bomb?"

Reaction to homeless students

I was shocked and frightened by two elements of this  article:
1) How  easily this could happen to us or our loved ones!
2) How these children live in fear that this could be a permanent situation!
The first element we have no control over. It is true that we are just one tragic event away from being homeless. The second echoes of "no hope." I have heard fear characterized by the description as being "  that little dark room where negatives are developed." It is our responsibility to provide the way back to the light!

Article 2 of 2

Homeless CPS students head to college

June 16, 2011|By Erin Meyer, Tribune reporter

Like many recent high school graduates, Miguel Noyola and Michael Young are preparing to start college in the fall.

Noyola plans to study to be an automotive technician, and Young wants to apply to the nursing program at Truman City College in Chicago. Both share something few of their future college peers will be able to fathom — they have experienced homelessness during their high school years.

"I can't wait to go to college and start my career," said Noyola, 18, who graduates from Edwin G. Foreman High School on Friday. "All my mother ever wanted for me was for me to be happy and go to college."

Noyola is one of five Chicago Public Schools students who accepted college scholarships from the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless on Thursday at Loyola University Law School.

The students are among thousands of CPS students every year who lack stable housing, officials said. Of the 15,500 students enrolled this school year, more than 3,000 have no parent or legal guardian, according to the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.

Most do not fare as well as the five who got scholarships from the coalition.

"They usually end up homeless due to some tragedy," said Ashley Allen, a member of the group's scholarship selection committee.

Despite living in shelters or crashing with friends while getting little or no parental support, some students still make it through high school, Allen said.

"These young people always found a way to keep going and make it through high school when there are so many who don't," said Allen, 28, who spent her high school years moving between shelters in Charlotte, N.C. "What motivated me was the fear of that being my life forever."

Young said the problems that left him wondering where he would sleep at night wound up working in his favor. As a senior at Senn High School, Young brought up his grades and started studying the Bible.

Since its inception in 2004, the program has awarded 25 scholarships worth $65,000 to CPS students who experienced homelessness in high school.

If the students earn satisfactory marks as college freshmen, the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless extends the award.

Daihana Estrada, a 2010 scholarship recipient, just finished her freshman year at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

"My mother and father got deported," said Estrada, who is studying political science with ambitions to become an immigration lawyer. "My graduation they were not there, my 18th birthday they were not there. I don't want people to experience what I went through."

efmeyer@tribune.com

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SRO's

Single Room Occupancy. Many Chicago residents depend on these structures to literally survive. Another winter is rapidly approaching driven by artic winds as the warming sun changes it's declination from above the equator to below. Many persons on fixed incomes depend on this form of housing. A room with a roof that has heat, no cool air conditioning, a shared toliet, shared shower, shared sink with running water shared with the room next door, one chest of drawers, and a bed. This description sounds very close to that of a United States prison cell. Oh yeah, prisoners receive three meals a day. Your next door neighbor probably has mental health issues ranging anywhere from clinical depression to substance abuse, They are storehouses for disposable segment of our population.

The ever shrinking housing base. The SRO. A Chicago fixture.

'Permanent supportive housing' model touted as alternative to single-room hotels

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August 31, 2011

In 1989, a group called Lakefront SRO turned a single-room occupancy hotel in the Uptown neighborhood into a 69-unit building that provided rooms and social services to people long teetering on the edge of homelessness.
That model — called "permanent supportive housing" — is now embraced by many advocates for the homeless. Lakefront SRO has become Mercy Housing Lakefront, an organization that has 12 permanent supportive housing buildings in Chicago providing 1,307 units to some of the city's most vulnerable residents.
"The whole objective is to help people stabilize in their housing," said Lisa Kuklinski, spokeswoman for the group. "Everyone that comes to us in this type of housing has had a history of housing instability, whether that's street homelessness or doubling up or sleeping in a place that was inappropriate."

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Each building provides residents with case managers who help them with everything from learning to budget properly to finding the social services and medical care they need. Also, residents are given employment training and taught how to advocate for themselves and become active members of the community.
The residents pay about 30 percent of whatever income they have for rent.
"We feel like these services address people holistically," Kuklinski said. "You're a whole person, you're not just a homeless person. You're a person who's a citizen of your community just like anyone else."
Reflecting how dire the demand for housing is, Mercy Housing Lakefront has waiting lists at all its buildings. When a new building opened in Englewood last year, Kuklinski said, more than 1,000 people applied for the 99 available units.
The group's work is funded by a mix of city, state and federal housing programs along with private and philanthropic donations. Kuklinski said that in general they give priority to homeless applicants who are disabled or dealing with chronic health problems.
While the approach used by groups like Mercy Housing Lakefront is more helpful to homeless people in the long term, Kuklinski said the loss of single-room occupancy hotels — no matter their condition — will be felt by many struggling to stay off the streets.
"It challenges all of our humanity to see people living in those kinds of conditions," she said. "However, it is the only kind of housing that we have in our community that someone can purchase day-to-day or week-to-week. The challenge is, if I don't have 60 days' rent, I can't get an apartment in this town. If it's the only thing between you and the street, it's the only option you have."
— Rex W. Huppke