This January, Half in Ten joined with the National Employment Law Project,  NELP, to urge Congress to include urgent reforms to the Unemployment Insurance system in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or ARRA.  The antiquated unemployment insurance system had failed to ensure equal benefits for low-wage workers, part-time workers, workers who left work due to “compelling family reasons,” and long-term unemployed individuals.  Low-wage workers are only one-third as likely to collect unemployment benefits, even though they have double the chances of being unemployed.  For this reason, UI reform was one of the 12 steps that the Center for American Progress Task Force on Poverty identified to cut poverty in half in ten years.

Congress listened to advocates, and included unemployment reform in ARRA, allocating $7 billion for the project. And these reforms have begun to reach unemployed workers across the country.  Earlier this week, the National Employment Law Project (NELP) released a report (PDF) detailing the “unprecedented wave” of unemployment insurance reforms that has swept across the country since the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) became law on February 17th, 2009.   Read more »

Kamika Dunlap
Oakland Tribune

Eleven months ago, Pat King was a successful loan officer making about $10,000 a month. Today, the economic crisis has left the unemployed single mother living on pennies to raise her 17-year-old son in West Oakland.

“I saw it coming,” said King, 45. “Loans were flying out the air, and people could put anything on paper. Then slowly loans that I was trying to get approved started to be more difficult, and the industry began to put in more restrictions.”

King is among scores of Oakland residents who are struggling, out of work or in serious financial trouble. She said she is “just hanging on day by day” and not living out the American dream.

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For years, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) has called for regulatory measures to stanch the increasing problem of subprime lending and the resulting foreclosure crisis. Read more about their efforts across the nation.
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Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa , joined by former Senator John Edwards, and ACORN members ( check whether there are other specific allies who need to be mentioned here ) announced a new $100 million revolving loan fund for affordable housing construction. The announcement followed a roundtable discussion on the affordable housing crunch in Los Angeles –a problem that touches both renters and homeowners. Mayor Villaraigosa, Senator Edwards, and other elected officials heard testimony from ACORN members including Alvin Clavon, a South L.A. resident at risk of foreclosure; Donna Rodriguez, a middle income renter whose housing costs amount to half her income; and Sonya Renee, a Section 8 tenant who was evicted when her landlord stopped accepting housing vouchers.