Half in Ten: From Poverty to Prosperity » New York

UI Reforms Reach Workers in 34 States

jrosenthal — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:21:42 +0000

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.

In just four months, 25 states have enacted reforms to modernize and expand their unemployment insurance programs, either by considering a worker’s most recent work history and earnings to determine their qualification for UI benefits or specifically offering unemployment benefits to historically-disadvantaged employees, such as women, part-time workers, and the long term unemployed. The states that made these reforms were Alaska, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Vermont, and West Virginia. These states joined the 8 states and the District of Columbia that had already made these reforms.

In addition to permanent UI reform, 21 states with high unemployment rates have also extended unemployment benefits to cover an extra 13-20 weeks. Of the $7 billion in federal incentive funds, the NELP report estimates that $3.65 billion will be provided to the states in order to help over one million jobless workers collect the benefits they need.

Catherine Rampell, the economics editor of nytimes.com, emphasizes that most of these state unemployment insurance reforms are new changes that indeed expand program eligibility, as opposed to “technical ‘fixes’ to existing laws.” The NELP report further highlights the broad bi-partisan support of these reforms, indicating that legislation has been signed and enacted by nine Republican governors. About a dozen states are still in debate over reforms.

Green Jobs/Green Homes: Expanding Energy Efficiency and Creating Good Jobs in a Clean Energy Economy

jrosenthal — Fri, 15 May 2009 14:37:14 +0000

Building efficiency retrofits serve the triple benefits of mitigating global warming emissions, reducing energy bills, and creating good, local jobs. Residential buildings alone account for 21percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and substantial efficiency savings are obtainable through easy and proven techniques. Yet if energy-efficiency retrofits offer such obvious environmental, economic, and employment benefits, why have they been so slow to materialize? The answer lies in a host of market failures, and developing viable, scalable solutions has proven challenging—until now.

On Friday, May 15, Half in Ten joined the Center for American Progress and the Center for Working Families to release a report that provides a policy roadmap for New York State to achieve mass-scale, energy-efficiency retrofits of 1 million housing units over the next five years.

Download the report (pdf)

Download the executive summary (pdf)

Watch the event

Bloomberg’s Innovative Antipoverty Blueprint

admin — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 20:17:49 +0000

As poverty in the United States continues to affect millions of people across the nation, city and state governments are finding themselves in an ongoing battle trying to unearth the right answer to an already growing problem. One city’s initiative to create new, and innovative antipoverty projects that will help its residents, can serve as a model not only to other urban areas across the country trying to fight poverty, but the nation as a whole. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg examined the city’s efforts in establishing programs designed to combat poverty at a recent event hosted by the Center for American Progress.

New York City’s Crusade Against Poverty

Rep. Jim McDermott Proposes a New Poverty Measure

admin — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 01:31:31 +0000

Congressman Jim McDermott (D-WA) has introduced the Measuring American Poverty Act of 2008 (H.R. 6941), which would update the federal government’s standard for calculating poverty. The current standard has been in place since the 1960s, and has not been updated to include the changing needs of American families. A more accurate measure of poverty is crucial in determining the policy solutions that will help to reduce it. Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) is expected to introduce a similar bill in the Senate.

Read the text of the bill here.

Read a press release about the measure from Congressman McDermott’s office here.

Read more about the need for a new poverty measure:

“Bipartisan Calls for New Poverty Measure,” New York Times, September 1, 2008.

“City Refines Formula to Measure Poverty Rate,” New York Times, July 14, 2008.

“Mayor Bloomberg Tackles Poverty,” New York Times, January 22, 2008.

Tackling Poverty: The Role of State and Local Governments

admin — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 13:12:34 +0000

Americans increasingly face financial uncertainty as they struggle to make ends meet during a period of rising food and fuel prices, a continuing mortgage crisis, and an overall economic downturn. Yet even before these latest challenges, a growing number of state and local governments launched comprehensive anti-poverty initiatives. These include special legislative caucuses, poverty reduction targets, and information-sharing summits.

On July 28, the Half in Ten Campaign, the National League of Cities, and Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity hosted a policy forum featuring two panels to explore this growing trend. The first panel offered an overview of state and local efforts, with a discussion between Joy Moses of Half in Ten and the Center for American Progress Action Fund’s Poverty Program; Susan Golonka, Director of the Human Services, Social, Economic, and Workforce Programs for the National Governor’s Association; Jodie Levin-Epstein of Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity, and the Deputy Director of the Center for Law and Social Policy; and Cliff Johnson, the Executive Director of the Institute for Youth, Education, and Families at the National League of Cities.

The second panel looked at specific policies enacted by states and cities. Moderated by Half in Ten and the Center for American Progress Action Fund’s Mark Greenberg, this panel featured Connecticut State Senator Jonathan Harris, chair of the Human Services Committee; New York City Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs; Gregory Gray, Director of the Legislative Commission to End Poverty in Minnesota by 2020; and Amy Rynell, Program Director of the Heartland Alliance of Illinois.

See video from the event:

A Visit to Harlem Highlights “Unacceptable” Issue of Hunger in America

admin — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:00:36 +0000

The New York City Coalition Against Hunger, World Hunger Year, the Food Bank for New York City, and City Council member Bill de Blasio joined Half in Ten at the Yorkville Common Pantry in Harlem on July 9. The Yorkville Common Pantry is one of the 1,200 food pantries and soup kitchens in the City that serve 1.3 million New Yorkers each year. Joel Berg, the Executive Director of the NYCCAH, told the Epoch Times, “Poverty in the U.S. and New York are unacceptable…In a society with as much wealth as modern America, hunger should be doubly unacceptable. [Senator Edwards’] visit not only highlights the growing domestic hunger problem, but enables us to being a national discussion of the basic steps necessary to make sure that all Americans have access to the food they need to lead productive and healthy lives.” Hunger in the United States is an ongoing and extensive problem; 1 in 5 children in New York City are food-insecure. As food prices have skyrocketed and the economy has worsened over the past year, hunger has increased in New York and throughout the country, and there was a 9% increase in meals served at food pantries and soup kitchens like the Yorkville Common Pantry in 2008.

“Sen. John Edwards Makes Appearance at Harlem Food Pantry” (The Epoch Times)

John Edwards on the Brian Lehrer Show