With just a few months left in the year, Congress must do its job and address the housing crisis.
According to recently released survey data by the U.S. Census Bureau, 43% of households earning $50,000 or less were spending over half of their income on rent. It’s a common rule of thumb that your housing cost should be no more than 30% of your gross income. But with rising housing costs and stagnant wages, that’s becoming more and more unachievable.
Right now, a full-time worker needs to earn $25.82 per hour to afford a modest, two-bedroom rental home and $21.25 per hour to afford a modest, one-bedroom rental home.
Eviction rates are back to pre-pandemic levels, with Black people and Latino people disproportionately facing the highest rates. 13% of Black renters have faced the threat of eviction, which is nearly double the rate of white renters.
The affordable housing crisis has been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic and rising inflation. The time for Congress to act is now. We demand:
An expansion of housing vouchers to at least an additional 200,000 households.
Significant funding to preserve and operate public housing ($5.125 billion for the Public Housing Capital Fund, and $5.06 billion for the Public Housing Operating Fund).
$3.6 billion for HUD’s Homeless Assistance Grants program to address the needs of people experiencing homelessness.
$100 million for legal assistance to prevent evictions.
$300 million for the competitive tribal housing program, targeted to tribes with the greatest needs.
If Congress can afford to give billions of dollars in tax breaks to the wealthy and major corporations, they can certainly afford to house people living in the U.S.
The Saving Children from Povertyedition.This week’s COVID-19 Watch is all about children. President Biden’s American Rescue Plan, now being turned into legislation in the House, includes provisions that taken together, would cut child poverty in half, according to the Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy. And just one of those proposals, the increase in the Child Tax Credit, would have the biggest impact, lifting 40 percent of children out of poverty. That means Congress is now working on a plan that will do immense good.
Here are some important truths: (1) child poverty can cause long-lasting harm in children; (2) the pandemic has increased poverty and its attendant hardships of hunger and the struggle to meet other basic needs; (3) poor children are more likely to fall behind in school, and the pandemic’s online schooling is making this worse; (4) children of color are disproportionately poor and disproportionately subject to the hardships children are now experiencing; and (5) Congress has the opportunity to take a gigantic step to reduce the harm. No one should fail to see how much is at stake for children now. Everyone should make sure Congress enacts the American Rescue Plan.
The Child Tax Credit is one major advance cited below, but there is so much more that benefits children in the Rescue Plan. Other forms of cash aid, such as continued unemployment benefits andthe $1,400 payments, allow families to pay their bills. Raising the minimum wage gradually to $15/hour will help families make ends meet. Increased nutrition aid and emergency rental assistance are essential. More child care funding, paid leave, aid for schools and other state and local services, expanded health coverage and vaccines – all will help children and their families.
Advocates are continuing to press to help more children in immigrant families, millions of whom are still left out. The unemployment benefits in the bill should extend till the end of September, not the end of August.More Medicaid funds are needed to help people with disabilities and seniors get the services they need and to help statesexpand their Medicaid programs.Let’s add to the good that the American Rescue Plan will do, prevent any cuts to undermine it, and let’s tell every senator and representative to vote for it.
4 in 10
How many children would be lifted out of poverty this year if the proposed temporary expansions of the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit become law, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Tweet this.
9.9 million
The numberof children that would be lifted out of poverty or made less poorif proposed expansions to the Child Tax Credit are enacted. That includes 4.1 million Latino children, 2.3 million Black children, and 441,000 Asian American children. Tweet this.
Twice as likely; 2 fewer years;
Less than ½ as much
When compared to children in families above twice the poverty line, poor children were twice as likely to report poor health or psychological distress; to complete 2 fewer years of schooling; and earn less than one-half as much as they reached adulthood. Reducing child poverty will improve outcomes for children in ways that will last a lifetime. Tweet this.
More than half
54 percent of adults living with children said someone in their household had lost income from work since last March (surveyed Jan. 20 – Feb. 1). Tweet this.
How many adults living with children said their households sometimes/often did not have enough to eat in the previous week – 15 percent of all adults with children, asked Jan. 20 – Feb. 1. Among households with children earning less than $25,000/yr, 38% were going without food.
19.1 million down; 10.6 million up
The number of children getting free or reduced price school lunches plummeted by 19.1 million from March to April, 2020, because the pandemic shut down schools. But the federal Pandemic-EBT program started, and its participants rose from 2 million in March to 12.6 million in May, 2020. That’s a big success, but it still left millions of children behind.
How many months of learning loss predicted for Black children, Hispanic children, and children in low-income households, assuming low-quality remote instruction and return to in-class education in Jan. 2021 (opening schools is not happening that soon in many places).
Nearly three-quarters
Voters in four states represented by moderate senators – Alaska, Arizona, Maine, and West Virginia – support President Biden’s proposed increase in the Child Tax Credit at rates ranging from about 70 – 78 percent, according to a new poll released this week. The poll also found similar support for Biden’s proposed $1,400 one-time payments.
February 12, 2021