Government Dependency

Harris Poll: People Want Government Spending Cut, But Not on Public Services

July 14, 2010

DailyKos - ... As can be seen from the chart below, the spending that people want cut most is for foreign aid and the military. There was practically no support for cutting public spending on health care and education.

Housing Crisis Reaches Full Boil in Metro Atlanta; 62 Injured

If you think this is bad, imagine the chaos that will ensue when public services are further cut across the United States and the world.

August 11, 2010

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution - Thirty thousand people turned out in East Point on Wednesday seeking applications for government-subsidized housing, and their confusion and frustration, combined with the summer heat, led to a chaotic mob scene that left 62 people injured.

At the Tri-Cities Plaza Shopping Center, emergency vehicles passed each other, transporting 20 people to hospitals. Medical and police command posts were set up on scene. East Point police wore riot gear. Officers from four other agencies supported them. Yet no arrests were made.

All of this resulted from people attempting to obtain Section 8 housing applications and, against long odds, later securing vouchers for affordable residences. Some waited in line for two days for the applications.

Renee Gray, a single mother holding her one-year-old daughter, Marion, came looking for a housing break and nearly got trampled, forcing her to run from the crowd and into the street.

"It could have been better organized," said Gray, a customer service employee. "A lot of adults lost focus.”

Jacquelyn Cuffie, 50, of Duluth, used a walker to cross the parking lot and navigate the huge gathering, determined to improve her living situation. It didn't matter how hot or crowded it got.

“It’s difficult to pay [the rent] with a disability check,” Cuffie said.

Offering applications for the first time since 2002, East Point Housing Authority officials had triple the crowd they anticipated, and one that was three-fourths of the 40,000 population of the south Fulton city. Things got out of hand when people started cutting into lines and authorities attempted to move groups to different areas.

Sgt. Cliff Chandler, East Point Police Department spokesman, said one flash point occurred early on. Authorities originally had lined up people to come into the front entrance of the Central Station Sports Cafe and receive the applications. However, when they saw the sheer number of people, the officials set up kiosks around the parking lot to hand out the applications, Chandler said.

Felecia McGhee, who came in search of her own Section 8 assistance, saw two small children trampled when people rushed the building that held the applications. When a group of people who had been waiting hours in a line were told to move to another line, people started pushing, shoving and cursing, witnesses said.

People collapsed in the heat. Emergency personnel drove up in a pickup truck and handed out bottled water. People were carried off on stretchers. A baby went into a seizure and was taken to a hospital.

Thaddeus Brookins of Atlanta dropped off his mother, Betty, a part-time furniture store employee, into the middle of the shopping center mayhem. He didn't like what he saw.

“It was terrible,” Thaddeus Brookins said. “Lot of people. People pushing people, knocking people over. People getting hurt.”

Wednesday's deluge of people seeking low-income vouchers in East Point demonstrated just how desperate the need for affordable housing has become in metro Atlanta, officials said. Some 15,000 Georgians currently are accommodated with Section 8 housing, with thousands more on waiting lists. Housing openings have been difficult to find anywhere, including rural areas.

"East Point, to me, is indicative of the problem," said Dennis Williams, a Georgia Department of Community affairs assistant commissioner. "It just goes to show you the situation is pretty dire."

At the same time the recession has pushed many middle-class families out of their homes, the closure of several large public housing projects -- Grady, Bowen and Capital Homes -- during the last decade has left many lower-income families with few housing options as well, elevating vouchers to something akin to lottery winnings. The demand has overwhelmed many municipalities and public entities that administer the Section 8 programs.

A check of the 16 metro Atlanta housing authorities that administer Section 8 programs found the overwhelming majority had closed their waiting lists. In one instance, the waiting list at Marietta Housing Authority has been closed since September 2008.

"There's more people demanding units at a lower-income level. The demands coming in from people who are losing their jobs and potentially having to leave their homes whether they move all the way to Section 8 or not, it's going to create demand, " said Jim Skinner, a planner in the research division of the Atlanta Regional Commission. "That's just the bottom line and that perhaps explains what happened in East Point."

When the crowd thinned out at the Tri-Cities Plaza Shopping Center, the parking lot was a sprawling mess of discarded water bottles, crushed soda cans and cigarette packs.

At an ensuing news conference, East Point officials tried to describe the day as a success, an assessment that was roundly challenged by those who had witnessed or been involved in the unruly scene.

Kim Lemish, East Point Housing Authority executive director, said the Section 8 housing applications were made available by the city for the first time in eight years because a waiting list had been depleted.

There was concern a similar overcrowded scene could occur Thursday morning when East Point began accepting the completed applications.

No one, however, was lining up at the housing authority in advance, by design. Late Wednesday, police had barricaded the housing authority and erected signs that declared "no loitering."

As Economy Sinks, Demand for Social Services Soars

July 26, 2010

Las Vegas Sun - For at least a year, economists have said Nevada’s economy was “bouncing along the bottom” instead of still searching for it.

The number of residents turning to the state for help tells a different story — if the economy has stopped its slide, then its most vulnerable residents are still in free fall. More than one in 10 Nevadans are on food stamps, a 35 percent jump from a year ago, according to state statistics; welfare rolls have grown 22 percent; and the number getting health care through Medicaid has increased 23 percent.

The Great Recession has Nevada firmly in its grip.

Elliott Parker, chairman of UNR’s Economics Department, offered some of the starkest warnings about Nevada’s economy. Yet even he believed the state had bottomed out a year ago.

“Perhaps I was too optimistic. I think most of us were using garden-variety recessions as a baseline for comparison,” he said in an e-mail. “We need to admit that this is technically a depression.”

To be sure, for years economic data have reflected Nevada’s economic struggles. One index, which combines foreclosure rates, unemployment increases and food stamp growth, has named Nevada the most economically “distressed” state since January 2009, when it surpassed Florida.

But even as 39 states showed improvement in unemployment this month, Nevada tumbled more. In May 2009, the state’s unemployment rate was 11.2 percent. Now it’s 14.2 percent.

The faces behind these numbers can be seen at state welfare offices with their long lines, tense waits and overburdened staffs.

“The stress level in offices is tremendous. Lobbies are overcrowded. Families are feeling like they’re sinking deeper and deeper,” said Miki Allard, staff specialist with the state’s Welfare and Supportive Services Division. “Everybody involved is stressed dramatically.”

At the welfare office on East Flamingo Road on Friday, the line was 150 deep by 7:45 a.m. People had begun arriving more than an hour earlier.

“The only option I have is to come here and see if I can get help,” said Monique Barnes, 22, who waited with her husband and two daughters.

Barnes and her family moved to Las Vegas from Pahrump in May. The Sonic where she worked cut her hours to one a day. She was bringing home $37.75 a week and figured a bigger city would offer better opportunity.

She was wrong.

“I’m disappointed to move and still be in the same position,” Barnes said. “It’s really no jobs out here, period.”

Barnes, who receives food stamps and Medicaid, was waiting to enroll in welfare.

As it deals with record numbers applying for help, the division has processed the “vast majority” of applications — 83percent — within 30 days, the standard set by the federal government, Allard said.

Last year the Legislature approved an additional 230 positions for welfare offices and Gov. Jim Gibbons’ administration exempted vacant welfare jobs from a statewide hiring freeze. But because of Nevada’s budget deficit, the division, like nearly all other state agencies, has had to institute furloughs.

As people poured into the Flamingo office Friday, a security guard warned it was a furlough day, and there would be long waits.

For the next several hours people streamed in — men with canes, men with skateboards.

Children, bored of sitting quietly, ran from wall to wall, dodging overwhelmed parents who tried to corral them.

Ryan Chastain, 18, sat fiddling with his cell phone. He waited to apply for food stamps for the first time.

“My girlfriend’s got $4,000 and that’s going to run out soon. We need money for food,” he said.

Chastain, who is unemployed, hopes to open an air-conditioning business one day. His girlfriend wants to teach history and English. Both have been looking for jobs with no luck.

“She wants to work for a casino and makes enough money to pay for a semester of school,” Chastain said. “You need to get a job to make money to do these things. It’s a circle. The world revolves around money.”

Parker said that in the past couple of quarters, personal income in the state has begun to grow, albeit slowly.

But “unemployment tends to lag income growth, and poverty lags that,” he said.

People have been burning through their savings, pawning items, relying on friends and family.

The longer hard times continue, “the more they need social services, and the harder it will be to claw their way back once the economy recovers,” he said.

Nevada administrators decided in March 2009 to expand who qualifies for food stamps, called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Previously families had to make 130 percent or less of the poverty level; now they can make 200 percent of the poverty level. A family of three with an income of $3,052 a month or less would qualify for food assistance.

In Clark County, requests for housing assistance have surged in recent months, according to Nancy McLane, director of Clark County Social Service. The program is meant as a last gasp effort to prevent homelessness.

At the same time, because of budget cuts, the county offers one month’s rent assistance instead of three for able-bodied residents. Those with disabilities now receive only six months of housing assistance instead of indefinite help.

The situation illustrates Nevada governments’ tight position. As a hurting workforce increases demand for services, there is less tax revenue to meet that need. The county had been spending about $900,000 a month on housing assistance; it has since scaled that back to about $300,000.

Although the number of people seeking assistance during the past 12 months is grim enough, it’s even more astonishing to consider how far Nevada has fallen since the recession began in late 2007.

The low for cash welfare payments came in March 2007, when there were just over 16,000 recipients. Now there are 30,498. Medicaid recipients totaled 165,000 in April 2007. Nevada now has 263,568. And the number of people on food stamps in April 2007 was just under 125,000. Now it stands at 283,683.

Nannette Perez has a job. She works at the Eagle Mini Mart just off the Strip. But business is slow and employees’ hours are regularly cut, Perez said, so she needs food stamps to make ends meet and feed her six children.

“I’m embarrassed to be on assistance because I know my potential,” Perez, 38, said. “I don’t want to sound snobby and say ‘I’m better than that,’ but I know I am. But I need help.”

Perez’s mother, Mary Carcieri, joined her in the waiting room at the Flamingo welfare office.

Carcieri, 65, moved from California to Las Vegas in January to be closer to Perez. She expected a tough economy, but nothing like this. She had worked for 50 years as a waitress and never before applied for public assistance, she said.

“It’s disheartening, but it will make the difference between whether I eat or starve,” Carcieri said, holding an application for food stamps and health care benefits.

Mother and daughter showed little hope for the future. Politicians and decision-makers just don’t get it, they said.

“The people in office, they already have everything they need,” Perez said. “They try to help us to make themselves feel better, but they don’t see how we live, how we struggle.

“Right now, they are helping the small businesses so they will hire people, but that’s not working. I hope at some point somebody will stop and really say, ‘Let’s help these people.’”

State Spending Recession

June 1, 2010

Balloon Juice - In “Bonddad” Stewart’s roundup of the first quarter GDP numbers at 538, this chart stood out:



Amidst some decent news about economic growth, state spending is way down. Even though stimulus is evil socialism, it looks like another round targeting states would have been a good idea, as some DFHs have been saying all along.

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Governments Move to Cut Spending, in 1930s Echo
Governors offering dire spending plans
State Budget Problems Will Only Get Worse
Public Pension Crisis: States have no choice but to cut spending and raise taxes
Why States Need to be a Focus for Any Economic Recovery Plan
Raise Taxes, Cut Spending - or Both?
Enough Talking about Fiscal Responsibility -- Let's Cut Spending
Cash-Strapped Governments Forced to Do Less
Without federal help, states remain in peril
Public pensions put state, cities in crisis
Taxpayers Will Pay for Massive Shortfalls in State Pension Funds
First Greece, now Spain; who could be next?
French government cites European debt crisis to slash spending
Irish Budget 2010: Spending cuts of €4 billion; Details of Budget spending and tax changes
Greek Unions Strike to Stop Spending Cuts Aimed At Ending Debt Crisis
UK cuts to public services
Cuts are coming, no matter what Brown says
PM denies 'Big Society' is excuse to cut spending
Why should anybody oppose public spending cuts, and how?
George Osborne: Economic picture is "worse than we thought"