Category: Poverty & income gap
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Justice for Whom?
The Legal Aid Justice Center, which has released another report decrying differential rates of suspensions and expulsions in Virginia public schools, is described by the Richmond Times-Dispatch as an organization that “works to fight injustice.” I have no doubt that the Legal Aid Justice Center sees itself on the side of the angels, but I’m…
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Plugging “Mercy” into the Judicial System
Just when it looked like the country was so locked in partisan gridlock that no one could agree about anything, along came the Republican-dominated General Assembly, the Democratic governor, and the Virginia Supreme Court to put into place reforms that make it easier for people owing court fines to keep their drivers licenses and continue…
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Second Chart of the Day: Unemployment
Another chart from the Commonwealth Institute based on the latest U.S. Census data: poverty rates across Virginia metro areas. Here’s what leaped out at me: Every single metro area, from Harrisonburg to Winchester, had a poverty rate below the statewide average of 11%. How high must the poverty rate for non-metro (aka rural) Virginia be…
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A Better Model for Lending to the Poor
It’s time to introduce into the public lexicon a distinction between “social justice warriors” and “social justice entrepreneurs.” Social justice warriors (or SJWs, as they are known short-hand on some conservative blogs) seek to remedy the conditions of the poor and downtrodden through political action, typically calling upon government to wield its power and money…
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Motels as Housing of Last Resort
Two Sundays ago the Richmond Times-Dispatch ran a disturbing special report on poverty and housing insecurity along the Jefferson Davis Highway in Chesterfield County. Hundreds of people live in shabby motels, paying $200 or more per week to live in conditions almost as deplorable as Richmond’s public housing projects. These hotels, the housing equivalent of…
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Public Housing Vs. Private Housing, Round Two
A couple of weeks ago, I published a post, “Your Taxpayer Dollars at Work: Stuffing Poor People into Hideous Housing,” trying to put the $150 million maintenance backlog at the Richmond Redevelopment Housing Authority into context. I noted that the RRHA’s $65 million budget, spread over 4,000 public housing units, amounts to $16,250 per unit…
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How Computer Games Are Sapping the Initiative of Young Men and Shrinking the Workforce
We’re all familiar with the stereotype of the young male slacker, disinterested in looking for work and holed up in his parents’ basement, wiling away the time surfing the Web or playing computer games. Many of us have observed such behavior in our own homes. (I’m not mentioning any names.) Now four economists writing for…
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Your Taxpayer Dollars at Work: Stuffing Poor People into Hideous Housing
The Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority, which provides public housing to about 10,000 Richmond residents, faces a $150 million backlog in repairs for its 4,000 housing units, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “At some point you’re going to have very serious health and safety problems,” agency CEO T.K. Somanath told the authority’s board last week. The authority…
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Sustaining the Biggest Public Nuisance in Richmond
Republished from Cranky’s Blog. Not satisfied at maintaining the largest public nuisance in Richmond – the one that just led to the shooting death of a State Policeman – the Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority (RHHA) now proposes to do nothing realistic about it: Fencing and gates. RRHA says this remedy is “largely . . .…
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The Scourge of Rootless, Predatory Males
Last week 27-year-old Travis A. Ball allegedly shot and killed Virginia State Police Special Agent Michael T. Walter in an apparently unprovoked attack in the Mosby Court public housing project. The murder was the seventh homicide and one of about 20 shootings to take place in the troubled housing project so far this year. The…
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Elite Universities and Socioeconomic Diversity
Over on Cranky’s Blog, it appears that John Butcher, like me, has little better to do this Memorial Day weekend than to ruminate upon the implications of a recent New York Times op-ed piece written by columnist David Leonhardt. Lamenting the paucity of smart kids from poor schools admitted to the nation’s elite universities, Leonhardt…
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How Do We Respond to Declining Economic Diversity in Elite Universities?
Writing in the New York Times earlier this week, columnist David Leonhardt expresses his dismay at the decline in state funding for higher education, the resulting surge in tuition, and the slide in economic diversity at the nation’s top public universities. “The declines in state funding are stunning,” he says. “It’s as if our society were deliberately trying…
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How to Dismantle the Poverty-Industrial Complex
Richmond’s new mayor is young, energetic and bursting with ideas. At 36 years old, the James Madison University-educated Levar Stoney represents a new generation of African-American political leadership. He has one foot in the minority community and one in the creative class. His top priority to date has been to restore competence to a city administration…
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Running in Neutral: a K-12 and Higher Ed Scandal
In this month’s issue of Atlantic, Nick Ehrmann writes a perceptive article, “Solving the Mystery of Underachievement: Why work hard enough to earn an A when a D will suffice for college admission?” He tells the story of an intelligent African-American lad who was groomed to attend college — and ended up dropping out after the…
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Government’s War on the Poor: College Loans
Students graduating in recent years are defaulting on student loans at a significantly higher rate than earlier age cohorts, finds Mark J. Warshawsky, a senior research fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, in a posting on the Mercatus website. “Some students, particularly from nontraditional backgrounds, seem to have been harmed by the…