A Strategy to Ignore Poverty

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2015/10/a-strategy-to-ignore-poverty.html#comment-6a00d83451b33869e201b8d16dc998970c

Eduardo Porter:

A Strategy to Ignore Poverty, NY Times: Arizona, where I was born, in July became the first state to cut poor families’ access to welfare assistance to a maximum of 12 months over a lifetime. That’s a fifth of the time allowed under federal law, and means that 5,000 more people will lose their benefits by next June.

This is only the latest tightening of the screws in Arizona. Last year, about 29,000 poor families received benefits under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, 16,000 fewer than in 2005. In 2009, in the middle of the worst economic downturn since the Depression of the 1930s, benefits were cut by 20 percent.

And if Paul Ryan, the Republican lawmaker from Wisconsin who is expected to become speaker of the House, has his way, poor people in many other states can expect similar treatment in the years ahead. ...

•••••

http://www.marketplace.org/topics/wealth-poverty/parking-lot-homeless-phoenix

A parking lot for the homeless in Phoenix [Arizona]

by Krissy Clark
Wednesday, July 17, 2013

A couple hundred people without permanent homes have been setting up a makeshift camp each night in a parking lot. The asphalt lot is big enough to fit about 60 cars, surrounded by chain link fence, with a few portable toilets and some awnings set up for shade.

The homeless camp is run by a shelter next door that doesn't have any more room.

“This is sort of an overflow to our overflow shelter,” says Mark Holleran, chief executive of Central Arizona Shelter Services. He says he opened up the parking lot, which he leases from the county, to homeless people a few months ago, after the number of people showing up at the other homeless shelters he runs nearby began to spike. Holleran said he had “nowhere to put them, to be honest.”

•••••

[more recently]
http://tucson.com/news/local/tucson-to-find-new-site-for-downtown-homeless-camp/article_92cacb51-e9a5-54c5-8f8a-1772bdaa98f3.html

March 03, 2015 7:30 pm • By Becky Pallack

The city will look for a new site for the ongoing “protest” that has homeless people living in plywood boxes and tents on the sidewalks downtown.

The City Council voted Tuesday to find a new place for the people living in and around Veinte de Agosto Park, and to explore a new urban-camping ordinance modeled on a Denver law. The new law could prevent camping on public property.

Neither the cost of a new location, nor where the money will come from, was discussed.

•••••

the 3,100 beds in Tucson homeless shelters are mostly full, with only 35 beds open Monday night, she said, and demand outweighs supply for places for couples, people with pets, and addicts.

•••••