cott Pelley brings “60 Minutes” cameras back to central Florida to document another form of family homelessness: kids and their parents forced to live in cars.

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Days Of Lot—Sins of Sodom—Did not strengthen the hand of the Poor and Needy

“Behold, this was the iniquity•Strongs 5771: aw-vone´; or {avown (2 Kings 7:9; Psalm 51:5 (7)), aw-vone´; from 5753; perversity, i.e. (moral) evil:—fault, iniquity, mischeif, punishment (of iniquity), sin. of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.”
—Ezekiel 16:49

WASHINGTON — They drive cars, but seldom new ones. They earn paychecks, but not big ones. Many own homes. Most pay taxes. Half are married, and nearly half live in the suburbs. None are poor, but many describe themselves as barely scraping by.

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Perplexity

“…upon the earth distress•Strongs 4928: sunoche, soon-okh-ay´; from 4912; restraint, i.e. (figuratively) anxiety: — anguish, distress. of nations, with perplexity•Strongs 640: aporia, ap-or-ee´-a; from the same as 639; a (state of) quandary:—perplexity.
•Strongs 639: aporeo, ap-or-eh´-o; from a compound of 1 (as a negative particle) and the base of 4198; to have no way out, i.e. be at a loss (mentally):— (stand in) doubt, be perplexed….”
—Luke 21:25

Divided Nation

“But he, knowing their thoughts, said unto them, Every kingdom•Strongs 932: basileia, bas-il-i´-ah; from 935; properly, royalty, i.e. (abstractly) rule, or (concretely) a realm (literally or figuratively): — kingdom, + reign. divided•Strongs 1266: diamerizo, dee-am-er-id´-zo; from 1223 and 3307; to partition thoroughly (literally in distribution, figuratively in dissension): — cloven, divide, part. against itself is brought to desolation•Strongs 2049: eremoo, er-ay-mo´-o; from 2048; to lay waste (literally or figuratively): — (bring to, make) desolate(-ion), come to nought.; and a house divided against a house falleth.”
—Luke11:17

Days Of Lot—Sins of Sodom—Did not strengthen the hand of the Poor and Needy

“Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.”
—Ezekiel 16:49

Down but not quite out, these Americans form a diverse group sometimes called “near poor” and sometimes simply overlooked — and a new count suggests they are far more numerous than previously understood.

When the Census Bureau this month released a new measure of poverty, meant to better count disposable income, it began altering the portrait of national need. Perhaps the most startling differences between the old measure and the new involves data the government has not yet published, showing 51 million people with incomes less than 50 percent above the poverty line. That number of Americans is 76 percent higher than the official account, published in September. All told, that places 100 million people — one in three Americans — either in poverty or in the fretful zone just above it.

After a lost decade of flat wages and the worst downturn since the Great Depression, the findings can be thought of as putting numbers to the bleak national mood — quantifying the expressions of unease erupting in protests and political swings. They convey levels of economic stress sharply felt but until now hard to measure.

The Census Bureau, which published the poverty data two weeks ago, produced the analysis of those with somewhat higher income at the request of The New York Times. The size of the near-poor population took even the bureau’s number crunchers by surprise.

“These numbers are higher than we anticipated,” said Trudi J. Renwick, the bureau’s chief poverty statistician. “There are more people struggling than the official numbers show.”

Outside the bureau, skeptics of the new measure warned that the phrase “near poor” — a common term, but not one the government officially uses — may suggest more hardship than most families in this income level experience. A family of four can fall into this range, adjusted for regional living costs, with an income of up to $25,500 in rural North Dakota or $51,000 in Silicon Valley.

But most economists called the new measure better than the old, and many said the findings, while disturbing, comported with what was previously known about stagnant wages.

“It’s very consistent with everything we’ve been hearing in the last few years about families’ struggle, earnings not keeping up for the bottom half,” said Sheila Zedlewski, a researcher at the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan economic and social research group.

Patched together a half-century ago, the official poverty measure has long been seen as flawed. It ignores hundreds of billions the needy receive in food stamps, tax credits and other programs, and the similarly large sums paid in taxes, medical care and work expenses. The new method, called the Supplemental Poverty Measure, counts all those factors and adjusts for differences in the cost of living, which the official measure ignores.

The results scrambled the picture of poverty in many surprising ways. The measure shows less severe destitution, but a bit more overall poverty; fewer poor children, but more poor people over 65.

Of the 51 million who appear near poor under the fuller measure, nearly 20 percent were lifted up from poverty by benefits the official count overlooks. But more than half were pushed down from higher income levels: more than eight million by taxes, six million by medical expenses, and four million by work expenses like transportation and child care.

Demographically, they look more like “The Brady Bunch” than “The Wire.” Half live in households headed by a married couple; 49 percent live in the suburbs. Nearly half are non-Hispanic white, 18 percent are black and 26 percent are Latino.

Perhaps the most surprising finding is that 28 percent work full-time, year round. “These estimates defy the stereotypes of low-income families,” Ms. Renwick said.

Among them is Phyllis Pendleton, a social worker with Catholic Charities in Washington, who proudly displays the signs of a hard-won middle-class life. She has one BlackBerry and two cars (both Buicks from the 1990s), and a $230,000 house that she, her husband and two daughters will move into next week.

Combined, she and her husband, a janitor, make about $51,000 a year, more than 200 percent of the official poverty line. But they lose about a fifth to taxes, medical care and transportation to work — giving them a disposable income of about $40,000 a year.

Adjust the poverty threshold, as the new measure does, to $31,000 for the region’s high cost of living, and Ms. Pendleton’s income is 29 percent above the poverty line. That is to say, she is near poor.

While the phrase is new to her, the struggle it evokes is not.

“Living paycheck to paycheck,” is how she describes her survival strategy. “One bad bill will wipe you out.”

It took her three years to save $3,000 for the down payment on her house, which she got with subsidies from a nonprofit group, Capital Area Asset Builders. But even after cutting out meals at Red Lobster, movie nights and new clothes, she had to rely on government aid to get health insurance for her daughters, 11 and 13, and she is already worried about college tuition.

“I’m turning over every rock looking for scholarships,” she said. “The money’s out there, you just have to find it.”

The findings, which the Census Bureau plans to release on Monday, have already set off a contentious debate about how to describe such families: struggling, straitened, economically insecure?

Robert Rector, an analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, rejects the phrase “near poverty,” arguing that it conjures levels of dire need like hunger and homelessness experienced by a minority even among those actually poor.

“I don’t have any objection to this measure if you use the term ‘low-income,’ ” he said. “But the emotionally charged terms ‘poor’ or ‘near poor’ clearly suggest to most people a level of material hardship that doesn’t exist. It is deliberately used to mislead people.”

Bruce Meyer, an economist at the University of Chicago, warned that the numbers are likely to mask considerable diversity. Some households, especially the elderly, may have considerable savings. (Indeed, nearly one in five of the near poor own their homes mortgage-free.) But others may be getting help with public housing and food stamps.

“I do think this is a better measure, but I wouldn’t say that 100 million people are on the edge of starvation or anything close to that,” Mr. Meyer said.

But Ms. Zedlewski said the seeming ordinariness of these families is part of the point. “There are a lot of low-income Americans struggling to make ends meet, and we don’t pay enough attention to them,” she said.

One group likely to gain attention is older Americans. By the official count, only 22 percent of the elderly are either poor or near poor. By the alternate count, the figure rises to 34 percent.

That is still less than the share among children, 39 percent, but it erases about half the gap between the economic fortunes of the young and old recorded in the official count. The likeliest explanation is high medical costs.

Another surprising finding is that only a quarter of the near poor are insured, and 42 percent have private insurance. Indeed, the cost of paying the premiums is part of the previously uncounted expenses they bear.

Belinda Sheppard’s finances have been so battered in the past year, she finds herself wondering what storm will come next. Her adult daughter lost her job and moved in. Her adult son does not have one and cannot move out.

That leaves three adults getting by on $46,000 from her daughter’s unemployment check and the money Ms. Sheppard makes for a marketing firm, placing products in grocery stores. Take out $7,000 for taxes, transportation and medical care, and they have an income of about 130 percent of the poverty line — not poor, but close.

Ms. Sheppard pays $2,000 in rent and says her employer classifies her as part time to avoid offering her health insurance, even though she works 40 hours a week. Unable to buy it on her own, she crosses her fingers and tries to stay healthy.

“I try to work as many hours as I can, but my salary, it’s not enough for everything,” she said. “I pay my bills with very small wiggle room. Or none.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The number of Americans living below the poverty line rose to a record 46 million last year, the government said on Tuesday, underscoring the challenges facing President Barack Obama and Congress as they try to tackle high unemployment and a moribund economy.

Days Of Lot—Sins of Sodom—Did not strengthen the hand of the Poor and Needy

“Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.”
—Ezekiel 16:49

`The Census Bureau’s annual report on income, poverty and health insurance coverage said the national poverty rate climbed for a third consecutive year to 15.1 percent in 2010 as the economy struggled to recover from the recession that began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009.

That marked a 0.8 percent increase from 2009, when there were 43.6 million Americans living in poverty.

The number of poor Americans in 2010 was the largest in the 52 years that the Census Bureau has been publishing poverty estimates, the report said, while the poverty rate was the highest since 1993.

The specter of economic deterioration also afflicted working Americans who saw their median income decline 2.3 percent to an annual $49,445.

About 1.5 million fewer Americans were covered by employer-sponsored health insurance plans, while the number of people covered by government health insurance increased by nearly 2 million.

All told, the number of Americans with no health insurance hovered at 49.9 million, up slightly from 49 million in 2010.

The economic deterioration depicted by the figures is likely to have continued into 2011 as economic growth diminished, unemployment remained stuck above 9 percent and fears grew of a possible double-dip recession.

The report of rising poverty coincides with Obama’s push for a $450 billion job creation package, and deliberations by a congressional “super committee” tasked with cutting at least $1.2 trillion from the budget deficit over 10 years.

Faced with deteriorating job approval ratings, the president is trying to convince Republicans in Congress to support his package.

Analysts said poverty-related issues have relatively little hold on politicians in Washington but hoped the new figures would encourage the bipartisan super committee to avoid deficit cuts that would hurt the poor.

The United States has long had one of the highest poverty rates in the developed world. Among 34 countries tracked by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, only Chile, Israel and Mexico have higher rates of poverty.

(Editing by Ross Colvin and Doina Chiacu)

If a CHA resident is arrested one time, the tenant is sent to eviction court. But a Chicago Reporter analysis found that the policy separates families and ousts some who were never convicted of breaking the law.

To view popup window put your cursor on the blue words

Perplexity

“…upon the earth distress•Strongs 4928: sunoche, soon-okh-ay´; from 4912; restraint, i.e. (figuratively) anxiety: — anguish, distress. of nations, with perplexity•Strongs 640: aporia, ap-or-ee´-a; from the same as 639; a (state of) quandary:—perplexity.
•Strongs 639: aporeo, ap-or-eh´-o; from a compound of 1 (as a negative particle) and the base of 4198; to have no way out, i.e. be at a loss (mentally):— (stand in) doubt, be perplexed….”
—Luke 21:25

Divided Nation

“But he, knowing their thoughts, said unto them, Every kingdom•Strongs 932: basileia, bas-il-i´-ah; from 935; properly, royalty, i.e. (abstractly) rule, or (concretely) a realm (literally or figuratively): — kingdom, + reign. divided•Strongs 1266: diamerizo, dee-am-er-id´-zo; from 1223 and 3307; to partition thoroughly (literally in distribution, figuratively in dissension): — cloven, divide, part. against itself is brought to desolation•Strongs 2049: eremoo, er-ay-mo´-o; from 2048; to lay waste (literally or figuratively): — (bring to, make) desolate(-ion), come to nought.; and a house divided against a house falleth.”
—Luke11:17

“Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the LORD, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward.”
—Isaiah 1:4

Days Of Lot—Sins of Sodom—Did not strengthen the hand of the Poor and Needy

“Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.”
—Ezekiel 16:49

Jessica Moore showed up at the Daley Center, shaken and without a lawyer. She had a bad feeling about how things might play out in court.

A lawyer hired by a company that manages Chicago Housing Authority properties approached her. She followed him into courtroom 1302 and was ushered into a small conference area tucked away in the corner. A steady stream of eviction cases were called at the bench as they talked.

The CHA wanted to cut a deal: If she agreed to move out, the agency would let her and her six children stay seven days.
Moore balked.

“I’ll take it to trial,” she told him.

Moore, 39, is just one of hundreds of low-income residents the CHA has taken to eviction court for violating the agency’s one-strike policy during the past six years. The rule is part of a set of national guidelines created in 1996 to make public housing developments safer by ridding them of people who commit crime.

But there was a problem. Moore was no criminal.

When the national policy was drafted, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development empowered local housing authorities to tailor their own one-strike rules for best rooting out criminal activity as long as it was relevant to the peace and safety of its residents.

By the CHA’s standard, all arrests are subject to one-strike. As a result, tenants have lost their homes over nonviolent offenses, including shoplifting and marijuana possession.

The CHA had also chosen to evict leaseholders under one-strike for crimes committed by their children and anyone living in the unit, even if the crime occurred on property not owned by the CHA. Tenants are also culpable if their guests commit a crime on CHA property.

A new Chicago Reporter analysis found that from 2005 to 2010 the CHA opened 1,390 one-strike cases. The vast majority of them—86 percent in 2010—had nothing to do with the primary leaseholder.

When people were arrested, the person named on the lease was automatically summoned to eviction court, a civil matter, even though the criminal court cases were still pending in many instances.

If the CHA had considered how those cases played out in criminal court, it would have discovered that more than half of the defendants were found not guilty, their cases were thrown out or they were never prosecuted, the Reporter analysis found. Instead, one in three tenants whose criminal cases were tossed out or ended with a “not guilty” verdict, had their entire household evicted or moved out without a fight, the analysis shows.

CHA lawyer Scott Ammarell said that his agency takes an across-the-board approach to pursuing a one-strike eviction policy, regardless of the severity of the charges.

“If we get an arrest report and the charge on the arrest report is an offense that will end somebody’s eligibility to continue to receive a subsidy from the federal government, we pursue it,” he said.

It’s a policy that newly elected Mayor Rahm Emanuel appears to stand by. The mayor’s office declined an interview but issued a statement that said, “The Chicago Housing Authority has an obligation to provide the 30,000 individuals who currently reside in public housing with affordable and safe housing. The safety of CHA residents, its children and families as well as its neighbors is a top priority.”

Some critics say that the evictions are not only too harsh, but also premeditated. Earlier this year, the CHA demolished the last of its 51 high-rise public housing buildings. It was part of the agency’s Plan for Transformation. Eligible residents will get new units in mixed-income neighborhoods or subsidies to move into the private rental market. By barring many from public housing, some speculate that the CHA can avoid having to move them into replacement units, which are currently in short supply.

The Reporter’s analysis found that the number of one-strike cases across the city increased sharply in CHA developments where demolition was eminent. Cabrini-Green, Harold Ickes, Henry Horner and the ABLA housing developments accounted for more than a third of all one-strike cases in the past six years. Combined, those four developments accounted for more than half of all public housing units demolished during that time.

A large number of one-strike evictions have occurred in the new mixed-income communities, which replaced traditional public housing in gentrifying neighborhoods in the Near North, Near South and Near West sides. It’s in those same mixed-income communities that residents’ ability to fight one-strike evictions has been weakened the most.

One-strike cases are the only type of public housing eviction where tenants have no chance to file a grievance or request an internal hearing. Their only shot at beating the case is in civil court.

But most CHA tenants can’t afford a lawyer. And they can face long odds at winning the case—even with a legal defense. Meanwhile, in the spring, the CHA attempted to revoke its “innocent tenant” clause, residents’ main avenue for fending off evictions in the courtroom.
The clause gives the head of household—the person who was not arrested, even if someone in their household was—a chance to plead their innocence and protect the housing unit for the rest of the family who wasn’t involved in the crime.

The CHA’s proposal to revoke the clause was quashed in late June after public uproar. But the defense is becoming a moot point in most of the newest one-strike cases because the private developers hired to create mixed-income communities aren’t required to consider culpability in pursuing an eviction. That’s because the innocent tenant defense is not written into the lease agreement that tenants in the privatized developments are required to adhere to. Meanwhile, the number of one-strike cases continues to climb in these developments.

“We know the game,” said Shannon Bennett an organizer with the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, which has been an outspoken critic of the policy for more than a decade. “These policies are intended to push people out.”

No community has experienced more one-strike cases than Cabrini-Green.

The CHA had 74 public housing developments sprawled across the city. Yet, roughly one in five of the one-strike arrests involved Cabrini residents.

A decade ago, nearly 13,000 people lived in the Near North Side public housing community, which was anchored by 1230 N. Burling St. and seven other decaying concrete towers.

Today, the buildings are all gone; some have been replaced by mixed-income homes, apartments and condos. Many of the new residents of the area are increasingly white and college-educated, and just 444 of the units there are for public housing.

Moore moved in when she was 23.

Her paychecks never came close to covering rent in the private market. So for more than a decade, she and her children squeezed into a two-bedroom Cabrini-Green apartment at 624 W. Division St.

When a four bedroom at 1230 N. Burling St. opened in 2005, she and her children—whose ages at the time ranged from 1 to 13—jumped at the chance to spread out. She had just quit her job as a cashier at a Walgreens and enrolled in classes part-time at Robert Morris College working toward a business degree.

She crossed paths with her boyfriend Ricky Dyer not long after moving in. Dyer had a history with Cabrini. He was born in 1983 and grew up in the development. As a teenager, he earned a reputation as a drug dealer and was given the nickname “Rickdog.” By the time he was 20, he was convicted of selling drugs. He pleaded guilty to two felony counts and was sentenced to one year in prison.

Once he got out, Dyer moved back in with his mom and steered clear of major trouble, but he had a few run-ins with police. He was arrested for trespassing and public drinking, but both cases were tossed out.

Around that time, he and Moore began dating.

By 2009, their neighborhood had changed dramatically. Moore’s building was one of the last two Cabrini-Green high-rises left standing. Her building sat to the far left of a rusting gate that served as the official, but least used, entrance to the 15-story buildings known as “the whites” for their pale concrete exterior.

The other 21 mid- and high-rise buildings had been knocked down by the wrecking ball and replaced with red-brick townhomes with lush shrubs, flawless concrete and quaint names, like North Town Village. Police were brought in to pay special attention to Burling Street, which was one of the last corners of the neighborhood occupied exclusively by public housing residents.

Under an agreement with the CHA, the agency and the Chicago Police Department freely exchanged arrest information. The two agencies signed off on the pact in 2000. If someone with a public housing address was arrested, or an arrest was made on the CHA’s property, police automatically passed along the police report to the CHA.

Burling residents became suspicious when police began showing up by the dozens. Moore knew that all it took was a single arrest to open a criminal-activity eviction. No conviction was required. No internal investigation was launched. And Moore knew from experience that the cops patrolling her building rarely flinched at throwing cuffs on her neighbors.

“The police would come into the building each day either knocking into somebody’s apartment or grabbing guys downstairs,” Moore said.
Arrests climbed as demolition of the building inched closer. Burling began to empty quickly. In the fall of 2010, only 39 of the building’s 134 units were occupied. During the last 20 months that the 1230 N. Burling St. building was occupied, 19 households were hit with a one-strike eviction. The leading cause for arrest was misdemeanor marijuana possession.

Moore had a love-hate relationship with the police. On one hand, she feared them because she knew that her eldest son, Devonte, was becoming a troublemaker. At 16, he’d already been in and out of rehab after getting arrested for drugs.

While many of Moore’s neighbors did their best to avoid the police, she saw them as her last hope for reining in Devonte. He was hardheaded.

“I couldn’t tell him anything,” she said. She appealed to a couple of trusted cops known around Cabrini as “Eddie Murphy” and “Babyface” for their help. “I told them, ‘Stop him if he’s selling drugs. I don’t want to get put out.’”

Nothing prepared Moore for the morning of Sept. 25, 2009, when a team of 19 officers busted down her front door just after 8 a.m. as her children slipped on their shoes and backpacks on their way out to school.

For two hours, the officers picked through Moore’s four-bedroom apartment, finding $48 worth of marijuana stashed on a shelf in Devonte’s bedroom. During a pat down, a dime bag of cannabis, worth $12, was recovered from Dyer’s right shorts pocket. He was charged with misdemeanor pot possession.

Within days of the raid, Moore got her notice that her lease would be terminated.

The Reporter found that a growing number of families have similarly faced eviction based on low-level, misdemeanor charges. More than 70 percent of the one-strike cases involved drug possession; less than 10 percent were attributed to the drug dealing that one-strike was created largely to address.

A growing number of these cases are based on low-level crimes. In 2005, 40 percent of all one-strike arrests involved a misdemeanor charge. By 2010, that figure had grown to 76 percent, the Reporter found. A disproportionate number of those arrests involved black teens and men living in the two rapidly gentrifying Chicago wards, the 2nd and 27th, which have flipped from being majority black to racially mixed over the past decade.

Alderman Walter Burnett, whose 27th Ward includes Cabrini where he grew up, chalked up the spike in arrests in the area to the increased pressure city officials, the CHA and police face from new homeowners.

“Just look at 1230 Burling,” Burnett said. “Those [neighbors] complained about the building every day. Every day. Why? Because they wanted the building down. Why did they want the building down? One, because they thought it was affecting their property values.”

Moore fought for her apartment for six months. When her trial date finally came, police testified about Dyer’s pot possession. She lost, and a judge gave her and her children seven days to move.

“I’m like, ‘Where I’m gonna go with six kids?’” she asked.

In a gesture of mercy, Moore said, the CHA extended her move-out date to 60 days.

Cook County Sherriff’s police hauled the last bit of broken furniture out of her apartment on June 30, 2010. Nine months later, the Burling high-rise was demolished.

What happened to Moore, Burnett said, runs counter to what the CHA is given millions in federal anti-poverty dollars each year to do: stabilize families.

“CHA should be thinking about how to keep people in those apartments. They should be advocating toward helping people to keep their places, not finding ways to put them out,” said Burnett, who was convicted of armed robbery, a felony, at 17 when he was joy riding with friends in Kankakee. “Everybody deserves a second chance.”

In June, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan issued a letter reminding housing authorities that there are only two types of people who are prohibited from living in public housing: methamphetamine producers and registered sex offenders. “[E]vidence of rehabilitation or evidence of [a] family’s participation in or willingness to participate in social services such as counseling programs should be considered,” Donovan wrote.

CHA officials, however, point to a U.S. Supreme Court decision from 2002 that upheld a California housing authority’s right to evict an Oakland woman although she wasn’t responsible for the crime that got her evicted under one-strike.

Still, even within the CHA, the importance of arrest histories is inconsistent. Arrests alone, for example, don’t preclude applicants from joining the agency’s housing waiting list, which currently has roughly 40,000 names.

Ultimately, HUD cedes to housing authorities the power to draft policies that protect the safety and well-being of their residents. But under the Obama administration, the agency isn’t quick to endorse them.

“Housing authorities tend to point the finger at HUD, saying [one-strike] is a federal policy,” HUD spokeswoman Donna White said. “We leave it to them to use discretion.”

As Linda Couch, senior vice president for policy with the National Low Income Housing Coalition sees it, “Both HUD and local agencies play both sides when it serves their purposes.”

The Chicago-based Legal Assistance Foundation negotiated an innocent tenant defense back in the mid-1990s to help soften Chicago’s one-strike policy. Because private firms own the new mixed-income communities, they aren’t bound to the defense. But the number of new one-strike cases is becoming more prevalent in those areas. For example, in the Westhaven Park community, which replaced the Henry Horner Homes on the Near West Side, 41 percent of all one-strike cases in the past six years occurred in 2010 alone.

As far as lawyer Elizabeth Rosenthal is concerned, the innocent tenant defense is the only avenue public housing residents have to defend themselves. “Otherwise, CHA operates with no discretion in these cases,” she said.

It’s particularly important because in 84 percent of the eviction arrests, the primary leaseholder wasn’t responsible for the criminal activity, the Reporter’s analysis found.

The CHA’s expectation is that tenants who successfully evoke the defense will end up barring the person they describe as the “bad actor.” Typically, the rest of the family is allowed to stay under the condition that the person barred will never return to CHA property. One slip, and the deal is broken with no chance for appeal, even if the person barred is the tenant’s own child.

Moore found an apartment in West Englewood. Her family squeezed into the two bedroom for six months until the building went into foreclosure.

People suggested she move into a transitional housing shelter until she could get back on her feet. But she feared Devonte, who’s now 18, would have been pushed into an adult shelter and that her 17-year-old daughter would be next.

“I’m not leaving my kids,” she said. “My kids are my life.”

Moore maxed out her student loans—taking out $8,000 last fall—to cover the rent in her current two-bedroom in Avalon Park on the South Side. Three children sleep in a sunroom filled with garbage bags full of clothes that were soiled by a leak in the first apartment. There’s mold in the kitchen and a hole in the bathroom ceiling where water gushes in from time to time. There’s no washing machine, so she sometimes washes the family’s clothes by hand.

Moore’s rent is now $750 a month—a far cry from the $72 a month she paid at Cabrini-Green. “Plus I have to pay the gas bill,” she said. “Plus the light bill.”

After six years, Moore and Dyer are still together. Finding permanent work has been tough, though. He’s handy and has been able to pick up odd janitorial jobs.

Moore has also turned to the state for welfare through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families fund, which she hadn’t done in nearly two decades. It brings in another $555 a month.

“I felt I didn’t want it or need it before. I was working,” she said. “But now it’s really hard to find a job. And I really don’t want to quit school. I’m at the door of my associate’s degree.”

Meanwhile, her children catch a train and a bus to get to the same North Side schools they went to while living on Burling Street. “I didn’t want to switch schools because I didn’t know if I was going to be moving,” Moore said.

Two are at Suder Montessori, which she describes as a good magnet school. Her two youngest boys attend Jenner, the neighborhood school closest to Cabrini-Green. And her eldest daughter is going to be a senior at Lincoln Park High School this fall. In one more year, she’ll be off to college.

Both Moore and her daughter are trying to stay positive and think of college as their best chance to open new doors. When her daughter starts stressing about tuition and considers downgrading her plans to community college, Moore pushes her.

“I’m like, ‘No, you’re going to go out of Chicago,’” Moore said. “I want her to get a good education so she can go wherever she wants to go.”

Dylan Cinti, Alexis Pope, Caitlin Huston and Louis McGill helped research.

To those who believe the federal Supplemental Security Income program for severely disabled children is a lifesaver and not a boondoggle, Hulston Poe is a great example.

To view dictionary popup window put your cursor on the blue words

Days Of Lot—Sins of Sodom—Did not strengthen the hand of the Poor and Needy

“Behold, this was the iniquity•Strongs 5771: aw-vone´; or {avown (2 Kings 7:9; Psalm 51:5 (7)), aw-vone´; from 5753; perversity, i.e. (moral) evil:—fault, iniquity, mischeif, punishment (of iniquity), sin. of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.”
—Ezekiel 16:49

After four-year-old Hulston Poe was diagnosed with severe ADHD last October, case workers said there wasn’t much they could do for him. But when doctors recommended his mother enroll him in the SSI program this year, everything changed.

The four-year-old was diagnosed with severe ADHD last October, after more than a year of violent temper tantrums, and kicked out of preschool. Case workers said there wasn’t much they could do for him. “We were at a standstill,” said his mother, Suzanne Poe, who was scraping by as a single parent of two in Des Moines, Iowa.

But when doctors recommended she enroll her son in the SSI program this year, everything changed. A monthly check of $674 helps pay for Hulston’s day care, a private tutor and medicines. Perhaps most importantly, the program made Hulston newly eligible for Medicaid, the joint state-federal health insurance program for the poor. He gained access to the doctors he needed.

“I can see a light in his eyes again,” Poe says with relief. “He just looks so much happier.”

The SSI program for children is rapidly expanding, with the biggest increase among kids with mental, behavioral and learning disorders, including ADHD, speech delays, autism, and bipolar disorder. But as it pulls in children like Hulston, the program is sparking criticism in Congress. The Boston Globe fueled a lot of the backlash with a series last December that termed the children’s SSI program “The Other Welfare” and followed several families whose children’s eligibility for the program was questionable. Several of the families, the articles reported, believed that they had to medicate their children with psychotropic drugs in order to qualify for the benefit.

The Globe series spurred Rep. Geoff Davis, R-Ky., Rep. Richard E. Neal, D-Mass., and Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., to request an investigation by the Government Accountability Office, which is expected to be released by the end of the year.

In a January letter to the GAO, the three lawmakers expressed concern about “recent reports in the media and elsewhere” that “have identified potentially alarming practices … [that raise] numerous concerns, including the potential for fraud and abuse in the program.”

Republicans in Congress are not waiting for the results of the GAO study; they have twice proposed limiting SSI benefits. The House budget resolution passed earlier this year by Republicans, for example, proposed that the government could save $1.4 billion over 10 years by reducing incentives in the SSI program “for parents to place their children on medication solely to receive SSI benefits.” The resolution didn’t mention ADHD, but it was specifically cited in a separate budget proposal by Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., during the debt ceiling debate.

Advocates for children and people with mental illness have rallied against the potential cuts. Sixteen of the largest advocacy groups, including the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, have formed a coalition to protect the SSI program for kids and launched a major campaign to lobby Congress.

SSI currently provides cash assistance and Medicaid to the families of 1.2 million low-income kids who struggle from severe disabilities, at a cost of $10 billion a year. Since 2002, the program has grown by nearly 40 percent.

“Cutting the SSI program could have disastrous consequences for families, many of which already are struggling well below the poverty line,” says Rebecca Vallas, a lawyer at Community Legal Services, a Philadelphia nonprofit that also is part of the coalition. She says the increase in the SSI program can be explained by a national increase in child poverty and increased access to health care for kids, who get diagnosed earlier and more frequently with disabilities that might otherwise be missed.

She also says some children who were once characterized as mentally retarded may now be diagnosed as having autism or another mental disability. Overall, the percentage of kids on the program with any form of mental disability, including retardation, has remained largely stable since the early’90s, according to Vallas. “I think a lot of the skepticism about the children’s SSI program really is just thinly veiled skepticism about the legitimacy of mental health disorders,” she says.

But Richard Burkhauser, a professor at Cornell University who recently wrote a book about disability benefits, says the increase in kids on SSI, especially those with disorders that can be difficult to diagnose, is troubling.

He points to a long history of expanding the benefits. “The issue is: Has there been a stupendous increase in the number of kids out there with other mental conditions, or is the SSI kids program increasingly being used as a more general welfare program to help poor kids?”

When the program began in’74, the majority of recipients had disabilities such as Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, blindness and mental retardation. In’90, a class action lawsuit that reached the Supreme Court led to a fundamental change in the way SSA made eligibility determinations for children and expanded the number of kids who were eligible for the program.

In addition, Burkhauser argues, a major overall of the federal welfare program in’96 led some low-income families to apply for SSI instead. SSI is an attractive option because, relative to welfare, it provides a higher benefit level and has no work requirements or time limits.

States also acquired a financial incentive to shift both low-income kids and adults off welfare benefits and onto SSI, which is fully funded by the federal government. States now have staff members whose job is to evaluate whether welfare recipients can be switched over to SSI instead.

Among all poor children, the percent on SSI has quadrupled over the past 30 years. Much of the growth has come from kids like Hulston with ADHD, or what’s called “other mental disorders,” who now make up more than half of recipients.

Burkhauser says that while he’s not against providing more assistance for needy families, SSI is the wrong way to do it because it creates perverse incentives for families. If the child’s disability improves or the family finds other ways to climb out of poverty, they lose their SSI benefits. Two-thirds of kids on SSI stay on the program as adults, and “never enter the workforce,” he says.

While the program is easy to target for cuts, “it’s easier said than done,” says Mark Duggan, a professor of business and public policy at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He compares it to lawmakers seeking to cut down on waste, fraud and abuse in health care.

David Wittenburg, a senior researcher at Mathematica Policy Research, says cuts could prove expensive in the long term. “Given that SSI is the program of last resort and many of these youth live in families that were on other programs that have been cut back, a key question is where would they go now?” he asks. What’s really needed, he continues, is a “fundamental rethinking of how cash supports are provided to youth with disabilities,” so that there are incentives to promote their long-term employment as adults.

President Obama’s 2012 budget proposed another approach: increase funding for the SSA to do more regular medical reviews that evaluate whether SSI recipients are still eligible for the benefits. If the reviews find people receiving benefits who are no longer disabled, they can result in significant savings.

Suzanne Poe feels so strongly about SSI that she recently went to Capitol Hill to testify and lobby her representatives to preserve the program. She says that the SSI program is holding her family together. After Hulston was kicked out of preschool, she had to drop two classes from college to care for him. “I can’t even express to you how much it was disrupting my household.”

She says she’d be thrilled if Hulston’s ADHD improved enough to get off of the SSI program.

“The reason I applied for disability was not because that’s what I want to live on for the rest of my life or my kid’s life. I want to achieve things in life. I want my family to be self-sufficient,” she explains. “Right now that isn’t happening.”

Medicare beneficiaries escaped direct cuts in Washington’s debt deal, but the agreement could eventually hit seniors and disabled Americans who rely on the program for medical coverage.

Days Of Lot—Sins of Sodom—Did not strengthen the hand of the Poor and Needy

“Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.”
—Ezekiel 16:49

Health-industry lobbyists and policy experts say Sunday’s deal between the White House and congressional leaders effectively opens the door to another round of talks in which lawmakers are likely to weigh increasing the Medicare eligibility age and setting up a means test that might require wealthier people to pay more for the program.

A provision in the deal that allows for payment cuts to health-care providers who treat Medicare recipients could lead hospitals to cut services, industry officials said.

Health-care stocks took a broad hit Monday over concerns about the implications of the debt deal. Investors are “waking up to the fact” that health-care spending “will be in the crosshairs” as Congress looks for more cuts, ISI Group analyst Joe Ruggieri wrote in a research note.

Hospital stocks were sharply down. Industry heavyweight HCA Holdings Inc. finished the day off 6.5%. Health insurers posted generally smaller declines, with UnitedHealth Group Inc. down 3.2%.

The $2.1 trillion deal would raise the debt ceiling in two stages and provide initially for $917 billion in spending cuts over a decade. A bipartisan committee of lawmakers would be charged with finding another $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction. If the committee doesn’t find at least $1.2 trillion in savings, or Congress doesn’t approve its proposals, a different set of spending cuts would kick in.

To hit the $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, the congressional committee is likely to reconsider major changes to Medicare that the White House and congressional leaders put on the table during this summer’s debt-ceiling negotiations. President Barack Obama in earlier negotiations floated the idea of raising the Medicare-eligibility age to 67 from 65 in an effort to win Republican concessions. He also said he was open to a means test.

“All those type of issues will certainly be looked at by the committee,” said Tom Nickels, a senior vice president at the American Hospital Association.

Should the committee’s recommendations not make it into law, the backup spending-cut mechanism would include cuts to Medicare. The agreement says these cuts would affect health-care providers, not beneficiaries, and would be capped at 2%.

Some health-care-provider groups contend they couldn’t absorb such payment cuts without affecting patients. The hospital industry says the cuts could overload emergency rooms, shut down trauma units and reduce patient access to the latest treatments.

The industry is already on the hook for $155 billion in Medicare and Medicaid savings over 10 years under the health overhaul passed last year.

“Some of it may be subtle, but at the end of the day, there is a consequence to such a significant reduction in payments,” said Chip Kahn, president of the Federation of American Hospitals, which represents for-profit facilities.

—Jon Kamp and Peter Loftus contributed to this article

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from opponents of same-sex marriage who want to overturn the District of Columbia’s gay marriage law