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PATH PartnersKathryn Baer
Kathryn Baer is a consultant in policy research, analysis and communications. She has provided expert support for the legislative and regulatory interests of nonprofits, government agencies, a Member of Congress and several large global corporations. In addition to for fee services, she contributes her time and skills to organizations that advocate on behalf of low-income people in the U.S. As part of this work, she maintains her own blog, povertyandpolicy.wordpress.com.
Posts by Kathryn Baer
Long-Term Unemployment Benefits Saved, But Scaled Back
So the Republicans and Democrats agreed on a deal to extend long-term unemployment insurance benefits — defying predictions of another cliffhanger or worse.
Also extended, as you’ve probably read, were the employee payroll tax cut and the “doc fix” to avert huge cuts in Medicare reimbursements. As you may not have read, some programs for low-income people got a new, temporary lease on life as well.
Food Stamp Benefits too Low for a Healthy Diet, New Study Confirms
In 2008, Children’s HealthWatch and partners reported on a unique study aimed at finding out whether food stamp benefits enable low-income families to buy what they need for a healthy diet. Now we’ve got a followup.
The answer now, as before is no. And though the followup was conducted only in Philadelphia, the findings are generally applicable to other urban areas, including the District of Columbia.
DC Homelessness Figures Buck Nationwide Trends
This year’s State of Homelessness report from the National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH) presents, in some ways, a rosier picture than last year’s. Big headline is that homelessness decreased between 2009 and 2011 — not only the overall rate, but the rates for people in families, veterans and the chronically homeless, i.e., individuals with disabilities, including [...]
Let’s Recall Poverty Before the Safety Net
Huffington Post blogger Dan Morgan looks back nearly 50 years to tell us what poverty was like in his early reporting days.
This is an important, timely post because it reminds us of how poor people lived — and died — before the creation of today’s safety net.
Here in the District of Columbia, Morgan found “people living in basement apartments with dirt floors. Many were hungry, cold and short of coal for stoves. Some children were staying home because they had no shoes.”
Long-Term Unemployment Benefits Need More Than Extension
Huffington Post blogger Arthur Delaney has been hammering on an important fact about the just-passed temporary extension of long-term unemployment insurance (UI) benefits. It won’t fully extend benefits for everyone who’s getting them now.
By the time the temporary extension expires, workers in 11 states will have lost their benefits, he writes, even though they won’t have reached the maximum they’d have been entitled to in early December.
Temporary Assistance to Needy Families Safety Net Keeps Fraying
Safety nets are supposed to catch people when they fall so they don’t crash to the ground. So too with what we call safety net programs. We have created them so that people don’t land in desperate poverty. We’d thus expect safety net programs to catch more people when the economy tanks, as it did [...]
Survey Yields Insights on Washington DC Homeless Youth
Back in February, DC Councilmembers Jim Graham and Michael Brown introduced a bill that would, among other things, give us a better fix on who is homeless in the District and what services are — and ought to be — available for them.
Nothing’s happened with the bill, so far as I can tell, since the hearing in June.
But something has happened to address the main focus of the hearing — unaccompanied homeless youth.
More than Half a Million Jobs Lost if Federal Unemployment Benefits Expire
I’m not acutely distressed by the fact that Super Committee members couldn’t cut a deal.
The Democrats had moved so far to the right that whatever deal got enough Republicans on board would probably have been worse than the automatic spending cuts the no-deal will trigger — assuming Congress lets them happen.
In one respect, however, the stalemate disappoints me.
