Who Is My Neighbor?

Poverty: A Threat to the Common Good

January 2007: Catholic Charities releases a poverty report & policy paper, with a goal to cut the U.S. poverty rate in half by 2020. Download a copy here. 

Headline: Poverty Moves into the Suburbs!

December 2006: An analysis of poverty in cities and suburbs of the nation's 100 largest metropolitan areas, based on data from the 2005 American Community Survey and census 2000, indicates that:

• In 1999 large cities and their suburbs had nearly equal numbers of poor individuals, but by 2005 the suburban poor outnumbered their city counterparts by at least 1 million. 

Read more here.

A Job Should Keep You out of Poverty, Not Keep You in It”

For the most up-to-date news on the campaign for a minimum wage increase visit: www.letjusticeroll.org.

A Just Minimum Wage: Good for Workers, Business and Our Future

By Holly Sklar & Rev. Dr. Paul Sherry
Makes a powerful economic and moral case for raising minimum wage and moving the U.S. from the low road to the high road of enduring economic progress. A job should keep you out of poverty, not keep you in it. Read more here; order the book here.

What Do You Have to Earn Per Hour to Afford to Live in Your State? 

Download the most recent Housing Wage Map from the National Low Income Housing Coalition here. 

What Do You Have to Earn Per Hour to Afford to Live in Your State? 

Download the most recent Housing Wage Map from the National Low Income Housing Coalition here. 

Continuation & Acceleration of Affordable Housing Crisis

December 2006

• The proportion of income that renters spend on housing, which was fairly stable during the last two decades of the 20th century, grew from 26% to 29% between 2000 and 2005 and reached a staggering 79% for Extremely Low income renters;
• The share of renter households paying more than 30% of their income on housing, which increased from 34% to 40% between 1980 and 2000, grew to 49% by 2005;
• The growing proportion of families living in unaffordable housing is largely due to the confluence of increasing housing costs and largely stagnant incomes, particularly at the bottom of the income spectrum; and
• After covering the rising cost of housing, the average ELI household in 2005 actually had less monthly income to spend on other goods and services than in 2001, which was not the case for the other income groups.
Read more here.

U. S. Report: Racial Disparities Continue

MSNBC November 2006: Differences in income, education, home ownership continue, data finds. Read more here.

Castaway Children: The Hidden Faces of Poverty
Portland (Maine) Press-Herald
The Hidden Faces of Poverty is a five-part series that continues a three-year examination by The Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram of the challenges and issues children and teens face in Maine. Reporter Barbara Walsh spent a year investigating the problem of poverty and talked to the children who face it. On this page is the original series that ran Dec.14-18, 2003, and stories that update the profiles and actions of Maine’s leaders.

Justice For All
Business leaders tell congress to raise the minimum wage: Sign up here!