Beyond Bread: News of the Week

Businesses lobby for a shelter, financial news, and a possible Street Sense rival

~Conventional wisdom says that there is a divide between the interests of DC's businesses, and the interests of the homeless residents who need housing and shelters. We could debate the truth of that off-hand witticism all day (actually, we should do that sometime), but it provides a backdrop that makes the Downtown Business Improvement District's support of a downtown shelter all the more interesting. The Washington Business Journal has the story.

~Since we're on the subject, The Washington Business Journal had another great story on the same day. This one covers Councilmember Barry's controversial New Communities Initiative. The trust fund that allegedly would have made the project possible got a handful of swift kicks from the market downturn and now new funding is being cut. Some remain skeptical that there was ever enough money in the pot to responsibly fund an initiative like New Communities. Others think Northwest One, the first New Community deal, proved that the DC government was never really planning to get behind the project. This is something we covered extensively before, and we'll continue to stay on it.

~A very interesting story on the affects of the financial crisis on low-income families came out of IPS earlier this week with some stark statistics on poverty. The whole thing is good, but here's one of the interesting nuggets:

About 42 million working adults and their children are too poor to meet their basic needs of food and shelter, according to Roberts. Put another way, 70 percent of poor families work, and half are two-parent families, the study says.

~A well crafted opinion piece on how to fix the housing crisis recently came out in a newspaper called Street Roots. Published out of Portland, this non-profit appears to be a dead ringer for our very own Street Sense. Are we allowed to have a write-off (get it? non-profits??)?