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Articles 1 - 24 of 24
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Moving Target: The Dilemma Of Serving Massachusetts Poor Families, Randy Albelda
Moving Target: The Dilemma Of Serving Massachusetts Poor Families, Randy Albelda
New England Journal of Public Policy
While Community Action Agencies’ original mission of serving the poor has changed little over the last three decades, government commitments to the poor, the population of poor individuals and families, and women’s economic expectations have changed considerably. This article documents the trends in family structure, women’s employment patterns, and poverty policies in Massachusetts between 1970 and 2000. The increase in poor, single-mother families and poverty policies that emphasize employment present dynamic challenges for Community Action Agencies (and others who serve the poor), but also create some new organizing opportunities.
The Community Action Principle: Subjects Not Objects, Barney Frank
The Community Action Principle: Subjects Not Objects, Barney Frank
New England Journal of Public Policy
Deals with the impact of community action programs in the international and domestic economic policies. Influence of political participation on the application of democratic principles in politics; Background of economic policies by former U.S. Presidents regarding the free enterprise system; Relevance of community action on the formulation of international economic policies.
Saving Capitalism From Itself: Whither The Welfare State?, Mimi Abramovitz
Saving Capitalism From Itself: Whither The Welfare State?, Mimi Abramovitz
New England Journal of Public Policy
The U.S. welfare state has been under attack from both sides of the aisle since the mid-1970s. Using the lens of history, the following pages will argue that neither the rise of the welfare state in the 1930s nor the current attack were merely accidental. Instead, each was a response to a particular crisis of profitability because the institutional arrangements that had created the conditions for profit-making in the prior fifty years had deteriorated. The policies no longer worked for the powers-that-be and had to be “reformed.”
What Kind Of Labor Market Awaits Low-Income Workers?, Françoise Carré
What Kind Of Labor Market Awaits Low-Income Workers?, Françoise Carré
New England Journal of Public Policy
This essay highlights changes in the context of the labor market for low-income people, particularly mothers. It briefly reviews labor market trends and policies. It then highlights the challenges faced by such workers. The essay argues for a shift in thinking and policy advocacy to encompass the world of work, and its domination by business imperatives and language, and thus better represent poor people’s concerns in the policy world.
Child Care: Four Decades Of Growth And Change, Bruce Hershfield, John Sciamanna
Child Care: Four Decades Of Growth And Change, Bruce Hershfield, John Sciamanna
New England Journal of Public Policy
Child care has grown and changed over the past four decades. The federal government now has two major early education programs, Head Start and the Child Care and Development Block Grant. Although Head Start was enacted in 1965 and has had mostly bipartisan support, it took the federal government until 1990 to enact a national child care program. Massachusetts, led by an active advocacy community and strong leadership in the state legislature, has been a leader among states in support for child care funding and policies. It is its support for strong licensing, periodic increases in reimbursement rates, parental choice, …
The Empty Promise, Elaine Werby
The Empty Promise, Elaine Werby
New England Journal of Public Policy
This article reviews the federal role in providing rental housing for low-income households. It suggests that reliance on the private market has characterized the variety of programs designed to meet the housing needs of this population group. Despite some progress, millions of low-income households still lack stable, secure housing that they can afford, and the major current program of rent subsidies is under attack.
Shelter Poverty: The Chronic Crisis Of Housing Affordability, Michael E. Stone
Shelter Poverty: The Chronic Crisis Of Housing Affordability, Michael E. Stone
New England Journal of Public Policy
This paper examines housing affordability in the United States over the past three decades using the author’s concept of “shelter poverty.” The major findings are as follows: The number of shelter-poor households has been over 30 million since the early 1990s, an increase of more than 70 percent since 1970. Among families with children, rates of shelter poverty are much higher, and over the past several decades have risen faster, than among households with just one or two persons. Nearly half of all renter households are shelter-poor, victims of low incomes and rising rents; most low-income renters are headed by …
The Nonprofit Sector And The Will To Change, Pablo Eisenberg
The Nonprofit Sector And The Will To Change, Pablo Eisenberg
New England Journal of Public Policy
A greater portion of our nonprofit activities in the future will have to be devoted to policies and actions that can produce constructive change. The extraordinary problems of our society as we enter the twenty-first century — poverty, racism, environmental degradation, lack of health protection, declining trust in governments — can only be tackled by strong policy work, advocacy, and citizen mobilization. The author outlines seven challenges that nonprofits need to address including promoting democracy, strengthening government, asuring public accountability, redefining the nonprofit sector, reforming philanthropy, developing new leadership, and engaging institutions of higher learning in promoting democracies and communities. …
Masscap And The Caa Role In Advocating For Change, Joseph Diamond
Masscap And The Caa Role In Advocating For Change, Joseph Diamond
New England Journal of Public Policy
Cites the efforts of the Massachusetts Association for Community Action Inc. and community action agencies (CCA) to alleviate poverty in the state. Programs offered by CCAs that aim to improve the quality of life of low income people; Efforts of the organization to call for changes in federal and state policies directed to the poor; Details of several initiatives assisted by the organization; Support for the adoption of the Massachusetts Self-Sufficiency Standard.
Editor's Note, Padraig O'Malley
Editor's Note, Padraig O'Malley
New England Journal of Public Policy
In this issue, special guest editors, Elaine Werby and Donna Haig Friedman, assemble an array of distinguished scholars, policymakers, community activists and political advocates to examine the interaction of the economic, political, and social “flows,” the undercurrents of history that stymied the war on poverty. Their articles and essays chart the beachheads that must be secured before the war can be successfully resumed; No war, they collectively remind us, is won without some battles being lost. You do not secure the future of the country if you abandon the principles of equity and equality for all, the bedrock of the …
Essay On Community, Hubie Jones
Essay On Community, Hubie Jones
New England Journal of Public Policy
Family and community are human organisms that are the bedrock of any society. They provide the sustenance, values, direction, and protection that make it possible for individuals who live in a defined location to prosper and thrive singularly and collectively. Community is the social structure that mediates between the individual resident and the state and private elites, guiding social transactions between these different worlds to advance and protect the interests and needs of individuals and groups within neighborhoods or local communities.
Devolution: The Retreat Of Government, Judith Kurland
Devolution: The Retreat Of Government, Judith Kurland
New England Journal of Public Policy
Devolution as practiced in much of the world is decentralization of program authority and responsibility to achieve greater administrative efficiency or program standards. Devolution as practiced by the Bush administration and the Republican Congress is not that, nor is it a diminution of federal power and the strengthening of states’ rights. Rather, it is a radical restructuring of government to prevent the expenditure of funds for traditional Democratic programs of the New Deal and the Great Society, and to prohibit states from being either more generous in social programs or more stringent in regulating industry than this administration desires.
The Economic Context: Growing Disparities Of Income And Wealth, Chuck Collins
The Economic Context: Growing Disparities Of Income And Wealth, Chuck Collins
New England Journal of Public Policy
In the last few years, poverty rates have remained constant in the New England states. The effort to reduce poverty in New England and the United States has been thwarted by trends of growing income and wealth inequality. Since the late 1970s, the real incomes for the majority of U.S. households have remained stagnant or fallen. During the same time, asset ownership has become dramatically more unequal, and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few has increased. The causes of this accelerated inequality are complex, but underlying the picture are a series of rule changes, both public …
The Road To Universal Health Coverage In Massachusetts: A Story In Three Parts, John E. Mcdonough
The Road To Universal Health Coverage In Massachusetts: A Story In Three Parts, John E. Mcdonough
New England Journal of Public Policy
In 1988, the Massachusetts Legislature passed a new law, a “play or pay” employer mandate, requiring all employers with six or more workers to provide health insurance coverage for their employees. A few years later, with Medicaid identified as a “Budget Buster,” the Weld administration sought deregulation as the way to cut costs and expand access by establishing MassHealth, which dropped the employer mandate and expanded Medicaid, and eventually distinguished Massachusetts as the state with the greatest percent of covered citizens. But MassHealth enrollment has declined as premium costs have risen, and the Uncompensated Care Pool is once again faced …
Interrupted Progress: Forty Years Of Child Poverty, Deborah Weinstein
Interrupted Progress: Forty Years Of Child Poverty, Deborah Weinstein
New England Journal of Public Policy
In the last forty years since the beginning of the war on poverty, the condition of poor children has improved and the percentage of children living in poverty has declined. Children and their families made the greatest gain when there was a good economy and an increase in government supports. But when such investments shrink, as they have in recent years, progress is impeded. Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) must be reauthorized by Congress. The legislation now under discussion does not encourage states to replicate programs that have increased work and family income and helped children.
Higher Education And The Promise Of Opportunity, Robert L. Woodbury
Higher Education And The Promise Of Opportunity, Robert L. Woodbury
New England Journal of Public Policy
The article portrays the passage of the Higher Education Act of 1965 as a watershed event, much like the Morrill Land Grant Act and the G.I. Bill, in the history of opening higher education to a broader range of citizens. What had once been a largely private enterprise for the elite became an increasingly public commitment to make a college and university education accessible to anyone qualified to take advantage of the opportunity. In the last two decades, however, that promise has faded as costs have escalated, financial aid has become less available to the needy, federal and state support …
Challenges To Multiculturalism, Jorge Capetillo-Ponce
Challenges To Multiculturalism, Jorge Capetillo-Ponce
New England Journal of Public Policy
An anti-bilingual education referendum was offered to citizens of Massachusetts in November of 2002. The referendum read, in part, “The current state law providing for transitional bilingual education in public schools will be replaced with a law requiring that, with limited exceptions, all public school children must be taught English by being taught all subjects in English and being placed in English language classrooms.” The University of Massachusetts Gaston Institute analyzed the results of that referendum, here reported on by Jorge Capetillo-Ponce.
When Half The Neighborhood Is Missing, Gus Newport
When Half The Neighborhood Is Missing, Gus Newport
New England Journal of Public Policy
Local nonprofits too often compete with each other for power, turf, and funds. The author, formerly director of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, advocates for a collaborative process that engages the local community in defining and executing new initiatives. Governance for the good of the people must rely on sound research, sound principles and values, and the understanding and support of the community.
Challenging The Policy Establishment, Alice O'Connor
Challenging The Policy Establishment, Alice O'Connor
New England Journal of Public Policy
Among the many challenges community action faces after four decades, none cuts more deeply into its central mission than the political and ideological transformation reflected in the rise of the conservative right. Based on a potent combination of grass roots and institutional organizing, coalition-building, ideological mobilization, and inter/intra party politics, the right-wing takeover has empowered a political and policy establishment that is hostile not only to the ideas that animated the War on Poverty but to the very idea of public action against social and economic inequality. While this transformation has kept community action on the defensive, confronting the challenge …
Ideas Of Reform: Like Buddhist Souls, Peter Marris, Martin Rein
Ideas Of Reform: Like Buddhist Souls, Peter Marris, Martin Rein
New England Journal of Public Policy
In 1967 Martin Rein and Peter Marris wrote an important book exploring the projects leading to the development of community action and related programs of the Great Society. In it they describe reform as a diffuse process in which preferences clash and evolve. Purposeful reform rarely has the intended consequences. The selection below is taken from the concluding remarks of their book, The Dilemmas of Social Reform, copyright University of Chicago Press, and is reprinted here with permission.
Community Action In Massachusetts, Jim Canavan
Community Action In Massachusetts, Jim Canavan
New England Journal of Public Policy
Evaluates the contribution of community action agencies (CCA) in alleviating poverty in Massachusetts from its creation during the term of former U.S. President Lyndon Johnson until 2004. Description of the programs to the poor offered by CCAs; Operation of CCAs across the state; Affordable housing offered by the CCAs.
When They Need Help The Most: Public Services For Immigrants, Miren Uriarte, Phillip Granberry
When They Need Help The Most: Public Services For Immigrants, Miren Uriarte, Phillip Granberry
New England Journal of Public Policy
Ending unauthorized immigration is at the heart of current federal initiatives in both immigration and social policy. The intertwining of these two areas of policy is nowhere clearer than in the 1996 passage of both the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), better known as Welfare Reform, and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA). Immigration status became a key point of differentiation in access to public benefits as cutbacks were instituted with the stated goal of curtailing undocumented immigration. The denial of public benefits to limit unauthorized immigration has a disproportionate impact on those groups …
Foreword, Elaine Werby, Donna Haig Friedman
Foreword, Elaine Werby, Donna Haig Friedman
New England Journal of Public Policy
Interspersed throughout this issue are Voices of Community Action — the voices of executive directors, board members, and staff. Some are personal reflections; others describe their work or tell of the struggles of those who live with poverty. All speak to the commitment of service and change, to personal development and growth, and to the worth of their work. Their stories are 10 matched in the testimony of those who have received services or participated in community action programs. All of these stories bear witness to the importance of what happens on the front lines among leaders, board members, staff, …
A Portrait Of Asian Americans In Metro Boston, Paul Watanabe, Michael Liu, Shauna Lo
A Portrait Of Asian Americans In Metro Boston, Paul Watanabe, Michael Liu, Shauna Lo
New England Journal of Public Policy
The Asian American population of metropolitan Boston has grown rapidly and in extraordinary numbers. This article describes the great variety within the population with the purpose of fostering effective analysis, policy making, and service delivery.