The Asset Building News Week is a weekly Friday feature on The Ladder, the Asset Building Program blog, designed to help readers keep up with news and developments in the asset building field. This week's topics include postal banking, housing, income inequality, and public assistance.
Postal Banking
The conversation about postal banking has continued this week. Over on New America’s Weekly Wonk, Elliot Schreur looks at what exactly we mean when we talk about postal banking – and whether it’s a realistic path forward. Michelle Chen for In These Times discusses the history of postal banking and the implications such a development could have for postal workers’ unions. Dedrick Muhammad of NAACP writes that embedding small-dollar savings at the post office has the potential to address current racial disparities in access to safe and affordable financial services.
Child Savings Accounts
National Journal’s Norm Ornstein called for the creation of children’s savings accounts (CSAs) in a column last Friday. Ornstein cited former Senator Bob Kerrey’s “KidSave” plan as a model worth examining. That proposal resulted in a series of “knee-jerk, snarky reactions” prompting another column from Ornstein supporting the idea and citing the bipartisan and conservative support for CSAs in the past. Jeff Mapes of OregonLive also took note of the conservative roots of Senator Ron Wyden’s idea to promote CSAs.
Housing and Homelessness
Los Angeles County is expanding services to families struggling with homelessness by integrating more services in a “one-stop” model. As Jessica Ivey, a housing coordinator with L.A. Family Housing put it, "Families are not being shuffled around. They're not going from shelter to shelter or door to door to look for services. They're going to one spot and being connected.”
Writing for the New York Times, Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Michael Corkery report that the rise in the mortgage servicing industry has been accompanied by a rise in borrower complaints. While “servicing companies defend their track records, saying they have had success in keeping borrowers in their homes,” consumer advocates, such as Katerine Porter, appointed by the California attorney general to oversee the mortgage settlement, believes that servicing companies have “overpromised and underdelivered.”
The Washington Post reported on the interplay between growing student debt and falling rates of homeownership by first-time buyers. Meanwhile, Marketplace reports that homeownership is increasingly unaffordable for lower- and middle-income Americans.
Income Inequality
The Economic Policy Institute has a new interactive feature exploring income inequality in the U.S. at both the state and federal level. Annie Lowrey of the New York Times reports on the findings of a new Brookings report that documents heightened levels of income inequality within major U.S. cities. Researchers are looking at how city-level inequality differs or mirrors national-level inequality. San Francisco earns the dubious distinction of being home to “the single biggest increase in inequality over that period […] where earnings for the typical low-income household dropped $4,000 and soared $28,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars for a high-income household.”
Public Assistance
Participants in Colorado public assistance programs have been documenting their lives and experiences with support from Hunger Free Colorado. PBS spoke with a few participants from the program this week. Caroline Pooler described her experience: “I really can’t tell you what that’s meant to my overall ability to function, get things done in the day, and now have been able to at least see the light at the end of the poverty vortex, as I call it, where I’m in full-time school in a dental assisting program. So I’m hopeful that the training is going to translate into a full-time job, me getting off SNAP, and being able to support myself fully.”
Meanwhile, CNN reports that food stamp participation among members of the U.S. military is on the rise. One contributing factor is the struggle spouses of military members face in finding and keeping living wage jobs: “in 2012, there was a 30% unemployment rate among spouses off active-duty military who were 18 to 24 years old.”
Kathy Hanks for the Houston Chronicle features the experience of one family receiving SNAP (food stamps) while struggling to save and get ahead. The Johnsons are participating in a program called Creating Assets, Savings and Hope, or CASH, through which they save $60 every month and complete financial education workshops.
Quick Hits
New America’s Education team has put together an informative series of infographics illustrating the dynamics of student debt.
Coming up this Tuesday, check out this event we’re cohosting with the Center for Social Development: The Tax-Man Giveth? Refunds, Savings, and Promoting Economic Security. RSVP to attend in person, or bookmark the page to tune in live online at 9am EST.
Half in Ten and the Center for American Progress released a new report that looks at the viewpoints of Millennial-age Americans regarding poverty and economic difficulty. They found that Millennials have more direct experience with economic hardship than older generations – and perhaps relatedly show higher levels of support for strategies to address poverty.
Check out this webinar next week on the 27th hosted by our friends at the Center for Global Policy Solutions, featuring experts from NCLR, NAACP and D2D (Doorways to Dreams) Fund: "A Seat at the Table: The Importance of Financial Inclusion and Protection for Communities of Color."
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Postal Banking
The conversation about postal banking has continued this week. Over on New America’s Weekly Wonk, Elliot Schreur looks at what exactly we mean when we talk about postal banking – and whether it’s a realistic path forward. Michelle Chen for In These Times discusses the history of postal banking and the implications such a development could have for postal workers’ unions. Dedrick Muhammad of NAACP writes that embedding small-dollar savings at the post office has the potential to address current racial disparities in access to safe and affordable financial services.
Child Savings Accounts
National Journal’s Norm Ornstein called for the creation of children’s savings accounts (CSAs) in a column last Friday. Ornstein cited former Senator Bob Kerrey’s “KidSave” plan as a model worth examining. That proposal resulted in a series of “knee-jerk, snarky reactions” prompting another column from Ornstein supporting the idea and citing the bipartisan and conservative support for CSAs in the past. Jeff Mapes of OregonLive also took note of the conservative roots of Senator Ron Wyden’s idea to promote CSAs.
Housing and Homelessness
Los Angeles County is expanding services to families struggling with homelessness by integrating more services in a “one-stop” model. As Jessica Ivey, a housing coordinator with L.A. Family Housing put it, "Families are not being shuffled around. They're not going from shelter to shelter or door to door to look for services. They're going to one spot and being connected.”
Writing for the New York Times, Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Michael Corkery report that the rise in the mortgage servicing industry has been accompanied by a rise in borrower complaints. While “servicing companies defend their track records, saying they have had success in keeping borrowers in their homes,” consumer advocates, such as Katerine Porter, appointed by the California attorney general to oversee the mortgage settlement, believes that servicing companies have “overpromised and underdelivered.”
The Washington Post reported on the interplay between growing student debt and falling rates of homeownership by first-time buyers. Meanwhile, Marketplace reports that homeownership is increasingly unaffordable for lower- and middle-income Americans.
Income Inequality
The Economic Policy Institute has a new interactive feature exploring income inequality in the U.S. at both the state and federal level. Annie Lowrey of the New York Times reports on the findings of a new Brookings report that documents heightened levels of income inequality within major U.S. cities. Researchers are looking at how city-level inequality differs or mirrors national-level inequality. San Francisco earns the dubious distinction of being home to “the single biggest increase in inequality over that period […] where earnings for the typical low-income household dropped $4,000 and soared $28,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars for a high-income household.”
Public Assistance
Participants in Colorado public assistance programs have been documenting their lives and experiences with support from Hunger Free Colorado. PBS spoke with a few participants from the program this week. Caroline Pooler described her experience: “I really can’t tell you what that’s meant to my overall ability to function, get things done in the day, and now have been able to at least see the light at the end of the poverty vortex, as I call it, where I’m in full-time school in a dental assisting program. So I’m hopeful that the training is going to translate into a full-time job, me getting off SNAP, and being able to support myself fully.”
Meanwhile, CNN reports that food stamp participation among members of the U.S. military is on the rise. One contributing factor is the struggle spouses of military members face in finding and keeping living wage jobs: “in 2012, there was a 30% unemployment rate among spouses off active-duty military who were 18 to 24 years old.”
Kathy Hanks for the Houston Chronicle features the experience of one family receiving SNAP (food stamps) while struggling to save and get ahead. The Johnsons are participating in a program called Creating Assets, Savings and Hope, or CASH, through which they save $60 every month and complete financial education workshops.
Quick Hits
New America’s Education team has put together an informative series of infographics illustrating the dynamics of student debt.
Coming up this Tuesday, check out this event we’re cohosting with the Center for Social Development: The Tax-Man Giveth? Refunds, Savings, and Promoting Economic Security. RSVP to attend in person, or bookmark the page to tune in live online at 9am EST.
Half in Ten and the Center for American Progress released a new report that looks at the viewpoints of Millennial-age Americans regarding poverty and economic difficulty. They found that Millennials have more direct experience with economic hardship than older generations – and perhaps relatedly show higher levels of support for strategies to address poverty.
Check out this webinar next week on the 27th hosted by our friends at the Center for Global Policy Solutions, featuring experts from NCLR, NAACP and D2D (Doorways to Dreams) Fund: "A Seat at the Table: The Importance of Financial Inclusion and Protection for Communities of Color."
