Women and Poverty News
"The YWCA of Greater Cincinnati eventually will run the city's homeless shelter for women. For the time being, the 42 beds for single homeless women will remain at the Drop Inn Center in Over-the-Rhine."
"The Anna Louise Inn, the city's largest residence for homeless women, will undergo a $12 million renovation next summer. City leaders say the project... means a stable future for the inn, which has provided shelter for low-income females for the last 100 years."
"In June, Vantaja, 17, graduated from Malverne High School. She is an honors graduate, a scholarship recipient, and this week she is due to become a freshman at Nassau Community College. Until February, she was homeless."
"President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act in 1935. Since then, it has unquestionably kept millions of people - most importantly, the elderly and disabled - from the depths of poverty.
"Let it sink in, Monicka Carey-Green told her girls. Green, the founder and executive director of DIVA, a nonprofit organization for low-income and at-risk girls, uses Beyonce's song as a teaching tool."
"'Meth. That's never a good drug,' Wrightsman said. Jail and homelessness followed. At 29, however, she's on her way back up again, living at Volunteers of America's Mather Community Campus and heading to Brazil to play for the United States in the Homeless World Cup."
"But the San Francisco health care worker decided to break the cycle of poverty. Now, the 38-year-old is a college graduate on the cusp of opening her own business. She is also raising a high-achieving teenager who is in a position to win merit-based college scholarships"
"Liz Murray's journey from homelessness to Harvard University isn't a religious story in any traditional sense. Yet, Renee Craft, executive director of HOPE Ministries, couldn't help but see in it something appropriately encouraging for her clients."
"More than half of babies in poverty are being raised by mothers who show symptoms of mild to severe depression, potentially creating problems in parenting and in child development, according to a study."
"A case in point is occurring in New Jersey, where Gov. Chris Christie vetoed a bipartisan bill authorizing $7.4 million to help thousands of low-income women and their families receive vital health care services, including cancer screenings and other essential medical tests."
"The house, which sits on a particularly bleak block choked by weeds and vacant buildings, wasn't theirs, but it was shelter in the neighborhood where they'd grown up. The siblings are part of a disproportionate number of sick and elderly living in blighted buildings since Katrina..."
"On Aug. 31, Family Promise of Salem County (FPSC) will celebrate its first year in existence. They helped their first homeless family that day last year, and the single mom of two has since found a home and two jobs."
"It has been 17 years since Debra Thomas was homeless with her infant daughter, but the experience still defines her. In 2004, it drove her to start a tiny nonprofit to help others facing the same misery she had."
"A drug rehabilitation center for homeless women will be shuttered because of the economic downturn, leaving fewer options for those looking to start over.Albuquerque Health Care for the Homeless will close Tierra del Sol, its 11-bed residential treatment center for women..."
"Wisconsin is pushing to expand a controversial program that uses federal Medicaid funds to provide free birth-control pills, vasectomies and other forms of contraception to low-income people, an effort made possible by the federal health-care overhaul."
"A prominent expert on poverty who dropped out of school as a teen but went on to earn a doctorate in education brought her experience to San Luis Obispo County on Friday."
"The basic premise inspiring so many government subsidies — that any work, even menial work, is a first step out of poverty — has a hearty hopefulness to it and some logic."
"Gaitán, 29, says she came to the U.S. to follow her husband, who had come here earlier, escape poverty at home and send money to her family back in Nicaragua"
"On the other end of the spectrum, low-income women generally do not have a choice between career and family. Many are single parents. Their chances of escaping poverty are hurt by the long-term costs of taking time off after childbirth and having little flexibility in their schedules."
"For Jacqueline Parker, the road to homelessness was dazzling and well-lit. The 63-year-old Mississippi native had an apartment and a job when she began accompanying a friend to a Chicago-area casino to play the slot machines."
"We need to corral every vote possible to ensure that the health of low-income women throughout this state is not a casualty of political ideologies."
"It takes a perverse brand of courage to be a heroin addict -- a willingness to risk poverty, shame, incarceration, violence and death in pursuit of the rush. When Katie Bagdonas, 29, was ready to quit, she had to turn that bravery in a new direction."
"But, she said, it might have something to do with the conservative culture in these parts, which can create a reluctance to have open and honest conversations about sex. Economic downturns, and the poverty... that follow, also can raise the likelihood of sexual violence, she said."
"New Jersey's family planning health centers are bracing for reduced hours, layoffs, and even closings after Gov. Christie's veto of a bill to restore $7.5 million for women's health services."
"Then her life turned to chaos, quickly sinking her financial position from middle-class to poverty.
Her third child was born premature and later was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. Then there was a divorce and child support payments that never came."
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