When Minnesota’s new, leaner, meaner medical assistance law goes into effect on January 1, 2012, many legal immigrants will lose eligibility for medical assistance. The changes in the law affect both medical assistance for low-income legal immigrants, and the already-limited emergency medical assistance available to everyone. Continue reading
Category Archives: news
Bringing home the drum
While Cinco de Mayo may be the best-known Minnesota celebration of Mexican culture, the Minnesota-Mexico cultural connections are many and varied. Among them are Mexican dance groups in Minnesota, including Danza Mexica Cuautemoc and Kalpulli Ketzal Coatlicue. The Aztec dance tradition includes ceremonial costumes, ancient dances, and the music of ceremonial drums. Last week, the Grandfather Drum of Danza Mexica Cuautemoc was reported stolen, and this week its return will be celebrated.
The Grandfather Drum was made for Danza Mexica Cuautemoc in Mexico in 2002. According to their website, members of the troupe traveled to Mexico to meet with the drum-making family. Their drum was made from the trunk of a fallen tree that was more than a hundred years old. Continue reading
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Racial disparities in hiring? Just slash human rights budget
(Photo, courtesy of HIRE, shows demonstrators assembled to deliver petition to Governor Dayton.)
Last week a coalition of community organizations asked Governor Mark Dayton to veto Republican-backed legislation that will slash the Minnesota Department of Human Rights budget by a crippling 50-65 percent. The mission of the department is to:
• investigate charges of illegal discrimination,
• ensure that businesses seeking state contracts are in compliance with equal opportunity requirements, and
• eliminate discrimination by educating Minnesotans about their rights and responsibilities under the state Human Rights Act. (MDHR website)
A press release by HIRE Minnesota, a coalition of more than 70 community organizations, protesting the cuts said, in part:
MDHR’s mission has been threatened by budget cuts for years, and the agency’s staff has been reduced by 13 full-time employees over the last eight years. As HIRE Minnesota presented its letter, signed by dozens of Minnesota residents, community organizations and coalitions, to the governor’s staff, HIRE Minnesota Founder Louis King praised the governor for pledging to hold the department’s ever-shrinking budget steady over the next biennium.
For the record, Minnesota’s record on discrimination shows the continuing need for the work of the Department of Human Rights. As reported time after time, the Twin Cities metro area has the biggest disparity in black-white unemployment rates of any major metropolitan area in the country.
The budget cuts come after a big increase in caseload last year. (That may be due in part to the transfer of the work of the Minneapolis civil rights complaints investigations arm to the State Human Rights Department.) No matter—the Republicans don’t think that the Human Rights Department needs a budget to continue its work. Or maybe they just don’t think its work needs to continue.
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Egypt – the latest and where to follow the news
In Egypt today (Wednesday, February 2), the government sent police and government employees and supporters to attack the demonstrators assembled in Tahrir Square in Cairo. The army, which has not attacked the demonstrators, did not intervene to safeguard them from the attackers, some of whom came on horseback and camelback. Many people were seriously injured and at least one killed. The U.N. Secretary General condemned the violence.
The mainstream media, for the most part, are not reporting the identity of attackers – that they are police and government supporters, armed and sent by the government.
If you are watching the news from Egypt, whether with hope for the future or with fears resonating from Mexico in 1968 or Tiananmen Square, Democracy Now is the prime go-to news source. Their Sharif Abdel Kouddous is reporting from Cairo, where his family lives, and you can follow him via his Twitter stream (@sharifkouddous) or on the Democracy Now blog, which includes other voices as well.
Then there’s Al Jazeera, whose credibility is attested to by the ferocity with which the Egyptian police and government supporters are attacking it.
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People with disabilities speak out against proposed cuts to services
A report last week from Minnesota health plan companies, Minnesota’s Healthcare Imperative, recommended cuts in services for people with disabilities, and “a fundamental reinvention of the payment system.” In plain English, that means that state Medicaid payments, which now go directly to doctors and health care providers, would instead go to insurance companies and other managed care groups. Continue reading
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Sara’s story, and Minnesota’s future
“Three years ago, I met a young girl, now eight years old, whom I will call Sara. And who, when placed with foster parents at the age of five, couldn’t count beyond three and didn’t know her alphabet.”
Carolyn Roby, a high-powered Wells Fargo Foundation executive, had trouble talking about Sara at the January 26 Compass annual meeting. Her voice broke as she described Sara’s background – no learning disabilities, just an impoverished environment as the youngest of 10 children in a single-parent family where English was not the home language. Continue reading
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Bad news for low-income housing in MN
Two reports out this week highlight the scarcity and continuing problems of low-income housing in Minnesota. The first focuses on the gap between need and available housing, and the second on deep problems within the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency.
Housing Link, a nonprofit clearinghouse for affordable housing information, issued a report highlighting the housing gap. Its key findings:
- 151,788 metro-area households had incomes of less than 30 percent of the area median income. According to the report, that’s considered “extremely low income” by HUD.
- Only 50,103 subsidized housing opportunities were targeted for these households, out of a total of only 80,178 total subsidized housing opportunities in the Twin Cities metro area.
Subsidized housing opportunities included both tenant-based subsidies, such as Section 8 rent subsidies, and unit-based subsidies, which are tied to the apartment or house rather than to the renters.
Sharon Rolenc recently reported in the TC Daily Planet on the overwhelming demand for subsidized housing and the closed Section 8 waiting lists throughout the metro area:
St. Paul opened its waiting list in 2007 for three days and received more than 11,000 requests for applications. Minneapolis opened its list in 2008 for two days and nearly 14,000 applications were received. More recently, Richfield opened its list in November 2009, and had 11,000 people turn out for 500 spots selected randomly by computer.
The second bad-news report comes from LarsonAllen consultants, who were tasked by the Minnesota Housing Finance board with evaluating the strained situation within the Minnesota Housing Finance agency under the leadership of Dan Bartholomay. According to the Star Tribune:
The report called Bartholomay “a polarizing figure,” adding that he “appears to have misread the level of distrust he has generated, as well as his lack of credible knowledge of housing programs and housing finance.”
The report also cited an atmosphere of secrecy and intimidation of employees, including a bizarre incident of a manager requiring a “loyalty oath.”
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Ride on – Streetcars one stop closer to return to Minneapolis, St. Paul
The romance of streetcars in San Francisco, Toronto and New Orleans came one stop closer to the Twin Cities this week, as the Federal Transportation Administration awarded a $900,000 grant to begin the final study of the first proposed Minneapolis line.
Minneapolis has been studying and preparing for streetcars for several years. A 2007 feasibility study identified 14 possible routes: Broadway, Central, Chicago, Como, Franklin, Fremont, Hennepin, Lake/Midtown Greenway, Lyndale, Nicollet, Penn/Highway 55, University, Riverside, and Washington. According to the 169-page final report submitted to the city in March 2010:
More than a dozen North American cities have streetcar systems that have either been expanded or initiated operation in the past 15 years. At least twice as many additional cities have new systems or new lines under active planning. Streetcars have become popular because they provide cities with the ability to add visible rail service with a capital cost that is much less than the higher capacity light rail. Streetcars are also popular because they are a good fit for densely developed, pedestrian-oriented, urban neighborhoods and activity centers. Many cities, including Minneapolis, were shaped by early streetcar systems, whose remnants can be seen today in the way streets and neighborhoods are laid out.
The FTA-funded study will focus on a Nicollet-Central line stretching from South Minneapolis through Northeast. It’s not entirely clear, but it looks like that line combines two lines that were described in the March report. They both look good:
Nicollet Ave S
• Short term: tourists, downtown workers and visitors to inner core, Convention Center and very dense downtown neighborhoods.
• Long term: serves high density residential neighborhoods south of I-94 and all of Nicollet
Avenue S., connecting to regional routes at I-35W BRT 46th Street station
• Prominent downtown circulator service on Nicollet Mall
• Potential to reduce bus service once the line reaches Lake Street; could essentially eliminate buses on Nicollet Avenue once the line reaches 46th.
• Potential for higher density development between downtown and Franklin
Avenue.
• Opportunity to “knit together” Nicollet Ave at Lake Street with redevelopment potential.
• Very high ridership potential, especially as buses are replaced.
• Limited breadth and intensity of economic development potential downtown and south of Franklin (except at Lake Street).
• Limited opportunity for maintenance and storage facility if line does not connect to Lake Street.
• Dependent on SW LRT Corridor decision.
• Requires significant capital costs to connect Nicollet to Lake Street (reconnection of Nicollet Avenue)
Central Ave NE
• Short term: tourists, downtown workers, visitors to entertainment district, East Hennepin residents and businesses connected to core
• Long term: Residents and businesses along corridor; connecting regional routes at Columbia Heights transit center
• Moderate economic development potential especially East Hennepin area and near Lowry and Shoreham Yards.
• Opportunity to replace significant numbers of buses once the alignment reaches Columbia Heights transit center (if connected to Nicollet).
• Maintenance and storage potential at Shoreham Yards.
• Relatively modest ridership until bus replacement begins.
• Bridge crossing required to reach downtown (likely Hennepin Avenue).
• Needs to be connected to another corridor to serve significant ridership.
• No special generators and limited mix of uses.
Meanwhile, across the river, St. Paul City Councilmember Russ Stark recently visited Portland and observed
… relatively seamless integration of light rail with streetcars, buses, bikeways, and even an aerial tram (like a gondola). I was particularly impressed with how Portland has used the streetcar to revitalize economically depressed areas of the City and attract new housing and jobs back into the urban core. …
Portland uses the streetcar as a primary economic development tool, and the City touts the fact that along existing streetcar lines that cost $155 million to construct, they have seen more than $3 billion in private investment.
Stark is urging St. Paul residents to send him their ideas about possible streetcar routes.
Streetcars started as horse cars in the Twin Cities way back in 1872, with experiments in steam and even cable cars on steep hills on Selby Avenue and East 7th Street, according to A Brief History of Twin Cities Transit. Except for the two cable car lines, all of the streetcars ran on electricity by 1891, with 524 miles of track at their peak.
In other cities around the country, streetcars get more ridership than buses, attracting both tourists and commuters. Proponents say they encourage walkable cities and new development, as well as running cleaner and quieter than diesel-powered buses.
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No spoofing?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brianteutsch/ / CC BY 2.0
Your caller ID shows the name of your bank, and you answer the phone. An official-sounding voice explains that the bank is concerned that “a suspicious person” has attempted to cash a $1,200 check on your account, and asks if you have issued the check. Thoroughly alarmed, you say that you haven’t. You tell the bank officer that you do not want them to cash the check and thank him for their vigilance. He says that he will not allow payment, but needs to verify that he is talking to the account holder – will you please give him your account number and the last four digits of your social security number? Continue reading
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Minnesota homelessness increasing
Homelessness in Minnesota increased dramatically over the past three years, according to the October 2009 Wilder Research study. Wilder has conducted the study every three years since 1991, and found that homelessness stayed fairly constant from 2000-2006, with a low of 7,696 and a high of 7,854. In 2009, however, volunteers counted 9,452 homeless Minnesotans.
The 22 percent increase included 1,670 families with 3,251 children, whose average age was six and one-half years old. An additional 1,207 youth were homeless and on their own, up from 867 in 2006.
Greg Owens, the study director, characterized the results as “troubling, but not surprising.” More people are becoming homeless because of economic conditions, Wilder reported:
• 39% percent of homeless adults left their last permanent housing because of eviction, foreclosure, or failure to have their lease renewed; up from 32 percent in 2006.
• 40% of homeless adults reported a job loss or reduction in hours was a reason for the loss of their last housing; up from 31 percent in 2006
• 20% percent of homeless adults reported current employment, full or part-time, down from about 28 percent in 2006, while average hours of employment per week also dropped to 26 from 30 in 2006.
• 44% of homeless adults are on a waiting list for some form of public housing (up from 34% in 2006).
The Wilder study was conducted by more than 1,000 volunteers who interviewed people across Minnesota in shelters, transitional housing programs, drop-in service locations and other locations such as abandoned buildings or places where homeless people camp. Wilder survey included only those people who were actually located and interviewed. Later reports will include estimates of the number of people who were missed.
Looking just at Hennepin and Ramsey counties, the Minnesota Housing Partnership’s “2 x 4” report for the fourth quarter of 2009, released March 31, found mixed figures on homelessness in December:
• For the 4th quarter, an average of 260 families per month occupied Hennepin County contracted shelters. This number is 12% higher than the 4th quarter of 2008, and 66% higher than the 4th quarter of 2006.
• However, there was a dramatic fall in family homelessness within the quarter itself in Hennepin County. In December, the family homeless number eased markedly to 201 families, likely due to the homeless prevention program discussed above.
• The Minneapolis and St. Paul public schools identified 4,700 homeless youth through December of the school year, 8% higher than last year and 22% higher than the year before.
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Mary Turck