Laid off as a laborer and truck driver for the city of Minneapolis in the depths of the recession, Wes Winkelman found himself unable to find another job.Homelessness and trouble followed. He drank too much.”The first victim of homelessness is sobriety. You’ve got nothing else in life to do. You’re broke. After awhile, stuff happens,” Winkelman, a week short of 58, confides as he describes his transition from self-supporting to unemployed and homeless to housed.Community Sketchbook focuses on the economic and social challenges facing communities, especially low-income communities and communities of color, and how people are trying to address them. Continue Reading
The negative effects of homelessness on kids are well-known. In school, homeless children are absent more frequently and tend not to do as well academically. Outside school, because of dangerous living environments and traumatic family experiences, their families are more likely to be involved with child welfare authorities.But put them and their troubled families into supportive housing and life generally gets better for these children, according to a study released this week by a network of supportive housing programs and the University of Minnesota.The study is notable in part because of the proportion of children among the homeless in Minnesota. The most recent and highly regarded Wilder Research Center homeless count in October 2009 found that the more than 3,200 children counted made up 34 percent of the homeless in the state. Almost two-thirds of homeless persons of all ages were people of color.Community Sketchbook focuses on the economic and social challenges facing communities, especially low-income communities and communities of color, and how people are trying to address them. Continue Reading
Imagine growing up African-American in the pretty much white-bread culture of Minnesota in the 1970s and 1980s, as Kerwin Bell did, and maybe thinking this was all there was to being black in Ameri
It’s not so much about the rhythm as the cause.Celebrated Twin Cities percussionist Marv Dahlgren is calling on drummers far and wide to pick up their sticks at 2 p.m. Saturday to communicate a sobering fact: there are at least 925 million starving and malnourished people in the world.In this state, about 10.8 percent of the population falls at or below the poverty line with hunger numbers here doubling over the last five years. “We’re trying to raise awareness,” says Dahlgren, well known as principal percussionist for the Minnesota Orchestra for 48 years before his retirement a few years back. “I just sit at the phone every day and call drummers.”Community Sketchbook focuses on the economic and social challenges facing communities, especially low-income communities and communities of color, and how people are trying to address them. It is made possible by support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The Minneapolis Foundation, and some Minneapolis Foundation donor advisors.Community Sketchbook articles may be republished or distributed, in print or online, with credit to MinnPost and the foundations.At least 5,000 drummers from here, around the United States and from other countries as well will join in.Unlike so many others who saw news of widespread famine and crop failure in Africa back in August, Dahlgren took up hunger as his cause, enlisting drummer friends including the notable David Stanoch, who has played with some of the best musicians around the world.”I’m concerned that the world is not paying enough attention,” Dahlgren says, 87 years old and still teaching music at McNally Smith College of Music in St. Paul and at Augsburg College in Minneapolis. Continue Reading
The U.S. Census Bureau made it official this year, though a lot of people have known for a long time that the numbers of the needy in Minnesota were rising.The people who run emergency food pantries, house the homeless and educate our kids were telling us so.Schools personnel told of children and their families living in cars and kids coming to school hungry. Emergency food providers told of jobless folks who once donated to emergency food shelves now packing up bags of groceries to bring home. Housing providers told of the need for more shelter space. Government officials pointed to vacant houses and soaring numbers of the poor in suburban cities.Community Sketchbook focuses on the economic and social challenges facing communities, especially low-income communities and communities of color, and how people are trying to address them. It is made possible by support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The Minneapolis Foundation, and some Minneapolis Foundation donor advisors.Community Sketchbook articles may be republished or distributed, in print or online, with credit to MinnPost and the foundations.But Census numbers quantified and legitimized other surveys and everyday observations: 2011 was a year in which more and more Minnesotans entered the ranks of the poor and near poor, putting stress on people and institutions throughout the state.This fall U.S. researchers reported that 10.8 percent of Minnesotans fall at poverty level or less, up from 9.6 percent in 2007-08 before the recession. Continue Reading
Society’s cost for helping the poor has long been monetized, though usually in terms of payouts for such things as financial aid for children and other nutritional assistance.But in these recessionary times of increased poverty in Minnesota and across the nation, there is another way of looking at the costs of hunger: the broader price borne by both individuals and society if its citizens go hungry.Such expenses include paying for medical and mental health problems related to food deficiencies as well as such services as special education classes in schools.Community Sketchbook focuses on the economic and social challenges facing communities, especially low-income communities and communities of color, and how people are trying to address them. It is made possible by support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The Minneapolis Foundation, and some Minneapolis Foundation donor advisors.Community Sketchbook articles may be republished or distributed, in print or online, with credit to MinnPost and the foundations.Considered from that point of view, the cost of hunger in Minnesota is estimated conservatively to be at least $1.26 billion and as higher or higher than $1.62 billion a year, according to a report from the University of Minnesota Food Industry Center that was written for Second Harvest Heartland in late 2010.A newer, national study pushes costs even higher. Released in October by the progressive Center for American Progress in cooperation with Brandeis University, that study estimates Minnesota’s hunger price tag in terms of higher health care costs and poorer education comes to $2.25 billion a year. Their figures are higher in part because the center includes among costs the value of charitable food donations.That Center for American Progress study puts the national cost of letting people go hungry or under-nourished at $167.5 billion.The consequences”This is a condition that does have actual consequences,” says Elton Mykerezi, author of Minnesota’s “Cost/Benefit Hunger Impact Study” and an assistant professor of applied economics at the University of Minnesota. The study’s co-author is Jean Kinsey, a professor emeritus in the same department.Hunger “predisposes” people to physical health problems, psychological and social dysfunction, increased health care costs and lower productivity in the labor force, according to the landmark Minnesota study.”Eliminating these costs will save taxpayer money, help lower the state budget deficit, decrease health care costs, and increase the health and welfare of millions of Minnesotans,” Kinsey blogged last year about the report, which was underwritten by Target.Mykerezi’s numbers are “very conservative, very careful, with the highest level of certainty,” says Second Harvest Heartland Vice President R. Newell Searle in praising the study.Given the increased numbers of the hungry, Mykerezi concedes the costs would be higher today than the study indicates.Specific hunger effectsIncluded among the long and serious list of detrimental health effects among youths experiencing ongoing or reoccurring hunger are: iron deficiencies affecting cognitive and physical development, increased depression and suicide among teens, more anti-social behavior, lower math scores and a greater need for special education services in schools.Hungry pregnant women are at higher risk of giving birth to underweight babies or children with birth defects. Continue Reading
Around the Twin Cities, the need for help with the necessities of life is rising.In the Minneapolis area, requests for emergency food assistance this year rose 15 percent over last year’s numbers and spiked 14 percent for emergency housing.In St. Paul, at food pantries and free kitchens, as well as homeless shelters, people have at times been turned away because resources were exhausted.Such reports put the Twin Cities in the same social-service boat as most of the 29 cities responding to the United States Conference of Mayors 2011 Status Report on Hunger and Homelessness released Thursday.Community Sketchbook focuses on the economic and social challenges facing communities, especially low-income communities and communities of color, and how people are trying to address them. It is made possible by support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The Minneapolis Foundation, and some Minneapolis Foundation donor advisors.Community Sketchbook articles may be republished or distributed, in print or online, with credit to MinnPost and the foundations.Eighty-six percent of the cities report increased calls for food, with an average increase of 15.5 percent. The survey also shows an average 10 percent increase in number of pounds of emergency food distributed, though the conference says the survey should not be taken as a national assessment of the problems of hunger and homelessness.Ranging in size from Asheville, N.C., to Washington, D.C., the cities are all members of the conference. The nation’s official poverty level of 15.1 percent in 2010 reflects the highest level recorded in the 52 years of such data collection.”Like other parts of the country, the economy is just dragging things down. Continue Reading
They wash up in gas station bathrooms, eat food unheated straight from cans and sleep in the back of a panel truck.Such is the startling life of a homeless Central Florida family, a jobless carpenter-dad and his two teenage children, as told on CBS’s “60 Minutes” on Sunday.Brother and sister, 13 and 15, tell their story. Keeping up appearances, they study hard at school, participate in a community theater production, then trek “home” to a truck parked in a different, well-lit lot each night.She is pragmatic. “It’s not really that much of an embarrassment. It’s only life. You do what you have to do,” says Aerial Metzger, a high school freshman. Continue Reading
