North Dakota Housing Finance Agency Publication - Tenant Resources

North Dakota Housing Finance Agency recently published a new Tenant Resources Guide: A Guide to Renting Affordable Housing.

The 8 page booklet provides information on:

• Determining Affordability
• Understanding Your Credit Score
• Preparing Your Apartment Resume
• Asking the Right Questions
• Repairing Your Background
• Understanding Your Lease
• Qualifying for Public Housing

The guide also has a link to the North Dakota Apartment Association's Landlord/Tenant Rights.

Economic Policy Institute: Minimum Wage Could be $18.85 if Tied to Productivity

Analyst: Min. Wage Could be $18.85 if Tied to Productivity

     

August 4. 2016

A new analysis argues that the federal minimum wage would be about $10 higher if it were tied to gains made in worker productivity. (iStockphoto)

BISMARCK, N.D. – This summer marks the seven year anniversary of the last time the federal minimum wage was raised – from $6.55 to $7.25 an hour – and the buying power of those dollars has fallen by 10 percent because of inflation, according to new analysis from the Economic Policy Institute.

David Cooper, the study's author, says until the 1960s the wage was raised at roughly the same pace as increases in worker productivity.

"Had that trend continued since 1968 and we had continued to raise the minimum wage pretty regularly every year, we would have a minimum wage today of close to $19 an hour," he points out.

The Democratic Party recently added a $15-an-hour minimum wage to its platform, and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has also come out in favor of an increase.

According to the National Federation of Independent Business, raising the federal wage isn't possible for all businesses, especially in the South and parts of the Midwest.

Cooper's study also found that if the wage had kept pace with the average growth of typical U.S. workers' income, today's minimum wage would be almost $12 an hour.

Groups opposing initiatives in several states to pay workers at least that amount over the next few years maintain the move could lead to thousands of jobs being cut.

Cooper disagrees.

"The effect of increases in the minimum wage on employment probably is the most studied topic in all of labor economics,” he points out. “Modest increases in the minimum wage have little to no effect on employment, I mean, that debate is basically settled."

Cooper stresses raising the wage floor also helps middle class workers get paid more, and has a positive impact on local economies.

Brandon Campbell, Public News Service - ND

The Midwest Joins the Movement: A Midyear Look at Paid Sick Time Progress across the Nation

JUL 01, 2016

By Zoe Ziliak Michel

The movement to guarantee paid sick time has swept into the Heartland. On May 27, Minneapolis became the first* jurisdiction in the Midwest to pass a paid sick time ordinance. Just last week, Chicago followed suit. The two cities join nearly three dozen other jurisdictions that have passed such laws.

Minneapolis and Chicago aren’t the only winners this year. Thanks to the tireless efforts of advocates and workers, eight jurisdictions have passed paid sick time laws or referenda in 2016. In March, Vermont became the fifth state (joining Connecticut, California, Massachusetts, and Oregon) to guarantee its workers paid sick time. Maryland came very close; its bill passed the house of delegates but failed in the senate on the last day of the session. Four other cities—Spokane; Plainfield, NJ; Santa Monica; and Los Angeles—also passed paid sick time ordinances this year. And just last month, voters in San Diego approved a referendum that will allow workers to earn 40 hours of paid sick time per year. The laws passed this year alone will grant paid sick time to over 1.7 million additional workers.

These laws help meet important needs. Without paid sick time, workers who fall ill have to choose between staying home to recover and earning a paycheck. They can even be fired for missing a single day of work. Paid sick time laws allow people to stay home to care for themselves or a sick loved one while still being able to pay their rent. The laws further promote public health by ensuring that workers who interact with the public—those employed in food service, health care, or child care facilities, among others—don’t spread their illnesses to clients or patients. The laws also help businesses by reducing employee turnover and improving morale.

More paid sick time laws are expected to pass in the coming months. Legislators in St. Paul and Duluth, MN are currently considering bills, and other locations may pass paid sick time through referenda. Berkeley, CA will have a paid sick time measure on its ballot this November, while advocates in Washington state; Arizona; and Albuquerque, NM are collecting signatures for referenda.

2016 is quickly becoming a memorable year in the movement to guarantee paid sick time. However, state and local paid sick time laws are not enough. There are currently 43 million U.S. workers who cannot earn a single paid sick day. While workers in Vermont and Spokane will soon have this protection, those in Georgia and Urbana need it, too. A federal paid sick time bill, the Healthy Families Act (HFA), is needed to cover everyone. This bill would ensure no one in our country has to choose between staying employed and staying well.

* = Milwaukee actually passed a paid sick time ballot initiative in 2008, but it was overturned with the passage of a 2011 Wisconsin preemption law forbidding municipalities to enact local paid sick time ordinances.

Medicaid Expansion Helps Kids by Helping Moms Get Care for Maternal Depression

JUL 21, 2016

By Joan Alker and Olivia Golden 

Today, CLASP and Georgetown University Center for Children and Families (CCF) are releasing a new report on the important but often-overlooked link between adult health care coverage and children’s healthy development – specifically, the connection between health care coverage and identifying and treating maternal depression, so that children can thrive.  Because of the powerful connection between mothers’ mental health and children’s wellbeing and long-term success, Medicaid expansion is a critical tool to help children and should be front and center for child-focused advocates and policymakers. 

We are especially excited about this report because of the complementary expertise of our two organizations – CCF on health and CLASP on child care and early childhood development.  Thank you to our co-authors Stephanie Schmit and Alisa Chester for their hard work synthesizing the research about child development, Medicaid expansion, and maternal depression.  The report, Medicaid Expansion Promotes Children’s Development and Family Success by Treating Maternal Depression, distills the research to support four key conclusions.

• Untreated maternal depression is a major public health problem that affects large numbers of women, especially low-income women and their children. More than half (55 percent) of poor infants have a mother who is experiencing some level of depressive symptoms. Maternal depression has been shown to undercut children’s healthy development and stymie families’ efforts to escape poverty. Maternal depression can affect children’s cognitive, socio-emotional, and behavioral development, as well as academic achievement and employment opportunities throughout their lifetime.

• While safe and effective treatments exist, low-income and uninsured women are far less likely to get treatment. More than one-third (37 percent) of low-income mothers with young children who have had a major depressive disorder do not receive any treatment. The cost of mental health care is a major barrier to care, particularly for uninsured mothers.

• States that used the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to expand Medicaid coverage for low-income parents have new opportunities to ensure that women are enrolled and receiving coverage. In the 19 states that have not expanded Medicaid, half a million mothers fall into a coverage gap. They earn too much to qualify for Medicaid coverage but earn too little to qualify for premium assistance through the ACA’s health insurance marketplace. The Medicaid income eligibility threshold for parents in most non-expansion states is extremely low. (See chart).

• Mothers without health insurance face significant financial barriers to getting the care they need to treat maternal depression.  As research cited in the report demonstrates, expanding Medicaid coverage to more low-income adults (including mothers) would remove those barriers and help increase access to screening, identification, and treatment of maternal depression—thereby promoting young children’s healthy development and families’ economic security. Access to Medicaid has been shown to reduce the incidence of depression by increasing access to mental health services and diminishing financial barriers to care. For example, new research indicates that Medicaid expansion has not only resulted in improved access to medical benefits but has also resulted in improved access to behavioral health treatment for newly eligible enrollees.

The report concludes that Medicaid expansion for low-income mothers can greatly improve women’s access to treatment for depression, which is vital to children’s healthy development.

Extending Medicaid coverage to more low-income mothers would help increase screening, identification, and treatment of maternal depression—thereby promoting young children’s healthy development and family economic security.

If more states were to accept Medicaid expansion funding, more mothers would gain access to maternal depression screening and treatment and more children would have improved opportunities to reach their full potential.

Reclaiming Government for America’s Future

Dear allies and friends,

We are pleased to announce that we recently wrapped-up an intensive, multi-year investigation that examined the attitudes and beliefs of Americans about government and the public sector. More importantly however, this project, Reclaiming Government for America’s Future, developed compelling new communications recommendations for creating hopeful, constructive and engaged conversations about government with all types of Americans.

The Topos Partnership conducted this investigation on our behalf and, as always, their team produced a rich and bold set of findings and recommendations for communicators.

In keeping with the original findings we commissioned over a decade ago, Americans are deeply cynical about the value of government and have very little sense that there is anything they can do, other than voting, that will make a difference. Though they recognize that they live in a democratic nation, their day-to-day lived experience is that they feel like “subjects, not citizens.” It’s important that communicators acknowledge that people don’t believe government is working well and that they don’t believe they have a say in how things are run. Elected officials, who dominate people’s thinking about government, are viewed as not only out of touch but corrupt, manipulating government to serve primarily themselves and their wealthy friends. To break through these profound hurdles, we must remind Americans that government is supposed to be not only FOR, but also BY, the people. We have to help people connect the dots between what government does (schools, roads, public health, etc.) and how those things make up the foundation of “thriving communities.” Moreover, we have to give people a new idea of how democracy should work – it works when we all go “beyond voting.” We also need to give people a sense of the experience of democracy working by: 1) incorporating success stories of citizens coming together to make change through government; 2) offering tips and suggestions for how to be involved that can be grouped into “Voting Plus One starter kits”; and 3) reminding them of the mechanisms currently in place, and that could be in place, to allow them to “have a say.”

Indivisible, along with our partners at Topos, have been building out a set of resources and tools for communicators to help them understand and effectively implement these findings and recommendations. You can access all of the documents, vides, tools and other resources produced for this effort at reclaiminggovernment.topospartnership.com (passcode: byus4us), http://www.publicworks.org/newresearch/, and https://www.indivisible.us/research/.

Indivisible and Topos staff have also been on the ground in the six states in which the on-the-ground narrative testing occurred (CO, AR, OR, NE, MI and NC), working with a diverse set of leaders to launch these new ideas out in the American public dialogue.  These initial meetings and presentations have given us a sense of how challenging these recommendations might be. Nevertheless, it was inspiring to watch as participants generated dozens of creative ideas and plans for implementation in their communities and states.

Unfortunately, as many of you already know, Public Works and Indivisible are closing down operations this month and, therefore, will not be in a position to work with partners and others who would like to use this new resource. Thankfully, The Topos Partnership welcomes inquiries from you and others about this research and, as someone who has expressed interest in this topic via your engagement with Public Works or Indivisible, you may receive updates from Topos when new resources are released. They can be reached directly at team@topospartnership.com.

It is uplifting for us to know that the mission of creating a new American cultural common sense about the role of government lives on through the great work you are doing in your respective communities and states and we sincerely hope that this new resource, Reclaiming Government for America’s Future, will aid you in those endeavors.

Very best wishes,

Team Indivisible & Public Works

Dianne Stewart, Marcia Kinsey, Elaine Mejia, Sarah White

Want to Lower Child Poverty? Give Families Cash.

July 7, 2016 | Andrew Stettner

Lisa Zilligen serves lunch to her three children in her home in Chicago. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)

This year marks the 20^th anniversary of the “welfare reform” that slashed cash income assistance in the United States. At the time, we didn’t have much scientific evidence about how children’s futures are impacted by poverty. Now, we know better.

Poverty can impede children’s brain development and harm biological processes in ways that damage long-term health. Numerous federally supported interventions, including Head Start, children’s health insurance, and child nutrition programs are deployed to ameliorate these disadvantages.  While these programs are crucial, they don’t get to heart of the matter.

What if we tackled the problem of child poverty head-on by providing a modest amount of cash assistance to parents?

In 1997, in the mountains of Western North Carolina—a region affected by grinding rural poverty—one community did exactly that. When the Cherokee Nation built a casino on the border of its reservation, they distributed the proceeds to local tribe members—the average family received $4,000 per year. Since non-tribal communities nearby lived in similar conditions, but were not eligible for the monies, these payments created an opportunity to examine the impact of cash assistance on the children who received it.

Researchers at Duke University tracked the participants from childhood into adulthood, and found that those who received the assistance “used less alcohol and fewer drugs, were less likely to commit minor crimes, and more likely to graduate from high school.”

What’s striking about this assistance—which was given without restrictions, guidance, the stigma of welfare, or the intervention of social workers—is that it paid off large dividends on problems that seemed intractable, such as alcoholism, crime, and education outcomes.  The study also made it clear that when parents have additional resources, they spend it on key investments like education for their kids, safe housing, meeting basic needs, and preventing hardships (like a broken down vehicle) that can push a family into crisis.

These results should not come as a surprise to anyone who has followed the success of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which provides an average of $3,000 to a working family of three. Studies have found that the EITC facilitates infant development, reducing the incidence of low birth weight. They have also shown that children in families that receive larger credits have higher test scores in elementary and middle school, and are more likely to graduate from high school and complete one or more years of college. In fact, a modest $3,000 increase in annual income for children ages 0-5 is associated with a 17 percent increase in annual earnings as adults.

Given the amount of evidence we have on how much a child’s future can be impacted negatively by poverty, and how that trajectory can be shifted in a positive direction by modest additional resources for their families, it’s time to re-imagine how we ensure that all children have the opportunity to thrive.

Universal child allowances, which exist in many industrialized countries, provide a useful model. These benefits are delivered monthly to help families cover recurring expenses, which is difficult to do with the once-a-year Child or Earned Income Tax Credits. Basic monthly benefits are modest. In Australia, Canada, and Britain they range from approximately $100 to $345 per month per child (USD).

We could establish a universal child allowance in the United States, by reforming our existing Child Tax Credit. Representative Rosa DeLauro’s Young Child Tax Credit Act (co-sponsored by House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Representative Sandy Levin) would increase the child tax credit to $1,500 per year for children ages three and under, remove arcane earning thresholds that keep the credit from reaching many impoverished families, and deliver the credit monthly (or as frequently as administratively possible).

A report by the Bernard L. Schwartz Rediscovering Government Initiative at the Century Foundation (where I work) modeled a number of different options for a child allowance, and found that a $2,500 universal allowance for children under six would lift 3.2 million children out of poverty—nearly twice as many as the current Child Tax Credit—at a cost of $33.7 billion (that’s less than the U.S. spends on estate tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires). Given the societal costs related to childhood poverty—more than $500 billion annually—it is a price well-worth paying.

Is it possible to move Washington to pass and implement such a bold policy? There is reason for hope. Tax reform is sure to take center stage in the next Congress, and there should be no reduction of corporate tax rates without commensurate help to our most vulnerable residents. Moreover, there is growing support from both the left and the right (and even venture capitalists) for a universal basic income, as well as popular support for family-friendly policies like paid family leave and child care. Given the broad interest in helping both low- and middle-income families, reforming the child tax credit to maximize its reach in the fight against child poverty should be a priority for any new administration.

Payday Loans: Beneath the Surface

www.stoppaydaypredators.org/ndespa