Although only 24 years old, Josué Ramírez has taken on a leading role in working with grassroots community leaders to solve one of our nation’s biggest housing and poverty challenges — the impoverished colonias of the Texas-Mexico border region. Josué is a policy analyst for Texas Low Income Housing Information Service working out of our new […]
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Tag Archives: Poverty
The Poverty of an Idea – NYTimes.com
March 3, 2012 
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An Op-Ed by Maurice Isserman, a professor of history in today’s NYT frames the competing views of poverty in the US quite well. The conclusion is sobering and distressing: lack of continued popular economic analysis of poverty since the passing of Michael Harrington “We are left instead with the insistent, culturally determined arguments of Mr. Murray and […]
Read more More Texas kids live in concentrated poverty than in any other state
February 23, 2012 Comments Off
What does it mean to a child to grow up in a neighborhood where poverty is concentrated? That is a question that Texas children are uniquely able to answer. More Texas children live in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty that any other state – 1,120,000 Texas children according to a report issued today by the Annie […]
Read more Houston experiences largest growth of poor population in American metros
August 5, 2011 1 Comment
Other central cities that saw populations of the poor soar between 2000 and 2007 included Dallas, Phoenix, Indianapolis, Columbus, San Antonio, Austin, Fort Worth, and El Paso. These are the observations of Rolf Pendall, PhD, Director of the Metropolitan Housing & Communities Policy Center at the Urban Institute, writing in the blog MetroTrends. The biggest single […]
Read more The budget cap deal means the opportunity to address poverty is slipping away
August 2, 2011 2 Comments
On the debt ceiling deal I’m no expert, but like everyone I have a personal opinion. My focus is on the economic condition of the poor in this country and improving the quality and affordability of their homes and neighborhoods, I fear that domestic discretionary spending cuts mandated in the debt ceiling deal will disproportionately […]
Read more TX Tribune story may lead to a misdiagnosis of colonia conditions and health problems
July 10, 2011 Comments Off
The second of a two-part Texas Tribune story on the colonias that ran today on the Tribune’s website and in the New York Times has me worried. Reporter Emily Ramshaw illuminates the terrible health problems faced by colonia residents. Unfortunately, the story also is likely to leave many in the dark. The story does not make […]
Read more CNN says, “Impoverished border town grows from shacks into community” – not exactly
July 9, 2011 Comments Off
Whoever at CNN wrote the headline above does not understand what happened in the Las Lomas colonia. The headline says, “Impoverished border town grows from shacks into community”. The headline should say, “Impoverished border community grows from shacks to a town”. The transformation of Las Lomas took place because it always was a strong community. That community […]
Read moreThe real poverty rate in US is much higher
October 22, 2009 Comments Off
In Ben Bernanke’s America, the recession is ending, stocks are rising, and cash is flowing. The housing crisis is over: banks that invested in subprime loans are flush with taxpayer dollars. The tent cities have disappeared from the outskirts of our cities, or at least they have disappeared from the front pages of our newspapers. […]
Read moreLatest data shows 3.8 million Texans live in poverty
September 17, 2009 Comments Off
The number of Texans living in poverty is up 537,000 over the past decade according to data from the US Census Bureau released last week. 3,843,000 Texans were living in poverty in 2008. The population of Texas is about 24 million. The Census Bureau’s estimate for 2008 places 13.2 percent of Texans below the poverty […]
Read moreAn interesting new, on-line look at Texas poverty
July 6, 2009 Comments Off
The College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin has unveiled a very useful and interesting way to learn about Texas government on-line called Texas Politics. The website is described as a “Multimedia Textbook.” One beta section offers an overview of poverty in Texas. There is a useful section on colonias within the […]
Read more87 percent of Texas communities exceed US poverty rate in new survey
January 1, 2009 5 Comments
My New Year’s resolution is to put doing something about the high levels of Texas poverty on our state’s agenda for 2009. Here is an assessment of where Texas communities stand in terms of poverty based on the recently released American Communities Survey. There are 61 Texas communities represented in the Census survey of more […]
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