October 2005

The images that we all saw on television spotlighted the fundamental unfairness of addressing the hurricane by withdrawing key government supports and services for the poor. This is driving some legislators to reconsider the whole rconciliation process as it related to entitlements and tax cuts. However, fiscal conservatives have begun to dig in their heels and insist on budget cuts to balance any new spending devoted to hurricane relief.

The Shriver Center, Access Living of Metropolitan Chicago, and the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) have designed a new "disability protocol" to ensure that persons with disabilities have access to CHA's redeveloped mixed-income housing.

Five major consumer groups, led by the California Reinvestment Coalition in San Francisco, are urging federal regulators to reject H&R Block Inc.'s application for a bank charter.

The Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law is making its Food Stamp Advocacy Tool envelope available to displaced families who are temporarily residing in Illinois. IDHS will allow families who have been displaced to apply for temporary food assistance.

Judge Mikva said that the War on Poverty's greatest success was that the American people chose to take responsibility for the poverty among them. Now that the horror of Hurricane Katrina has again turned the national attention to poverty, he hoped that this would mark the next turning point in the antipoverty movement.

Mandated by the Health Care Justice Act and appointed by Gov. Rod Blagojevich and Illinois General Assembly leaders, the task force is holding public hearings in each of Illinois's 19 congressional districts between now and April 2006 and will submit its plan to the General Assembly in the fall of 2006.