After increasing 145% from January 2000 to January 2009, the Michigan food assistance caseload continued to increase through May 2009, with a total of 718,277 cases. The table below shows the number of food assistance cases per county.
Recent Posts
A map prepared by the National Alliance to End Homelessness shows point in time homelessness counts across the country, highlighting areas that have experienced increases and decreases in the number of homeless.
Research on US programs for the needy (i.e., welfare, unemployment, housing assistance, Food Stamps and health insurance), published by the New York Times, reveals that as millions of people seek aid, they are finding a complex system that reaches some and rejects others.
The Food Assistance Landscape, recently released by the USDA, covers recent trends from the Food and Nutrition Service. It reports that the 11% increase in expenditures for food assistance programs in fiscal year 2008 was the largest percentage increase in 16 years. While SNAP accounts for 62% of spending, WIC was the fastest growing food assistance…
The USDA’s Economic Research Service has recently released an illustrated guide to research findings on nutrition assistance programs, food insecurity, food prices, food spending, global food security, healthy eating, agriculture, and more. Some of the graphs from the report are excerpted below.
This BBC report describes the experiences of the increasing number of homeless families in the US, including 15,000 homeless children in New York alone.
The number of homeless families in the Washington metropolitan area increased 15 percent in the past year, while the number of homeless individuals declined.
A recent report by the National Center on Family Homelessness provides estimates of homelessness among children, estimating that more than 1.5 million children are homeless each year (one in every 50 American children).
This link opens a New York Times article on the rising number of homeless encampments in cities across the country. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/us/26tents.html
This link opens a New York Times article on the effects of drought in California’s Central Valley.