Newark Star-Ledger, Nov. 24, 2013
By Barry Carter/Star-Ledger 

Tractor-trailers cross over railroad tracks and pull up to an assortment of industries, some under state investigation for soil contamination. Newark’s Ironbound section by the Passaic River is the ideal place for a paint company, warehouses, businesses that handle lubricants and clean chemical tanks sitting on the ground like watermelons.
There’s no reason to think anyone would live here.
But there are families in this forgotten part of Newark, an island of blue-collar folk barely clinging to a down-home way of life Hurricane Sandy took from them last year.

Janet Rosero, a resident of Esther Street in Newark, whose home, as well as most of her neighbors, was severely damaged by Hurricane Sandy, stands in her gutted home as she reads a water bill from the City of Newark. The little known section of Newark called the island got hammered by the Sandy storm leaving eight homes abandonded. They are frustrated by the state’s red tape in getting funds to fix up damaged homes. The are upset with the city for its incompetence.Robert Sciarrino/The Star-Ledger

They all knew each other on Esther, Joseph and Albert streets. They knew who belonged and who didn’t. Even the stray dog was fed and welcome.
“This isn’t just a regular community,” said Jaime Beja. “On the weekends everybody was outside.”
Now nearly everybody is gone.
It’s like a ghost town, like they don’t exist. Leaders of the Ironbound Community Corp., a grassroots group helping residents cope in Sandy’s aftermath, said eight homes out of 25 are empty because of foreclosure, condemnation and owners walking away from what they can’t fix. When you cross over Raymond Boulevard and turn onto Waydell Street, another 75 homes were damaged but those residents are trying to rebuild.
“People are disgusted with the system and feel abandoned,” said Reina Esteras, a disaster relief case manager for the Ironbound organization. “They’re at the breaking point. They’re bitter and they’re angry.”
Never did they think the Passaic River would swallow the neighborhood and wash away the foundations of homes that some will never live in again.
Janet Rosero has moved twice since Sandy, paying rent for an apartment and the mortgage for her home, which she checks regularly. Her place on Esther Street is gutted and the contractor hasn’t returned. She has a notice from the city to get out, but she’s hoping to start over if she can hang on.
“It’s like no one cares,” Rosero said. “I just want to come home.”
But she can’t, and why should she when residents don’t feel like they’re on the map anymore. Garbage has gone uncollected at times and mail has been disrupted too. What the storm didn’t destroy, some residents are trying rebuild, but navigating the state and local bureaucracy for disaster recovery funds has been painstaking. They say they filled out paperwork for grants but it’s gotten lost, a complaint shared by residents across the state in Shore communities who’ve applied for the Reconstruction, Rehabilitation, Elevation and Mitigation, or RREM, program.
Richard E. Constable III, the commissioner of the state’s Department of Community Affairs, said delays in residents getting construction grants from the RREM program have been due to strict federal guidelines.

“Because construction is involved, HUD requires eligible homeowners to jump through numerous federally mandated hoops — much of which we and Governor Christie have felt is unnecessary and redundant given that these are existing homes that cannot be built bigger than what was there before,” Constable said.
In the meantime, Constable said the state’s Homeowner Resettlement Program has been far more successful in assisting residents, because it doesn’t involve construction and high levels of documentation. More than 16,700 homeowners have been approved for a $10,000 resettlement grant and their checks are in the mail.
The Ironbound faithful hope they’re somewhere in the pipeline, because Newark hasn’t been helpful. The organization’s leaders said it took the city four months to issue flood plain letters to residents with more than 50 percent property damage. Having that letter could have expedited their claims for state recovery funds, they said. With help from their councilman, Augusto Amador, some residents got the document but others continue to wait and fight the city over bills they don’t deserve.
Ana Dos Santos said she was fined for placing storm debris in front of her Joseph Street house. Just what she needed after her son, Jaime Beja, renovated the home two months before the storm. Like many of her neighbors, including Rosero, Dos Santos received a water bill even though she wasn’t in the home for months.
“Are you kidding me?” she said.
On limited funds, the Ironbound group has paid rent, mortgages and water bills for residents. In one case, Esteras said they paid a homeowner’s water bill that had grown to $5,344.82 when the person had not been living there. In fact, the homeowner has not returned to this day. She said the city only adjusted his bill to $2,053.75 and refused to reduce it any further.
The only thing the city had to say for itself was this: “Department directors have been notified of the complaints from our residents to The Star-Ledger. The City of Newark will work to expedite the resolution of any issues facing property owners in the Ironbound section as a result of Hurricane Sandy.”
Esteras said residents were struggling to stay in their homes before the storm, but this has wiped them out.
Leizza Salgado is not coming back. Neither is her sister. The city condemned their Esther Street homes and the bank foreclosed, locking them out after two months with their lives in chaos.
“They didn’t give us any notice,” Salgado said. “It was a bad experience.”
She has moved to another section of the Ironbound, but there’s hope for her former neighbors. They learned last week the state Department of Environmental Protection is interested in buying out their homes. DEP spokesman Larry Ragonese said the program has to be explained and the majority of residents would have to participate for it to work.
Who knows how this will shake out. They are beaten down and tired.
“I just can’t take it anymore,” Dos Santos said. “They’ve worn us down. We’re like, just take it. Give me money and I’ll get out.”
Only problem is, this process could take another six months. Residents may not have that long.

Charles M. Blow

With that remark, Winfrey touched on an issue that many Americans have wrestled with: To what extent does this president’s race animate those loyal to him and those opposed? Is race a primary motivator or a subordinate, more elusive one, tainting motivations but not driving them?

NJSpotlight, Nov. 8, 2013

The U.S. Census Bureau typically judges poverty based on income and household size, using the same thresholds across the country. For the third year in a row, it has released what it is calling “supplemental poverty measures,” which take into account government benefits that are available in a specific geographic area, as well as the cost of living.

Doing so changes New Jersey’s official poverty rate of 10.7 percent to 15.5 percent. The national poverty rate is 15.1 (without supplemental measures) to 16.1 percent (with supplemental measures).

The supplemental measures reflect both a decrease in the poverty rate — due to available government subsidies such as the national school lunch program, unemployment insurance, housing subsidies, social security, and other government programs — as well as the local cost of living. It seems New Jersey’s high cost of living outweighs any governmental benefits.

That’s not the case for all states: 28 states actually improved their poverty rates due to government and other programs. These include some very poor states, such as Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, and Louisiana, as well as relatively wealthy states like Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Vermont.

N.Y. Times, Nov. 1, 2013

By Dorothy J. Samuels

Even as negotiations proceed in Congress over a new farm bill likely to contain a large cut in food stamps, needy Americans who rely on the program are confronting an immediate drop in benefits.

As of today, the boost to the federal food stamps program included in the 2009 Economic Recovery Act expires, abruptly slashing benefit levels that were already inadequate for millions of poor children and their families, as well as impoverished disabled and elderly people, who will now find it significantly harder to afford adequate food.

The callous Republican obsession with eviscerating the program is only partly to blame. Today’s cut is the product of a shabby deal Democrats made in December 2010, which accelerated the sunset of the benefit increase contained in the economic stimulus plan. Essentially, Congressional Democrats, cajoled by the Obama White House, gambled that they could restore the lost money before the cut became effective — a convenient but unrealistic bet given that Republicans were about to take control of the House.

Anti-hunger advocates expressed concern at the time about the bargain and its potential to seriously hurt food-stamp recipients not too far down the road — a worry, unfortunately, that has now become reality.

As a result of today’s cut, a household of three will lose, on average, $29 a month in food stamp benefits. That might not sound like much. But consider that just two months ago, the Agriculture Department reported that 17.6 million households lacked sufficient resources at some point during 2012 to put food on the table. The Census reported that 15 percent of Americans live in poverty.

A newly-released study by the Food Bank for New York City found that even before the Nov. 1 cut, three-quarters of the food-stamp recipients using city pantries and soup kitchens reported that their benefits lasted only through the first three weeks of the month.

And a survey last year by the New York City Coalition Against Hunger found that 63 percent of local food charities were unable to come up with sufficient food to meet demand and were forced to ration food with steps like reducing portion size, closing doors early or turning people away — a situation replicated all across the country and bound to worsen given shrunken monthly benefit allotments.

Far from minor, today’s food stamp cut means more misery for the most vulnerable in New York City and beyond. Just in time for the holiday season.

NJSpotlight, Oct. 29, 2013

GlobalPossibilities, Oct. 29, 2013
By Robert Ogilvie
Vice President for Strategic Engagement, ChangeLab Solutions
All across the country, the urban agriculture movement is growing. Communities are raising fruits and vegetables in places as varied as vacant lots, backyards and such public properties as vacant fields, schoolyards, parks, utility rights-of-way and even the rooftops of public buildings. These communities can see many benefits: new sources of fresh and healthy food, food literacy, job skills development, urban greening, promotion of civic participation, public safety and urban revitalization.

• Cleveland has turned an overwhelming number of vacant and foreclosed properties — nearly 20,000 in total, with 5,000 in the City of Cleveland Land Bank — into an opportunity. The Reimagining Cleveland Initiative, a partnership of Neighborhood Progress, Inc. (NPI) the City of Cleveland, Kent State University, Ohio State University Extension, and others are implementing a pilot land reuse demonstration initiative that is turning city-owned vacant sites into productive use – including such urban agriculture uses as community gardens, marker gardens, orchards, vineyards, pocket parks and neighborhood pathways.

Cleveland Community Gardens. Access this map here.
To make this a reality, the city updated their zoning code in November 2010 to permit urban agriculture in residential districts, which had been banned under the previous zoning code. Also, the Ohio Department of Agriculture came out with guidance on which home-grown and homemade products can and cannot be sold, and how products for sale need to be processed, packaged and labeled.

• San Jose, CA had more demand for garden space than the city could accommodate through the 30-year-old San Jose Community Garden Program, and budget cuts had forced the city to place a 2009 moratorium on creating any new gardens. In response, a local nonprofit formed a new partnership with the city to try and meet community demand. Partners in San Jose’s new Community Garden program include the Department of Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services (PRNS), which has long administered the program; The Health Trust, a local nonprofit that had been coordinating healthy food access work through the Campaign for Healthy Food San Jose; and CommUniverCity, another local nonprofit focused on service-learning programs for local youth. CommUniverCity subleases land from PRNS and is responsible for garden maintenance and operations, must carry a $1 million in liability insurance and must indemnify the city. PRNS, in turn, manages the lease and ensure a steady water supply from the Santa Clara County Water District. The Health Trust funds CommUniverCity’s operations.

In Cleveland, San Jose, and other communities in which urban and community gardening has taken root, partnerships have been key to helping those projects achieve their full community transformation potential. Successful partnerships are built on agreements that define the relationship between individuals, community organizations, and public entities, and provide clarity to everyone involved.
These agreements can take many forms — they can be informal agreements, leases, licenses, contract, memoranda of understanding (MOUs), permits or joint use agreements. Different types of agreements are right for different communities, but most should address the following issues:

• Liability: Indemnification and insurance;
• Utilities;
• Maintenance;
• Growing practices & pest management;
• Soil conditions;
• Access and security; and
• Improvements.

With these issues covered, your community will be better prepared to reap and sustain the full benefits of urban gardening and greening.ChangeLab Solutions is here to help think through what agreements would best seed the ground for a rich harvest for every member of your community.
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ChangeLab Solutions offers an array of tools to help make community gardening a reality, including Dig, Eat, and Be Healthy: A Guide to Growing Food on Public Property, and Seeding the City: Land Use Policies to Promote Urban Agriculture.
This work was originally published on CommunityCommons.org.

N.Y. Times, Oct. 31, 2013
By John Harwood
WASHINGTON — President Obama last week sought to turn attention from health care to immigration — in other words, from one racially divisive issue to another.