Effects of Medicaid cuts being felt in Kansas

The state of Kansas recently made cuts to their Medicaid budget and it's effects are beginning to be felt. The ten percent cuts are not only being felt by the frail and disabled but for those who care for them as well. As Kansas politicians begin to go back to work for 2010, many are debating if the cuts need to be undone.

From the Topeka Capitol Journal Online, writer Barbara Hollingsworth takes a look at the debate.

As big cuts hit Medicaid-funded programs — including agencies serving adults with developmental disabilities, physicians serving Kansans in poverty, and nursing homes caring for the frail and elderly — Kansas lawmakers on Monday will converge on the Capitol for the 2010 legislative session. Even with the drastic cuts aimed at balancing the budget, the Legislature faces a budget shortfall of between $300 and $400 million.

"There are serious questions that even if there was a legislative desire or willingness to reverse those cuts, where would they get the money?" asked Jerry Slaughter, executive director of the Kansas Medical Association. "The state can't print money like the federal government. If you don't have the money, you don't have the money."

The 10 percent cut in Medicaid reimbursement rates was part of $258.9 million in budget adjustments announced in November, although the Medicaid reduction didn't go into effect until this month. In all, the 10 percent cut is aimed at saving the state about $22 million through the end of the fiscal year. However, the loss to Medicaid providers will amount to about $66 million because the program relies heavily on federal matching funds, said Peter Hancock a spokesman for the Kansas Health Policy Authority.

It wasn't a decision that was made lightly, said state budget director Duane Goossen.

"The results from doing this are not positive things," he told the Senate Ways and Means Committee last month. "They are almost entirely negative things."

Slaughter said medical providers are having to reconsider if they will continue to accept new Medicaid patients or if they will stop serving Medicaid patients entirely. If the cuts last longer than a few months, he said he anticipates some practices may begin making decisions about cutbacks this summer. As is, he said, many physicians barely break even when serving Medicaid patients.

Teens spending part of the Summer, volunteering

Teens from Wichita, Kansas learned more about the plight of the homeless in the U.S. Instead of heading to a foreign country for their missions trip this year, the teens from Andover's Hope Community Church spent a week working for the Inter-Faith Ministries homeless shelter.



From the Wichita Eagle, writer Joe Rodriguez spoke to one of the teens, Aaron Schnieder.

"They're just nice people that something bad happened to," he said.

Schneider learned the lesson as part of a mission project with more than 25 other teenagers from Andover's Hope Community Church.

They spent the week away from their homes, and away from their cell phones and other electronic devices.

They were allowed to bring only what fit into one backpack and $20 each to cover their expenses, including food.
...

The idea was to make the teens more aware of issues such as poverty and homelessness and provide them the opportunity to do local mission work, a project leader said.

Lacey Gould, event coordinator for the youth at Hope Community Church, said many of the teens didn't even know local people struggled with issues such as homelessness. Many teens, she said, had the perception of homeless as "scary" and "older men."

"I think they realized this week it really could be anybody," she said. "They met a lot of families with children. I think they just started to perceive it differently."

Finding long term fixes to the increase in need

With needs increasing in this poor economy, social service leaders say that long term solutions are needed to provide for everyone. Especially with more and more people asking for food from food banks, or help with heating bills and so on.

A story from Kansas' Ottawa Herald examines the struggle that these organizations have to help the growing number of people.

While many advocates agree prevention is key to combatting poverty at its root sources, that isn’t always possible for smaller charity service organizations like churches, said Lisa Davis, coordinator of the Kansas Statewide Homeless Coalition.

“Rural areas can lack specialized services, especially for serious or complicated problems such as mental illness, and it does not make economic sense to replicate programs found in urban areas,” Davis said.

Based on national demographic data, an estimated 3,400 people in rural Kansas are without permanent housing on any given night and may be living in cars, with other families or camping out, she said.

“Unfortunately, the local police and jails can end up being the ones that deal with the homeless in these areas,” Davis said.

Davis points to a transitional housing program in Paola that has been successful in combatting its local poverty issues. That’s because it has been able to not only provide a place for families to go but to help them tackle their problems once they get there.

When Jay Preston first had a vision to help the struggling families in Miami County, the former pastor knew he needed a fresh approach, rather than duplicating the services that were already in the area but were not helping families cope in the long-term.

He also knew that too often church and charities could provide only short-term assistance. In some cases, they turned families away because their moral compasses did not align with the families’ social situations, he said.

“A lot of people, especially in rural areas, feel judged by church services. Sometimes churches earn that bad reputation, unfortunately,” said Preston, who experienced a bout of homelessnees after dropping out of college in the late 1970s while facing drug and alcohol addiction.

The transitional housing at My Father’s House in Paola, an eastern Kansas city of 5,000, has been in operation only since 2006. But it is already providing housing for up to 42 people and needy families. It has also always had a waiting list of dozens of applications in Linn and Miami counties, which have a combined population of about 40,000.

“Nobody in town even knew there was a need around here,” Preston said. “The assumption was that we’d bring homeless folks from downtown Kansas City here.”

Though families can live at the transitional housing for up to two years, it generally takes only nine to 12 months for a family to get back on its feet, thanks to the extensive case management, counseling, mentoring, budgeting and other life skills offered in the transitional housing communities by case workers and counselors, Preston said.

Preston said he’s been working for the last few years to find ways to partner with other organizations in neighboring counties to develop and implement the self-sufficiency models without creating new non-profits and “reinventing the wheel.”

“We know there is more need than resources, and so the change is needed to be more effective so we can meet more needs,” he said. “Preventing homelessness is much cheaper than continuing to pump money into providing services for the chronically homeless.”

Report on Kansas kids: State ranking drops

from the Wichita Eagle

A new report ranks Kansas 18th in the nation for childhood well-being, down from previous years.

BY SUZANNE PEREZ TOBIAS

More children living in poverty or without health insurance and a higher percentage of low-birth-weight babies contributed to a lower ranking for Kansas in a new state-by-state study of children's well-being.

The Kids Count Data Book, released today by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, shows that Kansas declined on five of 10 measures that reflect childhood well-being.

The state ranks 18th in the nation -- down from 16th last year and 12th in 2006.

According to the study:

• The number of Kansas children living in poverty increased from 12 percent in 2000 to 16 percent in 2006.

• In 2005, roughly 46,000 Kansas children -- about 7 percent -- were uninsured. The number is not one of the study's 10 measures of well-being, but officials consider it an indicator of child health.

• The percentage of low-birth-weight babies rose slightly, from 7 percent in 2001 to 7.2 percent in 2005.

• The state's infant mortality rate increased from 6.6 deaths per 1,000 in 2003 to 7.4 in 2005.

• The percentage of children in single-parent families also rose, from 26 percent in 2002 to 28 percent in 2006.

"The number of kids living in poverty is a huge concern, because so often the outcome for those kids is not very good," said Shannon Cotsoradis, executive vice president of Kansas Action for Children, which collects and analyzes data for the annual report.

"When you look at the indicators -- low birth weight, infant mortality, child death rate -- so much of that is tied to poverty and a lack of health insurance."

Kansas improved on four of 10 measures: teen death rate, high school dropouts, the percentage of families with secure parental employment and the percentage of "idle" teens, meaning those not in school and not working.

The state's high school dropout rate showed the most dramatic change, decreasing from 7 percent in 2002 to 4 percent in 2006. Kansas placed second in the nation in that indicator.

The Poor Go Hungry As Food Prices Climb Higher

from Red Orbit

KANSAS CITY - Blame Australian drought. Blame the shrinking dollar. Blame ethanol. Blame $100-a-barrel oil and $3-plus gasoline. Blame China for finding prosperity. Blame India, too. Blame humankind for liking the taste of meat.

Whatever's to blame, it's the world's poor who go hungry.

The number of hungry poor on the planet had stabilized in recent years. But soaring costs for food and for shipping it to the starving form the basis of a burgeoning global food shortage.

In Haiti last week, anger about runaway food prices sparked deadly protests and looting that led Saturday to the dismissal of the prime minister and a cut in rice prices. People clashed violently with police in Egypt about ballooning food costs. Cameroon and Burkina Faso saw food riots late last month. Earlier in the year, it was protests in Pakistan about rice and wheat shortages.

Some analysts say food wars could be next.

"This is not something that's going to go away overnight. It's not just cyclical," said Ellen Levinson of the Alliance for Food Aid, a coalition of humanitarian groups. "We are definitely into this for a couple of years."

A food aid conference this week in Kansas City will be dominated by what anyone who checks out at the supermarket or picks up a restaurant tab knows too well: Food prices are up.

For American households that spend typically less than 20 percent of their income on food, it's a painful adjustment. For the world's truly poor, who might use 70 percent to 80 percent of their money to stay ahead of starvation, it's a disaster.

"As the price goes up, they can't buy the same amount or the same quality," said Gawain Kripke, a policy director for the Oxfam America aid group. "It's almost a certainty that there will be more hunger as food prices go up."

The world's stockpiles of grains are about 150 million tons, or roughly 20 percent, below what they were at the start of the decade. Shortages of wheat, rice and corn drove world food prices up 45 percent in the last nine months. Last year, cooking oils jumped 50 percent, and dairy prices rocketed up 80 percent.

"And our best guess is these high prices will continue to stay high," said John Hoddinott, a researcher for the International Food Policy Research Institute.

What has been good news for Midwestern farmers - demand finally catching up to American agriculture's unmatched ability to grow food - could mean disaster to the world's poorest people.

Last week, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization called for a June summit of international leaders to manage what the agency is calling a worldwide food shortage emergency. The World Bank's president, Robert Zoellick, also called for a global response to address the escalating prices and prevent mass starvation.

The annual gathering in Kansas City will wrangle about how best to feed the world. Humanitarian groups think, for starters, that industrial countries need to resign themselves to spending more. And many want reforms, saying it might be time to sever ties that link aid to efforts to bolster U.S. agriculture and shippers.

Several factors have combined to make for a looming cost crisis:

- Protein. First, and paradoxically, many people are eating better. Economic awakenings in India and China have lifted millions out of abject poverty and put them higher on the food chain.

But by eating more meat, they effectively consume more grain needed to raise livestock.

- Biofuels. More food is being converted to energy. The shift to renewable fuels such as ethanol in the United States, Brazil, Thailand and elsewhere has left less acreage available to stock the dinner table.

- Weather. Back-to-back drought years devastated Australian crops. Europe had a poor harvest last year. Food aid specialists worry climate change could mean that such crop disasters will become more routine.

- Exchange rates. Because the United States is the biggest provider of food aid, the dollar's tumbling value means the same amount of assistance buys less overseas.

- Energy. It jabs at food costs at every stage, from the cost of fertilizer, to running farm machinery, to processing, to shipping.

Exploding food costs mean that hunger is shifting from Asia to sub-Saharan Africa and from remote villages to fast-growing cities.

Lyon County poverty in children increasing

from KTKA

Poverty rates affect more than just the kids.

Gary Brunk, President of Kansas Action for Children, says the effects trickle all the way through the community.

"We know that kids who grow up in poverty are less likely to do well in school," Brunk said.

So fewer Lyon county kids have the opportunity to get an earlier start on education.

Head Start teacher Jeannie Jenkins says they're at capacity.

"As of right now, I know that our program is full and there is a waiting list," said Jenkins.

And they can't open the class up for more students.

"Actually, it will only be 100 here, that is what our grant is written for," said Jenkins.

There's no more money, even though there's more of a need. And it could be a while before there is any change. Child advocates say they have to wait until the next legislative session next year to get state help for the problem.

"There's Head Start programs all around the state that can't serve all the kids that potentially would be served if there were enough funds to do it," said Brunk.

So what does the community need to do in the meantime?

"I think we need to make sure that there's a support structure in place for families and I'm talking things like access to childcare, health insurance and food stamps," said Brunk.

Brunk says the community needs to get together to help their youngest citizens succeed.

The Tyson layoffs may have less to do with the problem than you might think.

Jenkins says only three parents of her students lost their jobs.

Poverty ripples across SEK

from The Pittsburg Morning Sun

By Andrew Nash

Although the Community-Level Information for Kids shows SEK students are living in poverty, it's often hard to get inside the numbers.

For instance, all three counties (Bourbon, Crawford and Cherokee) rank in the bottom quarter of Kansas counties of the percent of students on a free or reduced lunch program (92nd, 83rd and 96th, respectively).

The free or reduced lunch program is a federal program established on strict guidelines.

To qualify for a free lunch, a family of four must make at or less than 130 percent of the federal poverty level. The program is based on the 2007 poverty level of $20,650. Therefore, to qualify for a free lunch, a family of four must earn less than $26,845.

To qualify for a reduced lunch, a family of four must make less than 185 percent of the federal poverty level, meaning $38,203.

And roughly half of the students in Southeast Kansas are below those levels.

"That is the best way to collect the data, when it is truly compared apples to apples," said Monica Murnan, executive director of the Family Resource Center. "Free and reduced lunch is recorded the same in Crawford County as it is in Bourbon County. Ninety-nine percent of kids are in school. That shows you just how many are dealing with poverty."

Gary Brunk, president of Kansas Action for Children, said poverty affects more than just economic conditions. He said poverty can cause lower grades, lower future earnings, a lower chance of being a homeowner, a greater chance of severe health problems, and are slightly more likely to get into the wrong end of the criminal justice system.

"Society as a whole bears the cost. If a poor kid grows up and earns less money, that's less money injected into local economies," Brunk said. "Federal estimates say it costs the nation as a whole $500 billion to have children grow up poor."

Murnan said her primary goal is to disseminate the KAC information as part of the Family Resource Center in Pittsburg. The information will go to Rotary clubs, service groups and teachers.

But Murnan's biggest concern is raising awareness of how bad economic conditions really are.

"It is just one more thing to put in our heads," Murnan said. "It's a great place to live, but this is who we are, this is how we live. This should drive us as a community when we look at all aspects of our infrastructure. This could help planning for the city, the county and our schools."

One more concern for Murnan is potentially the largest obstacle in her way: apathy.

Eudoran making a difference with coffee business

from the Eudora News, Kansas

By David Oakes

Kapeh Utz Coffee comes in a black and white bag. At the bottom of the front label are the words “good coffee” and “organic.” While the packaging is simplistic, the manner by which the coffee within that bag has found its way to Eudora is anything but.

Just three months ago, Eudoran John Fawcett started Kapeh Utz (pronounced kaw-pay oots), which means good coffee in the Mayan dialect of Kaqchikel.

The genesis for the business began in November 2005 when Fawcett went on a mission trip to Guatemala.

“On the first missions trip, I didn’t even want to go,” Fawcett said. “I said ‘I’m not in, but I’ll go because somebody I respect asked me to go.’”

Fawcett, who attends Morning Star Church in Lawrence, said the trip was a life-changing experience. He has returned several times since to work on water projects. During those subsequent trips, he felt he could do more to help the people of San Lucas Toliman.

“You kind of get to know the people you’re working with and what they’re doing,” Fawcett said. “You realize that there is a spiritual need, and there is also an economic need. What I believe God has called people to do is to help them spiritually, but also help them economically and support their businesses and support them in their dreams so they can gain an economic foothold and they can raise up out of poverty.”

Coffee is the second-most traded commodity in the world and the U.S. consumes approximately 1.5 million tons per year. While coffee plantation owners are successful, a large amount of coffee comes from small farmers who must form cooperatives in order to compete in the marketplace. The typical income for these coffee farmers is $300 to $1200 per year.

Fawcett, along with his friends Jerot Pierce and Mike Hauser, saw this disparity and decided they wanted to improve the lives of the coffee farmers.

“Having someone that will take the time and have a relationship with these folks and back it up by conducting business with them in a way where you’re not beating them down on the price is the backdrop for how all of this started,” Fawcett said.

There are organizations in the coffee trade, namely the Fair Trade Organization, who have set forth environmental, labor and pricing guidelines. If a company follows those guidelines, they are able to use the Fair Trade Logo on its packaging. However, FTO also requires companies pay them for use of the logo.

While fair trade has its positive points, its fixed pricing — about $1.60 per pound — of coffee can be a blessing and a curse for farmers.

“It’s a double edged sword,” Fawcett said. “Even if you have a killer crop and quality is through the roof and everybody is ranting and raving about it, it doesn’t matter. The price is set.”

Kapeh Utz pays around $2.05 per pound. While they have purchased coffee from other cooperatives, the main cooperative they work with is called Ija’tz and is located in San Lucas Toliman.

By working with this cooperative, which is headed up by a woman, Fawcett also believes he is supporting a move towards a positive way of life for the people of the cooperative.

“It’s rare in a Mayan organization to have a woman at the top and to have an organization realize that if they’re going to progress they need to empower women,” he said.

The cooperative, through the University of Texas, is developing programs to empower women as well as teaching them other valuable skills.

Another positive Fawcett sees in doing business with Ija’tz is supporting their farming practices. Ija’tz cultivates shade-grown coffee, a style of farming that provides a high-quality crop rather than a large crop.

The other positive to shade-grown coffee is environmental. If farmers are unable to make enough money off of coffee, they will have to cut down trees to grow crops that don’t grow in the shade.

“Supporting specialty coffee that is shade grown helps keep their ecosystem in balance,” Fawcett said.

On top of paying Ija’tz for the coffee, Kapeh Utz also is reinvesting 10 percent of all profits in Ija’tz. However, as is the case with many new businesses, Kapeh Utz is struggling to make a profit. However, Fawcett is optimistic.

““I know it sounds kind of corny, but I do feel called by God,” he said. “I believe God’s hand is in it. I believe that somehow this thing will get a life and support itself because no business subsidized forever is ever going to work. At some point it’s got to produce. What we have to do is get the volume up.”

Fawcett is unsure what the proceeds will go towards, but it will in some way benefit Ija’tz.

“When we reinvest money, we’re going to reinvest it in November,” he said. “I’m going down at the end of this month to work with I’Jatz to identify the project that we’re going to do. They may have a project that’s a $5,000 project and we only have $3,000 to donate. I don’t know yet. It might be a multistage thing.”

Currently, Kapeh Utz is not in any retail outlets other than Coffee Talk, 724 Main St. However, it is looking to expand, and the Mercantile in Lawrence is one possibility.

“We want to expand and do it with people who have a heart for this,” Fawcett said. “If the story resonates with folks, that what we want.”

Their Web Site, kapehutz.com will be online within a few weeks, as well.

Though business certainly could be better, Fawcett said the fact that Kapeh Utz is helping people softens the blow.

More poverty, even more poor children

from The Hutchinson News


Census shows poverty rising in Kansas alongside income, and growing at an even higher rate for residents under 18
By Dave Stephens - The Hutchinson News - dstephens@hutchnews.com

The number of Kansans living in poverty grew during the first five years of this century, even as the state's median income increased by more than 4 percent.

According to recently released data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of people in Kansas living below the federal poverty level increased from less than 9 percent to almost 12 percent between 2000 and 2005.

In most Kansas counties, the poverty rate increased at an even higher rate for children under the age of 18. Statewide, about 15.5 percent of children live at below the federal poverty level, but in parts of central and southwest Kansas the rates were even higher.

In Reno County, 18.2 percent of children live in poverty; in Barton, Stafford, Seward and Finney counties, more than one in five children do.

Those figures come as no surprise to Tawny Stottlemire, executive director of the Kansas Association of Community Action Programs, which oversees a statewide network of organizations fighting poverty.

"Since they've begun tracking poverty statistics, Kansas has usually kept pace with the national level or even been below it," Stottlemire said. "Now, we're seeing the long-term trend starting to go above the national level, that our poverty rate is actually increasing at a greater rate."

The rise of poverty in central Kansas for the five years between 2000 and 2005 came even as some counties saw median incomes grow by 7 percent or 8 percent - double the state average.

In Reno County, the median income grew by 8 percent from 2000 to 2005, but the percentage of children living below the poverty level grew by 4.1 percent. In Barton County, which includes the towns of Great Bend, Ellinwood and Hoisington, the median income grew by 7 percent, but childhood poverty grew by 6.2 percent - the highest rate in the region.

Stottlemire said Kansas and the nation have seen a growing disparity between the wages earned by the highest- and lowest-paid workers. While incomes for many are rising, some workers are laboring at jobs with wages that haven't seen significant increases in more than a decade.

"As the gap continues to increase, we see lots of workers suffering," Stottlemire said.

But income doesn't necessarily tell the whole story about the causes of poverty, Census data shows. In some western Kansas counties, median income actually declined over the five-year period as the poverty level stayed stagnant.

In Lane and Kearny counties, the median income dropped by more than 5 percent, and the poverty levels in both counties grew by less than 2 percent.

Figures like that belie the difficulty of solving the state's poverty problem, Stottlemire said, because the causes include a complex mix of income, housing, health care, education and other factors.

Although the latest Census figures highlight the growing poverty problem in Kansas, they only touch on the people in the lowest income bracket - $20,650 for a household of four or $13,690 for a family of two.

Stottlemire said the 2007 estimate is that 12 percent to 13 percent of the state lives below the federal poverty level; an additional 15 percent of the population is believed to be in the struggling category, unable to make ends meet on a regular basis and often one missed paycheck or health crisis away from poverty.

"That's nearly 25 percent of the state's population together that's barely getting by," Stottlemire said. "And it's a number that continues to grow."

Education official: Poverty is No. 1 issue

from the Wichita Eagle

BY JILLIAN COHAN
The Wichita Eagle

The visitors in the back of the classroom looked on Tuesday afternoon while Marshall Middle School math teacher Robert Schrader ran his students through an algebraic equation.

"Remember substitution?" he asked the class.

Students nodded at his explanation of variables and inverse operations, a few sneaking glances toward the back of the room.


When the lesson was over, the taller of the visitors, Wichita schools superintendent Winston Brooks, introduced himself and the women at his side: State Board of Education member Carol Rupe and the state's new education commissioner, Alexa Posny.

"She's sort of Mr. Brooks' principal," Rupe told the class.

Posny heads the state Department of Education, which oversees regulations such as teacher licensure and assessments of student academic performance. She visited several Wichita schools Tuesday.

A redhead not much bigger than some of the eighth-grade girls in the class, Posny wore a crimson suit and a leather backpack that added to the impression that she was back in school for the day.

"I'm impressed with how much they remember from the summer," she told Brooks as the middle-school tour continued.

When a reporter asked her later what she had expected to see in Wichita schools, Posny replied that she'd hoped to witness "great schools, great educators and great leadership."

Wichita schools are more urban than many in the state, she said, but in spite of the poverty and diversity of student needs in the city's schools, "we know they can learn."

"It may not show up in all the test scores, but the (achievement) gap is being reduced," she said.

Later, at a presentation to the Wichita school board, Posny described coming revisions to federal No Child Left Behind legislation and laid out her priorities, including:

• That all students graduating from Kansas schools meet or exceed high academic standards and are prepared for the next step in their lives, whether it's entering the work force or going to college.

• Addressing the teacher shortage looming as Baby Boomer teachers retire and young people often choose other careers or choose to teach for only a few years.

• Working to improve conditions in urban school districts such as Wichita, which don't generally benefit from the state's school-finance formulas.

"To me, the No. 1 issue is poverty," Posny said. "We're talking about kids in inter-generational poverty. It is a societal issue, it's not just education. That is part and parcel of what we're trying to deal with. In education we're good, but I don't know how much we can change society. And yet we're preparing the future members of society. That's why the urban issues are so important."
Reach Jillian Cohan at 316-268-6524 or jcohan@wichitaeagle.com.

'Seeds of Change' forum focuses on hunger, poverty, aiding farmers

The Hutchinson News

By Clara Kilbourn

An organization formed to alleviate world poverty and a program aimed at reducing hunger in the United States by reprioritizing the 2007 Farm Bill hosted a "Seeds of Change" forum Sunday.

Session presenters Jim French, representing OxFam, a relief program that followed World War II, and Elise Young, from Bread for the World, shared the views of their groups to an audience that met at the United Presbyterian Church parlor in Hutchinson.

"Christians are called to serve," Young said. "We ask people of faith to write to their senators and representatives to fight hunger and poverty and improve the farm bill to help struggling farmers."

Their organization wants a change in the priorities of the 2007 Farm Bill to a balanced farm policy that supports greater diversity in farm crops, she said. She asked for support for nutrition programs, conservation and rural development and away from a narrow focus on commodity crops.

Young suggested greater support for a variety of alternative crops, naming pecans, broccoli and pears as examples.

"The greatest concentration of farm payments in the United States goes to the areas of the greatest population loss," she said.

OxFam, now in a consortium of 13 countries around the world, addresses poverty while helping the economy of those countries grow, French said.

Seventy-five percent of the world's poorest are involved in agriculture or live in an agriculture-based nation.

"OxFam America believes one of the best ways to help developing nations improve or address poverty is to allow their economies to grow and for people to engage in livelihoods that can support their communities," French said.

OxFam's mission statement seeks long-term solutions to hunger and poverty worldwide.

"That means we are focused on how do we enable people to provide their own livelihood," he said. "It's a matter of truth that U.S. policies create barriers for the poorest to be able to market their crops and provide for a decent means for support."

Grass-roots group hopes to bring full-time workers out of poverty

from The Lawrence Journal World

By Eric Weslander

A single parent in Lawrence with two children, working full-time year-round at the minimum wage of $5.15 per hour, would earn just more than $10,000 — more than $6,000 below the federal poverty line.

David Smith, a Kansas University associate professor of sociology, cited that figure Wednesday night during the first meeting of a local group that has set its sights on goals, including raising the city’s minimum wage to $8 per hour. About 80 people attended the initial meeting of the group, dubbed “Grass Roots Action,” at the auditorium of the public library, 707 Vt.

Smith said a majority of states have raised their minimum wage above the federal level, but that Kansas hasn’t in part because it doesn’t have a statewide ballot-initiative process that would let voters decide the issue directly.

“Kansas is behind the curve. Lawrence is behind the curve. It seems reasonable to bring people who work full-time out of poverty,” Smith said.

The group aims to become an umbrella organization for causes in Lawrence, including managing growth of retail business and housing, as well as requiring major retailers to offer health benefits to employees.

Kirk McClure, KU associate professor of urban planning, said the city has too much retail-business space and too much housing — a trend he said is causing vacancies and decay in the city’s core.

Regarding housing, he said, “We are doing to Lawrence what Kansas City did to itself in the ’50s and ’60s.”

“We need to get families to move back to those old neighborhoods,” he said.

Audience member Doug Holiday, owner of Bigg’s BBQ, 2429 Iowa, asked during the meeting how many people in Lawrence earn the minimum wage — a figure that no one in the room had available. He said he was concerned that if the minimum wage was raised, his employees who already earn about $8 per hour would no longer want to work for the minimum wage.

“It’ll cost everybody more in the long run,” he said.