SHC Pine Press July 2021 | 12 person housed as immediately as possible, and the highest score on the scale is chronic homelessness that requires more intensive intervention through social workers. For people requiring housing after being evicted, the city of Dallas, Mesquite, and North Texas has tackled the growing problem of housing through a $10 million Rapid Rehousing initiative from Congress with another $10 million through private donors. The motto is that people have a right to be housed and need housing first. This is also helpful for people who are homeless that also have substance addictions and mental health disorders because the theory is that the substance abuse and mental health disorders gradually decrease when someone is stably housed. Links: 1).https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2021/06/to-reduce-homelessness-dallas-plans-to-give-peopl e-somewhere-to-live/?fbclid=IwAR2aiUt59Vo3lX4cSaBcCpNgkUR0aFCGqrjQJvnE59PJSGcCAPvv6baS2j8 2). https://michiganlegalhelp.org/coronavirus/eviction
Why You Should Care About Child Care! By Maddie Elliot, Ferency There’s some very exciting investments for children and families coming down from the feds! The American Rescue Plan (ARP) and the previous two covid relief packages (CARES in March and CRRSAA in December) have made record investments in child care. The American Families Plan, with even more child care funding, will be up for a vote in the next few months in Congress and has a decent chance of passing! It’s definitely not time to sing Congress’s praises, since the child care system has been chronically underfunded since its inception, and it took a pandemic to increase funding, but anyways, here are some investments to look forward to and talk with your representatives about: ★ $1.4 billion to begin repairing Michigan’s broken child care system (from ARP and CRRSAA federal dollars) which has yet to pass the Michigan Legislature. ○
Gov Whitmer proposed using these funds to increase eligibility for families to access subsidies for child care, increase subsidy payments to child care providers (which are dismally low at $1.75-$5.80 an hour), offer start-up grants to help new child care businesses open, and other grants to keep child care centers open!
★ In the American Families Plan, which also has yet to pass, Pres Biden has proposed $225 billion over ten years to subsidize child care so that low and middle income
