New United Way Worldwide Report Finds Rental Housing Costs Rise Sharply as Help for the Lowest-Income Renters is Slashed

 

Several just-released studies have found that the current economic decline, fueled by increasing prices, poses a significant threat to household necessities, including housing, utilities, and groceries - and could lead to business contraction and job losses. This growing risk is underlined by new data from United Way Worldwide, which provides support to 211, a critical and free service connecting people to local programs and resources.

The 2023-2024 Annual Report from United Way highlights that financial instability is overwhelming the most fragile people in our communities. United Way Worldwide’s president and chief executive, Angela F. Williams, said that the 211 network is an essential part of America’s infrastructure because it’s a lifeline between people in need and the resources available to support them. Last year, the 211 network responded to 16.8 million requests for help. The United Way report emphasizes this amounts to 32 calls, texts, or chats per minute. People were asking for assistance with basic needs, which mostly fell into three categories: housing assistance, utility bills, and food. 

In the case of housing support, the volume of referrals nearly doubled, from 2019's 2.9 million to 5.6 million in 2024. Local 211s “are dealing with calls from people because their landlords are literally increasing rents by 20%, 30%, 50%,” Williams said. “People who are on fixed income or seniors can’t meet those increased rents and then have to leave or are evicted.”

The cost of housing for both renters and homeowners went up slightly in March, by 0.2%, compared with February, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Meanwhile, a Gallup poll conducted after the president’s “Liberation Day” tariffs found a record-high 53% of Americans said their financial situation is worsening.

A report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition found the U.S. has a shortage of 7.1 million affordable rental homes, resulting in only 35 affordable homes for every 100 households with extremely low-income renters. No state has an adequate supply of affordable and available rentals for the lowest-income households, according to the coalition. As a result, three-quarters of these renters spend over of their income on rent. When such a high percentage of income goes to housing, there is not much left to cover other expenses.

During the same time, the current administration has been dismantling government agencies whose mission has been to serve struggling families. Federal funds to nonprofits are being choked off or canceled. Programs to serve the poor are under attack. Last month, for example, the entire staff administering the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program - which provides financial assistance to help people pay their heating and cooling bills - was fired as part of the federal workforce culling. The current administration wants to eliminate funding for the $4.1 billion program, which assists over 6 million through block grants to states. The program provides funds to states, which then use the money to help people pay to heat and cool their homes and prevent utilities from shutting off the air or heat.

The bleak outlook can also be seen in reports like the New York Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Expectations, which it released recently. Consumer sentiment regarding current personal finances has fallen sharply since the tariff wars began. The New York Federal Reserve has highlighted a troubling trend: More households now expect slower income growth, anticipate greater difficulty finding new employment if they lose their current jobs, and an increased risk of missing minimum payments on debts such as credit cards, mortgages, and student loans.

Williams argues that the core problem lies not in discretionary spending but in systemic issues leading families into significant financial distress, the effects of which could persist for generations. She said she sees a “perfect storm” if significant inflation because of tariffs coincides with government benefit reductions or eliminations - combined with defunded community groups and nonprofits supporting the most financially vulnerable.

Read the May 9, 2025 Washington Post article.

(Image by storyset on Freepik.com.)

Obituary: Eve Kugler, Child Survivor of the Holocaust and Educator, 94

 

First in the U.S., and later in her adopted home of England, Kugler became a devoted memory-keeper for the victims of the Holocaust, speaking indefatigably to schoolchildren, traveling with students and others to Nazi concentration camps, and offering herself as a living witness to the dangers of ethnic, religious, and racial hatred.

“Her story is both exceptional and symbolic of a larger movement of children who survived the Holocaust and who have sought to bear witness,” said Laura Hobson Faure, the chair of modern Jewish history at Université Paris 1 and the author of Who Will Rescue Us? The Story of the Jewish Children Who Fled to France and America During the Holocaust (Yale University Press: New Haven, CT, 2025). (See upcoming book review in this blog.) Through her book about her family’s Holocaust history, Shattered Crystals, her website, her many public speaking engagements with students in the UK, and through her participation in the March of the Living, Eve educated thousands of young people about the history and lessons of the Holocaust. In 2019, Eve was a recipient of the British Empire Medal.

After World War II broke out in 1939, Kugler’s father was arrested in France because of his German nationality. With no means of supporting her daughters, her mother entrusted Kugler and her sisters to the Children’s Aid Society - the Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants (OSE) - which put them in several children’s homes while employing her as a cook. In 1941, the U.S. government granted permission for a group of refugee children to enter the country. The U.S. Committee for the Care of European Children, working with the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker aid group, began arranging transports with the help of OSE. In total, about 320 refugee children were evacuated from France in 1941-1942 via Spain and Portugal to the U.S., said Hobson Faure. Kugler and her sister were on the second transport. 

Kugler said that she remembered nothing of the journey through France and Spain and across the Atlantic Ocean, and that any detailed memories of her childhood began with her arrival in the U.S. The refugee children wore lanyards with numbered cards - Kugler was Number 24 - and were placed with foster families. In the following years, Kugler lived in three homes, her sister in four. “They were difficult and lonely years for me,” she wrote in a memoir, Shattered Crystals (C.I.S. Publishers: Lakewood, NJ, 1997), co-authored with her mother Mia Amalia Kanner.

“Emotionally damaged and traumatized by the Holocaust, I came to America with a hidden disability,” she continued. “With the best will in the world, the members of my foster families had no way of grasping the reasons for my deep unhappiness. How could they comprehend my feelings of isolation, my realization that I was different from other children. How could I explain to them my awful, never-ending feelings of guilt at having been saved at the expense of others, those unknown children who, the day before departure, became too ill to travel?”

In her 40s, Kugler begin to address what she described as a form of “amnesia” surrounding the traumatic events of her childhood. The experience of writing her memoir with her mother allowed her to better understand her family’s story. She started speaking at schools, synagogues, and other venues, committing herself to the preservation of the memory of the Holocaust. Kugler’s death came one day before she was scheduled to participate in the International March of the Living (MOTL), an annual gathering at Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp in occupied Poland. “I feel grateful and somewhat guilty,” she once told an interviewer, “for having survived.”

MOTL Global CEO Scott Saunders said, “Eve had been a part of the March of the Living UK since the very beginning. She was a wonderful, inspiring lady who taught all of us the resilience and positivity of life. She was my friend, my mentor and i and the whole March of the Living family will miss her.” Eve’s legacy will live on in the hearts of minds of the thousands of young people who were privileged to hear her testimony first hand on the March of the Living and in many other educational programs and settings. May her memory always be for a blessing.

Read the May 7, 2025 Washington Post obituary.

Read the April 23, 2025 MOTL article.

(Image Credit: Sam Churchill, motl.org.)

May is National Mental Health Awareness Month!

 

Mental Health Awareness Month (also referred to as Mental Health Month) has been observed in May in the U.S. since 1949. It is observed with media, local events, and film screenings. The theme "Turn Awareness into Action" was chosen for 2025 with the goal of celebrating “the progress we’ve made in recognizing the importance of mental health - and challenging us to turn understanding into meaningful steps toward change." The Month was presidentially proclaimed on May 5, 2025.

Mental Health Awareness Month was started by Mental Health America (MHA) (then known as the National Association for Mental Health). Each year in mid-March MHA releases a toolkit of materials to guide preparation for outreach activities during Mental Health Awareness Month. During the month, MHA, its affiliates, and other organizations interested in mental health conduct a number of activities which are based on a different theme each year. The Mental Health Month ribbon is green, symbolizing Hope, strength, and emotional support for those affected by mental illness.

MHA’s National Prevention and Screening Program is a collection of free, anonymous and clinically validated online screening tools, with 11 tests in English and two in Spanish. People who complete a screening test are immediately connected with resources to support their mental health journeys. Since its 2014 beginning, over 32 million people have taken a screen to check on their mental health concerns. It is the nation’s largest ongoing, real-time mental health early identification program.

The purpose of the Month is to raise awareness and educate the public about: mental illnesses, such as the 18.1% of Americans who suffer from depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder; the realities of living with these conditions; and strategies for attaining mental health and wellness. It also aims to draw attention to suicide, which can be precipitated by some mental illnesses. Additionally, the Month strives to reduce the stigma (negative attitudes and misconceptions) that surrounds mental illnesses. The month came about by presidential proclamation.

In addition to MHA, many other similar organizations choose to host awareness observances that coincide with Mental Health Awareness month. National Children's Mental Health Awareness Day is one such campaign. This event is sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in partnership with other non-profit and advocacy organizations.

Other months and weeks throughout the year are designated to raise awareness around specific mental health conditions or the mental health of different demographic groups - such as Minority Mental Health Month (July), sometimes referred to as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) Mental Health Awareness Month; Mental Illness Awareness Week (Sunday, October 5, 2025 - Saturday, October 11, 2025); National Depression Screening Day (October 10), etc.

Remember that mental illnesses can affect anyone, regardless of their background or circumstances. No person should have to face these challenges alone. Recognizing the signs, encouraging open dialogue, and showing compassion are essential steps in addressing mental health challenges and supporting those who face them.

Study of Class Segregation Finds Poor and Especially Rich Americans are Isolated in Their Daily Activities

 

"Rubbing shoulders: Class segregation in daily activities," by Maxim Massenkoff & Nathan Wilmers, Journal of Public Economics, Volume 244, 2025, 105335, ISSN 0047-2727, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105335. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272725000337). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105335.

It was found:

• Poor and especially rich Americans are isolated in their daily activities.
• Distance from home explains one-third of class segregation in activities.
• Casual restaurant chains like Olive Garden foster more class mixing than civic spaces.
• Cross-class encounters strongly predict Facebook friendships across economic lines.

The authors used location data to study cross-class encounters. Low-income and especially high-income individuals are socially isolated: they are more likely than other income groups to encounter people from their own class. Counterfactual exercises suggest this is explained largely by residential segregation and firms. Among firms, casual restaurants make the largest positive contribution to cross-class encounters through both scale and their diversity of visitors. Dollar stores and libraries isolate visitors. Our local measure of encounters is strongly associated with cross-class Facebook friendships, which have been previously shown to correlate with intergenerational mobility.

Growing research has shown that places rub off on you (Wilson, 2012, Sampson, 2012). When children move to better neighborhoods at a young age, their adult outcomes improve (Chetty et al., 2016, Chetty and Hendren, 2018), and children growing up in the presence of inventors are more likely to innovate in that area (Bell et al., 2019). The sources of these exposure effects are unclear, but one possibility is that areas that boost mobility have more opportunities for interaction, friendship, and mentorship across class lines (Chetty et al., 2022a).

This article measures opportunities for such cross-class interactions, providing the first national estimates of economic segregation in activities. It is done using intuitive metrics and geolocation data from SafeGraph, which allows for granular income proxies based on the small neighborhoods where people live. A neighborhood’s exposure to others is defined by the other people in the stores, restaurants, shops, parks, and libraries that its residents frequent.

How much do Americans of different income levels mix with one another? Who is exposed to a broad cross-section of income levels, and who is disproportionately exposed to others like themselves? It was found that the most isolated Americans are not the poor, but the rich. Households from the top 20% of neighborhoods by income are twice as likely to encounter other high-income people as would be expected by chance. The bottom 20% of neighborhoods is also isolated, but at about half the rate. Middle-income residents in the US are exposed to a more representative assortment of people. The cross-class encounters that we register in our data are also highly correlated with a measure of cross-class friendships constructed using Facebook data (Chetty et al., 2022a).

How much isolation is due to high- and low-income households frequenting different industries from others (high-end dining rather than fast food) or staying local at residentially segregated neighborhoods? In a counterfactual reweighting exercise (DiNardo et al., 1995), we find that there is only a small role for industry. High-income residents frequent different types of places - e.g., museums instead of libraries and full-service restaurants as opposed to fast food - but equating industry shares across classes would barely shift levels of isolation. On the other hand, people are most isolated when they are closest to home, and the tendency to stay close can account for around one third of the isolation we observe. This suggests that activity segregation partially reflects residential segregation. But even adjusting for distance from home, the majority of activity segregation persists.

The article next examines which specific firms contribute to socio-economic mixing and which exacerbate segregation. Some very poor-serving national chains, like discount general merchandise stores, contribute to segregation. But, consistent with the importance of distance in the reweighting analysis, so do chains that have many local branches: while residents from all income quintiles shop at CVS (the largest pharmacy chain in the U.S.), they shop at CVS stores in their own neighborhoods.

In contrast to these market segmented or highly local businesses, some chains contribute substantially to socio-economic mixing. Specifically, low-price full-service restaurants are frequented by a diverse range of residents: the rich and poor rub shoulders at Olive Garden and Applebee’s. Indeed, the most socio-economically diverse places in America are not public institutions, like schools and parks, but affordable, chain restaurants.

This study expands on recent literature that uses data from mobile phones, social networks, and financial transactions to examine economic segregation (reviewed in Appendix F), providing the first national estimates of experienced class segregation in daily activities. We focus on an intuitive measure of isolation: the share of encounters with one’s own group members, and provide the first decomposition quantifying sources of social isolation for the rich and poor. Finally, we investigate the types of locations that harbor economic integration, even down to the brand level, offering a unique level of granularity for measuring the role of specific brands in hosting economic integration.

It was found that the core concept is exposure: the chance of encountering someone in a certain group, conditional on membership in a certain group. An encounter is when someone is at a place at the same time as someone else (Athey et al., 2021). A place is typically a business establishment, but also includes entities like parks and schools. Exposure was based on the monthly aggregate visits. The high income group has a relatively lower share of visits to essential retail and a relatively higher share of visits to entertainment and full service dining.

Given the importance of national chains and firms to the isolation of high- and low-income neighborhood residents, the specific industries and chains that contribute to and offset isolation are identified. Our establishment-level data allows us to track particular chains and provides the first assessment of particular companies’ contribution to socio-economic mixing.

Class segregation appears not just where people live (Reardon and Bischoff, 2011) and work (Song et al., 2019), but also in the public and commercial places where people spend time and money. This paper establishes that residents of low- and especially high-income neighborhoods are exposed disproportionately to others like themselves.

(Image by storyset on Freepik.com.)

AJC, USC Shoah Foundation Partner to Document and Map Global Antisemitism

 

The American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the USC Shoah Foundation (University of Southern California) announced on April 27th at the AJC Global Forum their newly formed partnership to give voice to, document, and map modern-day antisemitism around the world. Harnessing AJC’s global reach and the USC Shoah Foundation’s expertise in testimony collection, AJC will contribute to the USC Shoah Foundation’s ambitious and visionary goal of collecting 10,000 testimonies from across the U.S. and around the world to document incidents of antisemitism post-1945, and bring voice to the worldwide persistence of antisemitism and its many manifestations. This multi-year, international testimony collection is part of the USC Shoah Foundation’s Contemporary Antisemitism Collection.

“We must clearly show to the world - and preserve for the future - what antisemitism is, what it looks like, and the personal toll it takes on Jews around the world. AJC has seen, firsthand, the way antisemitism has morphed and manifested itself in different ways since the end of the Holocaust,” said AJC CEO Ted Deutch. “Through AJC’s work all over the globe combating antisemitism, we have also seen the power of personal testimonies in not only changing hearts and minds but also in winning support for policies that protect Jewish communities. The USC Shoah Foundation’s collection of testimonies will forever capture the personal experiences of thousands of Jewish people, enabling us to tell our story, and share it with generations to come.”

“Our partnership with AJC will enable us to reach survivors of antisemitic violence from all over the globe. In turn, this is a powerful statement that bringing the world’s attention to antisemitism requires partnerships built on a shared commitment to giving voice to the personal histories of those who have and continue to experience one of humanity’s oldest and most enduring forms of hatred. This ambitious project, namely building a Contemporary Antisemitism Collection at the USC Shoah Foundation, will add tremendous value to the study of antisemitism and hate and help Jewish and non-Jewish communities become more resilient against these forces, both now and into the future,” said Dr. Robert J. Williams, CEO and Finci-Viterbi Chair of the USC Shoah Foundation.

During the announcement, Daniel Pomerantz, now executive director of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA; transl. "Argentine Israelite Mutual Association, a Jewish Community Center), and a survivor of the July 18, 1994 terror attack, explained, “the [Hezbollah] terrorists killed 85 and injured 300. These were my friends and colleagues. They were Argentinian Jews and Argentinians of all backgrounds. Thirty-one years later, those responsible for orchestrating that horrible day - for attacking my place of work, my community’s gathering place, and for murdering and maiming dozens - have still not been brought to justice or held accountable for their crimes.”

The Contemporary Antisemitism Collection focuses on five categories, including: (1) Sephardic, Mizrahi, and Yemenite Jewish communities, many of which were displaced or left the Mediterranean basin, North Africa, and the Middle East in the 1940s and 1950s; (2) Ethiopian Jewish communities, including those which made Aliyah and those that entered the diaspora in Europe and North America; (3) North American Jewish experiences since 1945; (4) The experiences of Jewish communities under communist rule, including Jewish life in the Soviet Union, in Warsaw Pact states, and in the former Yugoslavia; and (5) Victims of antisemitic terror attacks, beginning with the 1994 bombing of the AMIA, the worst antisemitic attack since the Holocaust until October 7, 2023. Once completed, the collection will be the largest archive ever assembled of testimonies on contemporary antisemitism. 

AJC, the global advocacy organization for the Jewish people, has long utilized research, policy, and advocacy to address this hatred. The USC Shoah Foundation, the Institute for Visual History and Education, is home to over 61,000 testimonies of survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust, contemporary antisemitism, the Armenian Genocide, and other mass atrocities and genocidal crimes of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It is the largest such collection in the world. 

Read the April 27, 2025 AJC article.

Book Review: "Stacked Decks: Building Inspectors and the Reproduction of Urban Inequality"

Stacked Decks: Building Inspectors and the Reproduction of Urban Inequality by Robin Bartram. University of Chicago Press, 2022. 

This is "a startling look at the power and perspectives of city building inspectors as they navigate unequal housing landscapes." Though we rarely see them at work, building inspectors have the power to significantly shape our lives through their discretionary decisions. The building inspectors of Chicago are at the heart of this author's analysis of how individuals impact - or attempt to impact - housing inequality. 

Drawing on her extensive research into code enforcement in Chicago, Bartram shows that building inspectors often make surprising choices about who to cite (and who not to cite) and discuss how these choices underscore the continuing challenge of persistent inequality.

In Stacked Decks, she reveals surprising patterns in the judgment calls inspectors make when deciding whom to cite for building code violations. These predominantly white, male inspectors largely recognize that they work within an unequal housing landscape that systematically disadvantages poor people and people of color through redlining, property taxes, and city spending that favor wealthy neighborhoods. This book illustrates the uphill battle inspectors face when trying to change a housing system that works against those with the fewest resources.

The book argues that cities are stacked decks. They are sites of vast disparities in racial wealth, health, education, and well-being. But this stacked deck also motivates. Disparities in the city inspire and organize action. Built environments - and the inequity they embody - motivate frontline workers like building code inspectors. But features of this unequal world also hinder the actions they inspire and work as justice blockers. This tension - between motivation and obstruction - makes inequality particularly stubborn and hard to change. This book is a story of how the stacked deck gets reproduced even when people are trying to do the opposite.

House Committee on Education and the Workforce Grills Universities "Beyond the Ivy League" About Antisemitism

On May 7th, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce questioned three college presidents in a hearing called “Beyond the Ivy League: Stopping the Spread of Antisemitism on American Campuses.” The hearing focused on schools that received F grades from the Anti-Defamation League. While three college presidents apologized for not acting more aggressively to curb antisemitism on their campuses, the president of Haverford College Wendy Raymond was berated by Republican lawmakers on campus antisemitism for when asked repeatedly, Raymond said her institution does not publicize the outcomes of disciplinary processes. 

Some Committee members suggested the school should lose federal funding because of her refusal to discuss student discipline in the wake of pro-Palestinian protests. Rep. Burgess Owens (R-Utah) compared the antisemitism to the racism of the 1960s in the Deep South. “What we’re seeing on college campuses today isn’t activism. It’s intimidation, it’s harassment, in many cases, pure, unfiltered hatred of Jewish people.” “This is not a free-speech issue. It’s a public safety issue. It’s a moral issue. And every school that allows this chaos to continue needs to lose all federal funds.”

On May 6th, the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the Association of American Universities (AAU), and the American Council on Education (ACE) released a joint statement, affirming the seriousness of antisemitism on campus and a pledge from these organizations, representing the full breadth of American higher educational institutions, to “continuing consequential reform and transparent action.” Also co-signing the statement were the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU), and American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU).

According to AJC’s State of Antisemitism in America 2024 Report, 35% of current American Jewish college students and recent graduates report having personally experienced antisemitism at least once during their time on campus, with 20% reporting that it happened more than once. 22% of Jewish students report feeling or being excluded from a group or an event on campus because they are Jewish. AJC previously published Confronting Campus Antisemitism: An Action Plan for University Administrators, which includes concrete steps to meet both the immediate needs of Jewish campus citizens and foster sustained, real change that will improve the learning and living environment for all students, faculty, and staff - including Jewish community members.

The statement, which included those representing public universities and community colleges, noted that the federal government had recently taken steps in the name of combating antisemitism that endanger research grants, academic freedom and institutional autonomy.“ AJC, the global advocacy organization for the Jewish people, believes that when these actions are overly broad, they imperil science and innovation, and ultimately detract from the necessary fight against antisemitism while threatening the global preeminence of America’s research universities and colleges,” they wrote.

Reaad the May 6, 2025 Washington Post article.

Read the May 7, 2025 New York Times article.

(Image creator: Ethan Pann.)