Greetings: Week of Jan. 25

This week on CU-CitizenAccess.org, a website and social network devoted to coverage and discussion of social and economic issues within Central Illinois:

Restaurant inspection failures for December

Our ongoing restaurant inspection map has been updated to include failed inspection reports from December.

Check out our map to see what's new!

Blog: Gingrich prompts look at local food stamp use

By Dan Petrella/CU-CitizenAccess -- Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has gotten a lot of mileage on the campaign trail by labeling Barack Obama "the food-stamp president."

He repeated that sentiment at last week's debate in South Carolina, saying, "The fact is that more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history," which drew cheers from the audience.

Have you seen ...?

New website puts law within reach for Spanish speakers

Hispanics in Illinois unable to afford an attorney now have an online Spanish-language resource to help them resolve their legal problems 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The new website, www.AyudaLegalIL.org, developed by Illinois Legal Aid Online and Legal Assistance Foundation (LAF), delivers easy-to-use, free legal information in more than two dozen areas of law.

AyudaLegalIL.org, which is a mirrored version of the award-winning www.IllinoisLegalAid.org, provides zip code-based referrals to local legal services programs across the state and free, plain language legal information and resources for common legal problems. The website makes navigating a confusing legal system easy and free to lower-income Spanish-speakers facing legal issues like domestic violence, mortgage foreclosure, immigration and more.
(Contributed by Illinois Legal Aid Online) 

The Atlantic Cities looks at the most and least affordable housing and what drives up prices

Based on this report, the 8th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey: 2012 , Champaign has "moderately unaffordable" housing.

Follow us on Twitter

To get the latest about what's new at CU-CitizenAccess.org, you can follow us on Twitter under the name @cucitizenaccess. 

You can also follow CU-CitzenAccess reporters Pam Dempsey,@pamelagdempsey, and Dan Petrella,@PetrellaReports, and one of the project leaders Brant Houston, @branthouston.

To share information about social and economic issues in Champaign County with us, include the hash tag #cucitizen in your tweets.

For more about connecting with us through Twitter on your computer or cell phone, visit CU-CitizenAccess.org/mobile.

'Like' us on Facebook

You can get news and information from CU-CitizenAccess.org straight to your Facebook news feed by liking our Facebook page, www.facebook.com/cucitizenaccess