Poverty

By Dan Petrella/CU-CitizenAccess – Brenda MacPeek’s husband used to earn decent money as a long-haul truck driver, making runs all the way out to Colorado.  

But last September, the couple lost their home in Aroma Park, near Kankakee, because they were both out of work. They relocated to a doublewide mobile home in Ludlow, a town of 371 in northeastern Champaign County.

By Julie Wurth/The News-GazetteChildren's advocates have focused for several years on early learning -- preparing young children for kindergarten -- but a new report says what comes next is just as crucial.

 “Great at Eight,” the 2011 Illinois Kids Count report, notes that the state's third- and fourth-graders have made only modest improvements in reading since 2003, and wide disparities remain between students of different races and income levels.

 Why is that important? Children make a key transition in third and fourth grades, shifting from “learning to read” to “reading to learn” -- applying their newfound reading skills to more complex subjects.

By Fawn Clark/For CU-CitizenAccess — The Commission on the Elimination of Poverty will make final recommendations later this month on steps to decrease the rate of extreme poverty in Illinois by 50 percent over the next five years.

Commission members say they hope the next legislature will act on the recommendations by next spring.

Since its creation in 2008, the commission has been working toward a goal of eliminating extreme poverty, which is defined as a family that earns less than half of the poverty level.

By Pam G. Dempsey/CU-CitizenAccess - The gap between Champaign County’s rich and poor has grown over the past three years, new data shows.

An analysis of new data released from the Census Bureau on Sept. 28 shows an increase of 28 percent for those county households earning $100,000 or more between 2006 and 2009 and a decrease of more than 10 percent in those county households earning between $45,000 and $99,000.

The percent of county households with an income below the poverty level increased by nearly 13 percent over 2006, according to the data.

Further, the percentage of Champaign County renters who pay more than 30 percent of their income to housing costs increased over 2006.

By Will Atwater—Moms and toddlers sat shoulder-to-shoulder in a semicircle inside the Columbia Street Center’s preschool and sang “The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round” and other children’s songs.

CHAMPAIGN – David Sankey swallows the last of his coffee with a gulp. “I just came in here for a break,” he says, rising from his seat in a cafe at Daniel and Sixth streets. “I got to get back to work – otherwise, I’d be a lazy bum and not a panhandler.”

“Not credit-worthy.”

That is what the local bankers told Muhammad Yunus when he met with them in Bangladesh over 30 years ago to ask them why they would not loan to the poor in the village of Jobra.

Davis believes the issues Yolanda had with her late mother are still not resolved.

“The death of her mother plays a big part in [Yolanda’s] life … as far as how she [acts] towards the kids because she does not want to treat [them] they way she was treated,” he said.

Of her hardships, worrying about her children’s welfare is the toughest. 

“Being on the street, being homeless, having to ask someone ‘could you feed my kids?’ Not knowing what’s going to happen tomorrow, or [what] the next day after that is going to bring.”