The Empty Promise

This article reviews the federal role in providing rental housing for low-income households. It suggests that reliance on the private market has characterized the variety of programs designed to meet the housing needs of this population group. Despite some progress, millions of low-income households still lack stable, secure housing that they can afford, and the major current program of rent subsidies is under attack

Sealed for Your Protection

In this project, I ruminate on the shiny, shape shifting polymer saturated world we are continuously creating. Oil, plastic, and fossil fuels are all very convenient for turning a profit, for consuming more and more, for the structures in place today. Concurrently, it is becoming increasingly inconvenient for our future generations to avoid extinction

A General-applications Direct Global Matrix Algorithm for Rapid Seismo-acoustic Wavefield Computations

A new matrix method for rapid wave propagation modeling in generalized stratified media, which has recently been applied to numerical simulations in diverse areas of underwater acoustics, solid earth seismology, and nondestructive ultrasonic scattering is explained and illustrated. A portion of recent efforts jointly undertaken at NATOSACLANT and NORDA Numerical Modeling groups in developing, implementing, and testing a new fast general-applications wave propagation algorithm, SAFARI, formulated at SACLANT is summarized. The present general-applications SAFARI program uses a Direct Global Matrix Approach to multilayer Green's function calculation. A rapid and unconditionally stable solution is readily obtained via simple Gaussian ellimination on the resulting sparsely banded block system, precisely analogous to that arising in the Finite Element Method. The resulting gains in accuracy and computational speed allow consideration of much larger multilayered air/ocean/Earth/engineering material media models, for many more source-receiver configurations than previously possible. The validity and versatility of the SAFARI-DGM method is demonstrated by reviewing three practical examples of engineering interest, drawn from ocean acoustics, engineering seismology and ultrasonic scattering

Foreword

Interspersed throughout this issue are Voices of Community Action — the voices of executive directors, board members, and staff. Some are personal reflections; others describe their work or tell of the struggles of those who live with poverty. All speak to the commitment of service and change, to personal development and growth, and to the worth of their work. Their stories are 10 matched in the testimony of those who have received services or participated in community action programs. All of these stories bear witness to the importance of what happens on the front lines among leaders, board members, staff, and participants in community action agencies as they work to improve the quality of life for families and communities. Much can be learned from the forty-year experience of community action and the social, economic, and political environment of those years, and we hope that this volume provides some insights as we move forward together in our commitment to social change

Latino Participation in Food Assistance Programs: A Study Conducted for Project Bread

Concern with low participation rates of households eligible for the Food Stamp program is shared among many groups focusing on the social and health needs of the low income population. While strides have been made in improving these rates, still both nationally and here in Massachusetts too many families are still food insecure, or worse, still hungry. Project Bread, the leading statewide anti-hunger organization, allocates resources for research, programs, and activities to promote greater utilization of the food stamp and other food assistance programs. Project Bread through its direct service program provides telephone and Internet information and assistance to potential applicants for food stamps, with these services available in both English and Spanish. Additionally, Project Bread provides funding for a health center program to offer direct assistance to families in applying for food stamps. These activities are only some of Project Bread’s varied efforts in promoting food stamp program participation. In an effort to address this issue of underutilization, a 2002 report prepared by the Center for Social Policy (CSP) at the University of Massachusetts Boston for Project Bread examined some of the barriers families face in accessing and maintaining Food Stamp benefits (Kahan et al, 2002). Still, a 2006 “Assessment of Hunger in Massachusetts 2005” conducted by RTI International for Project Bread found that the prevalence of food insecurity is higher than found three years earlier in the first Massachusetts Hunger Assessment. In March 2007 Project Bread submitted its “Plan to End Hunger in Massachusetts” to the state Legislature. The first strategy in this plan is “increasing access to underutilized federal nutrition programs, such as food stamps, school breakfast, after-school snack programs, and the summer food for low-income children and youth.” In its continual efforts to promote greater utilization of the food stamp program and concerned with a perceived low enrollment of eligible Latino families, Project Bread asked the Center for Social Policy (CSP) to explore and identify attitudes toward public benefits, and more particularly toward the Food Stamp Program, among the diverse Latino population in the Greater Boston area. This exploratory study addressed the following questions What is known about Latinos’ attitude toward public benefits in general? Are there attitudinal differences among Latino sub-populations regarding the use of these benefits? To what extent does a culturally familiar environment influence the decision to participate in a public benefit? To what extent do the following factors impinge on participation: knowledge of the programs and the eligibility rules, fear of government, English proficiency, legal status, and/or stigmatization? Are food programs viewed differently than other benefits? Are there differences in attitude and use among the various food programs? Do these differences vary by sub-populations

Numerical Techniques for Scattering from Submerged Objects

To represent the final results in terms of matrices, one expands all appropriate physical quantities in terms of partial wave basis states. This includes expansions for the incident and scattered fields and the surface quantities. The method then utilizes the Huygen-Poincare integral representation for both the exterior and interior solutions, leading to the required matrix equations. One thus deals with matrix equations, the complexity of which depends on the nature of the problem. It is shown that in general a transition matrix T can be obtained relating the incident field A with the scattered field f having the form T = PQ(-1), where f = TA. The structure of Q can be quite complicated and can itself be composed of other matrix inversions such as arise from layered objects. Recent improvements in this method appropriate for a variety of physical problems are focused on, and on their implementation. Results are outlined from scattering simulations for very elongated submerged objects and resonance scattering from elastic solids and shells. The final improvement concerns eigenfunction expansions of surface terms, arising from solution of the interior problem, obtained via a preconditioning technique. This effectively reduces the problem to that of obtaining eigenvalues of a Hermitian operator. This formalism is reviewed for scattering from targets that are rigid, sound-soft, acoustic, elastic solids, elastic shells, and elastic layered objects. Two sets of the more interesting results are presented. The first concerns scattering from elongated objects, and the second to thin elastic spheroids

Food Stamps: Available But Not Easily Accessible: A Study Conducted for Project Bread

Concerned with growing hunger among Massachusetts families eligible for Food Stamps, and the paradoxical decline in the number of program enrollees, Project Bread asked the Center for Social Policy at the John W. McCormack Institute of Public Affairs, University of Massachusetts Boston (CSP) to study the process of securing and sustaining Food Stamp Benefits. Concurrent with the planning process for the study, the Massachusetts legislature, in an override of the Governor\u27s veto in early December 2001, included language in the FY 2002 budget designed to expand access to the program. Among other requirements, the language requires the Department of Transitional Assistance (DTA), the state agency administering Food Stamps, to: extend office hours; simplify the Food Stamp application; out-station workers at community and human service organizations; provide categorical eligibility to families at 200% of the federal poverty level; and elect the federal option to automatically continue three months of Food Stamp benefits for families whose TAFDC benefits are ending. These requirements added new areas of inquiry to the study: the potential expansion of both physical and programmatic access to the program for Massachusetts families. In fact, in the state legislature\u27s Conference Committee budget for FY 2003, released mid-July 2002, these provisions are reiterated, as DTA is directed to increase access to Food Stamps by simplifying the application, making forms and notices more readable, extending office hours, and outstationing workers. With these new requirements, the study, carried out in collaboration with Project Bread, addressed the following research questions: Are there barriers to accessing the Food Stamp program? If so, what are those barriers? Why do some eligible applicants choose not to apply? Are there barriers to maintaining Food Stamp benefits? If so, what are those barriers? How do Food Stamp applicants experience the process of maintaining benefits? Is the Food Stamp program complying with the new regulations around extended hours, streamlined application forms, and out-stationing services

A Programmatic Audit of the Massachusetts Vitamin Litigation Project Final Report

The Massachusetts Vitamin Litigation Project resulted in the 2002 partial settlement of a class action lawsuit brought by the law firm of Ellis and Rapacki on behalf of residents of the Commonwealth who purchased indirect vitamin products1 during the period from 1990 through 1999. In return for the release of claims, the defendants (a group of pharmaceutical manufacturers) agreed to pay a settlement amount of more than $19 million to be allocated to charitable organizations providing food and nutrition programs in Massachusetts. An additional$2.5 million in settlement funds was subsequently approved. A total of 572 grants ranging from $1,000 to over$2.4 million were awarded to Massachusetts organizations in three waves: November 2002, June 2003, and December 2003. Of these projects, most (279) used their funds for capital improvements, 161 for a programmatic component, 127 for food purchases, and 3 for research. The large proportion of funding for capital improvement projects was intentional. As the settlement money constituted a one-time opportunity to strengthen organizations that address hunger and nutrition needs across a variety of populations and locations in Massachusetts, the law form of Ellis and Rapacki was particularly focused on building capacity and increasing the sustainability of these programs. To this end, Ellis and Rapacki considered not only the immediate and direct need for food, but also the - often neglected - infrastructure that is a backbone of aid efforts in general. By replacing failing equipment, providing vans to deliver food, building shelves, adding freezers, improving access for the physically challenged, the hope was to positively impact the ability of aid organizations to do their work now and in the future. The Center for Social Policy was selected by Ellis & Rapacki and approved by the Court to conduct a programmatic audit of the Vitamin Litigation Project. The audit was a process study that served two key functions. First, the audit served a descriptive function, portraying to the Massachusetts Superior Court what happened in the funded projects for purposes of accountability. Second, the study served an evaluative function by documenting lessons learned regarding the implementation and perceived outcomes of food and nutrition projects. The audit focused only on projects with a programmatic component and did not include projects focused exclusively on capital expenditures or food purchase. The audit had two major components. The first was the collection and analysis of reports from the funded projects. All grantees were required to submit to Ellis & Rapacki final reports responding to five questions in the Associated Grantmakers Common Report Form, and the vast majority of projects complied. The second component of the audit was site visits with a subset of 45 of the funded projects, which included interviews with the directors of the organizations and/or key program staff. The site visits were conducted between October 2003 and January 2005 and occurred during various phases of program implementation, mostly six to nine month after grant receipt

Housing for All: Addressing the Housing Needs of Massachusetts\u27 North Shore Residents

The aim of this report is to support North Shore efforts to build a regional approach to housing. The report explores the housing needs of people who are caught in the squeeze between low incomes and high housing costs. The report has two goals: to provide information for understanding the need to expand below market rate housing; to illustrate that need by providing detailed documentation on the situation in Gloucester, Peabody, and Salem. The report is not intended to propose solutions, but to provide groundwork for solutions