In our conversation for We Can Do Better, we talk about why Ray says that, after the Constitution, the tax code is the single most important document affecting American lives. She explains how the country has become a land of two sets of people: overburdened workers shouldering the cost of running the country and an American aristocracy of wealth and power who are allowed to dodge their tax responsibilities.

How is this “American Aristocracy” pulling this off? By building their wealth through stock and property, which they can avoid paying taxes on, instead of wages, which are subject to tax. “Salaries are for suckers,” Ray tells us.

Photo by Steve Rhodes

That leaves our eviction court clients and the rest of us working “suckers” paying far more than our fair share, especially in payroll taxes. Ray breaks down the lie behind the oft- repeated line, by Jeff Bezos and others, that the wealthiest 1% of Americans are paying 40% of the taxes while the bottom 40% are paying none.

That is just the latest falsehood used to hoard wealth. In the 1990’s the nation’s richest families, hoping to inherit billions tax-free, launched a political and PR campaign claiming falsely that family farms and businesses were at risk by taxes on inheritances. They succeeded in labeling our country’s estate tax a “death tax,” and now rake in tax-free wealth that they did nothing to earn.

But we can do better. Ray explains to us how we accomplish that, including her counter-intuitive plan to fix the estate tax by eliminating it. Instead, we will require inheritors of great fortunes to pay taxes on their windfalls—just like the rest of us pay taxes on any income we receive.

You can listen to and/or watch this episode and our past shows at our podcast channels on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. Thank you for reading and listening!

His reply? “ No, I’m not going to pledge that.”

Once again, the Trump administration does us a favor. It unmasks the structural corruption that had been more politely hidden by previous presidents.

As more fully developed in a Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy article I researched and wrote back in 2010, called Torture, Impunity, and the Need for Independent Prosecutorial Oversight of the Executive Branch, our current system de facto grants impunity for the President of the United States. Because the President gets to appoint–-and fire at any time they displease him– the only person who can initiate federal prosecutions: the Attorney General, the head of the Justice Department.

The fox is guarding the henhouse.

But,as we discuss in this week’s brief episode of We Can Do Better, this can change.

Todd Blanche, photo by Bruce Schaff via Wikimedia Commons

Specifically, we can independently elect our Attorney General.

An independently elected prosecutor is already the dominant model in local communities, where 95% of criminal cases are filed and adjudicated. Mayors don’t have control over the person and agency who might file criminal charges against them. State-level attorneys general are also usually elected, so they can similarly hold governors accountable, as can local prosecutors.

If we do elect our Attorney General, it seems very possible that, given our divided electorate, we could be electing a president from one party and an Attorney General from a different party. We have a lot of split ticket voters, and we like to have some accountability and oversight of our top leaders. Checks and balances.

How do we do this? Likely through a constitutional amendment of Article II, § 3 which states the President “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

But that is not fully settled. The framers did not specifically address the question of whether the Attorney General would be appointed by the President. And in fact they were very concerned about putting checks on the power of any one branch of government. And the first Congress did not see presidential control of federal prosecutions as a constitutional mandate.

So there is an argument that we may not need a constitutional amendment. And there are some other anti-impunity options explored in the article, including a strong independent counsel law.

But even if a constitutional amendment proves necessary, it is worth it . We need to root out the inherent corruption in our system, where at the highest level of government the fox pretends to guard the henhouse.

You can listen to and/or watch this episode and our past shows at our podcast channels on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. Thank you for reading and listening!

So that is why, for this week’s episode of We Can Do Better, we welcome David Cooper of the Economic Policy Institute. EPI is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank working for the last 30 years to counter rising inequality, low wages and weak benefits for working people.

The national minimum wage is stagnant at a shameful sub-living wage of $7.25 per hour. But, as David tells us, dozens of states and localities are not waiting for Congress any longer. They are raising the wage themselves, including many this year alone. Among the 30 states with higher wages are several “red” states, reflecting the strong bipartisan public support for living wages for all workers.

Image from Wikimedia Commons

David shares with us the reams of evidence countering the false claims that increased wages lead to widespread jobs losses and sharply higher prices. We also discuss the ripple effects of higher minimum wages on public health and safety, including protecting our clients and many others from domestic violence.

David also explains why President Trump’s no taxes on tips/overtime changes are “gimmicks,” filled with false promises that usually do not meaningfully help those workers.

What would help those workers? A legal guarantee that their hard work meets the needs of their households for rent, utility, food, and other necessities. What they need is a long-overdue national minimum wage increase.

You can listen to and/or watch our conversation at our podcast channels on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. Thank you for reading and listening!

The program is exactly what working parents have been hoping for: there are no income limits, no copays, and families can choose the care that works best for them, including centers, home-based providers, language immersion or faith-based programs, and care during evenings or weekends.

Jacob Vigil, legislative director for New Mexico Voices for Children, one of the leading advocates for this remarkable program, joins We Can Do Better this week.

Image from USDA, Public Domain

We talk about the broad coalition that fueled the campaign to create and implement universal childcare, and the importance of identifying a funding source. Jacob discusses the rock-solid science behind the value of high-quality early childhood education and care, the self-interest of the business community in having accessible child care, and the importance of ensuring that child care workers are well-trained and well-compensated.

Just as universal national benefits like Social Security and Medicare have proven to be more politically durable than means-tested benefits, there is good reason to expect that universal childcare in New Mexico is creating its own broad constituency–one that can be replicated in states across the country.

You can listen to and/or watch our conversation at our podcast channels on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. Thank you for reading and listening!

Earlier this month, the 21^st Century ROAD to Housing Act became law. It is the first substantial housing bill to pass Congress in decades, and it is . . . mid.

In this episode, producer Jack joins as co-host to talk with Fran about how the new law, like so many other reforms aimed at our housing crisis, focuses on increasing the supply of housing. Specifically, the Road to Housing Act will make it easier to get financing and construct new housing.

Which is fine.

But it won’t do much for the people we see in eviction court, and the millions of others who simply do not make enough money to afford market-rate housing.

(Mid- episode, Gen-Z-er Jack helpfully explains to Boomer Fran that the right description for such legislation is “mid.”)

Our nation’s leading housing experts have been making this point for years. As the title of a 2019 article by Alan Mallach, senior fellow at the Center for Community Progress, pointed out, “Rents Will Only Go So Low, No Matter How Much We Build.”

Not that building more housing is a bad thing: we have an aging housing stock and more supply will lower the price of housing in many areas for some middle-income people. But, as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities insisted last year, “Our Response to the Housing Crisis Must Include Rental Assistance, Not Just More Supply.”

That is because 7 million households with income below the poverty line are paying more than half their income in rent: their recommended monthly housing cost is just $224 per month. No construction boom will lead to a for-profit landlord agreeing to anything close to that amount.

“The Crisis Will Continue”

As we discussed last week, our clients living with disabilities and thus limited to a Supplemental Security Income check face market rent that is more than 100% of their income. The same barriers are faced by many seniors living on Social Security and some of our low-wage working clients, especially parents with young children.

So we need more and better subsidized housing, especially high-quality public housing and a full supply of housing subsidy vouchers for all who qualify, not just the one in four eligible households who receive it now.

A good detailed guide to the law’s changes is provided by the National Low-Income Housing Coalition here. The National Housing law Project had it right in its official response to the Road to Housing Act passing:

“This is progress but it is no silver bullet. We call on Congress to go further in addressing the housing crisis for poor and working people by making significant financial investments to build new housing, including new public housing, and to pass legislation that will protect and empower tenants. Until there is a whole-of-government approach to save our homes and protect the people who live in them, the crisis will continue.”

So, for our eviction court clients and the millions of others facing the loss of their homes or already homeless, the 21^st Century ROAD to Housing Act is kind of mid. We will save our cheers for when real reform, like the Green New Deal for Public Housing Act, becomes law.

You can listen to and/or watch our conversation at our podcast channels on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. Thank you for reading and listening!

We start out the episode with the story of Dorothy (not her real name), one of our many eviction court clients who is unable to work because of disability. Like 7.4 million Americans, Dorothy’s sole income is her SSI check. But that monthly check is only $994. It is the maximum amount SSI allows, but it is not even enough to cover Dorothy’s rent, much less other expenses.

That outdated monthly limit—along with tight restrictions on obtaining any other source of income—condemns millions of people who are living with disabilities to also live in deep poverty. And, like Dorothy and so many others, it sentences them to a lifetime of evictions and homelessness.

Our guest Stephen Nuñez, a researcher at the Roosevelt Institute, shows that we can do better. Stephen’s analysis of the SSI Restoration Act, introduced in Congress by Senator Elizabeth Warren and others, would boost the SSI monthly amount and dismantle nonsensical restrictions.

The bottom line from Stephen’s analysis: This legislation would do a LOT to help Dorothy and so many others. More people who are living with disabilities would get SSI, and a lot less people on SSI would be in poverty.

Public Domain Image

You can listen to and/or watch our conversation at our podcast channels on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.

Here is some of the suggested reading mentioned in the episode:

• Stephen Nuñez, Jack Landry, Estimating the Cost and Impacts of the SSI Restoration Act, https://rooseveltinstitute.org/publications/estimating-the-cost-and-impacts-of-the-ssi-restoration-act/

• SSI Restoration Act of 2026 Overview:, Justice in Aging, https://justiceinaging.org/the-supplemental-security-income-ssi-restoration-act/

• This One Neat Trick Can Reduce Homelessness, https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/increase-ssi-reduce-homelessness

Since then, democratic socialists have been on a roll. Zohran Mamdani in New York City and others are winning major mayoral elections and are poised to win more this year. Already in 2026, democratic socialists are defeating incumbents and winning open seats in primary wins that will likely yield a growing number of socialist members of Congress.

Many of us want to see our government respond much better to the struggles of everyday people. And we want wealthy individuals and corporations to hold far less riches and regular people to hold far more political power. Does that mean we are democratic socialists?

Also, what is “sewer socialism” and how does that service-focused history guide the new wave of elected socialist mayors like Mamdani? How does democratic socialism intersect with the care-for-others religious principles at the core of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and other religious and moral traditions?

We engage with all these questions with Jesse Brown. Jesse is a former high school teacher, which seems to be good preparation for educating us about what democratic socialism is and is not.

He shares with us how his single mom’s financial struggles and his family’s Christian faith led him to socialism, how he thinks democratic socialists are speaking to the same frustration that has led many voters to embrace Trump in the past, and how the democratic nature of socialism should prevent him or any other elected official from thinking they have all the answers for a community’s needs.

You can listen to and/or watch our conversation at our podcast channels on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.

A few articles and resources referenced in the episode:

“Democratic Socialists are Winning in U.S. Cities With Message of Getting Stuff Done,” The Guardian

Jesse Brown’s Weekly Newsletter

Religious Socialism: Faith in Action for a Better World (Orbis Books)

Thanks for reading and listening!

An unacceptable four in every 10 Americans report skipping prescription doses because they can’t afford their cost, a practice that we know can cost lives. Affording prescription drugs always ranks at the top of Americans’ concerns. For our low-income clients and many with even more resources, this is a very real struggle—despite the enormous government subsidies provided to pharma corporations at every stage of the prescription drug process.

Public domain image by TaxRebate.org.uk

Mara tells us that she and others have been working on a fix: drug manufacturing can and should be treated as essential public infrastructure instead of a platform for price gouging. In fact, it is already being done.

California’s CalRx is a state-backed initiative that produces CalRx-branded insulin pens. The pens are offered at pharmacies for approximately $11 per pen – a fraction of the roughly $80 or more per pen that patients typically pay for brand-name long-acting insulin.

CalRx is working on doing the same for albuterol, a medicine that is a critical need for children with asthma. Michigan and New York are contemplating following California’s lead in public manufacturing of medicines.

The public sector also is starting to leverage its purchasing power to lower drug prices. Not only that, the federal government actually has the right to license patents on critical medicines to generic manufacturers when those medicines are made unaffordable by monopoly-holding corporations. (See an explanation of that “1498”option below.) Our government has done this in the past, and should do so again.

We hope you enjoy this episode.

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Here is some additional background about Public Pharma:

Prescription Drug Prices are a Problem–But TrumpRx is Not the Solution, by Victor Roy and Mara Heneghan, March 2026, https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2026-03-26/prescription-drug-prices-trumprx

The New School’s Institute on Race, Power, and the Political Economy, https://racepowerpolicy.org/

Democracy Collaborative, Why We Need a Public Option in Pharma, https://www.democracycollaborative.org/whatwethink/medicine-for-all-the-case-for-a-public-option-in-the-pharmaceutical-industry

Chris Morten,Who’s Afraid of Section 1498? https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/2810/

To lead our conversation, we pulled out from behind the scenes our podcast’s guru and producer Jack Quigley. Jack is a journalist and writer, now Chief Marketing Officer for 14 Regional Construction Trade Magazines. Jack takes over the questioning and asks Fran about his article, including:

• The historical evidence showing that, by promising that our new government would fulfill “the pursuit of happiness” as an inalienable right, the founders meant a government guarantee of housing, healthcare, and meeting critical needs;

• How protecting civil rights like voting, free speech, etc. are completely dependent on fulfilling economic rights to housing, healthcare, etc.;

• Why the record shows that the U.S. people, now and throughout history, are nowhere near as hostile to guaranteeing economic rights to housing, healthcare, etc. as we have been led to believe;

• Why the U.S. ratifying the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights could solve our poverty crisis.

  
  You can listen to the podcast here:

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  The full article is available here: Reclaiming the Pursuit of Happiness: Let’s Celebrate the Declaration’s 250th by Ending Poverty, and pasted in below:
  
  Reclaiming the Pursuit of Happiness: Let’s Celebrate the Declaration’s 250^th by Ending Poverty

  Every week in our law school eviction court clinic, we see parents hustling from their workplaces, still wearing fast food and home healthcare uniforms, hoping to push back the day when they and their kids will be sleeping in their car. We see seniors and persons living with disabilities on the verge of eviction because they had to spend their rent money filling prescriptions. We see some of the 43 million people in the U.S. who are living with hunger.

  Every person suffering like this is a rebuke to the core promise of the Declaration of Independence. We should commemorate the Declaration’s 250^th anniversary with a renewed commitment to the pursuit of happiness, which means our government fulfilling basic economic needs.

  From the very first moment of its existence, the United States embraced economic rights. The Declaration of Independence’s second paragraph commits our government to protecting the pursuit of happiness as an unalienable right. The founders, as flawed as they were, knew that this promise included ensuring that basic needs are met.

  “Not a Charity but a Right”—The Founders and Government’s Role in Ending Poverty

  The Declaration’s main author, Thomas Jefferson, lamented the democracy-undermining existence of poverty. Natural rights are violated, Jefferson wrote, when some residents struggle and others prosper. So he insisted that the government has a duty to act to remedy the injustice, including through aggressively progressive taxation.

  Other founders agreed. Alexander Hamilton explained that the General Welfare Clause in Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution (“The Congress shall have Power to lay and collect taxes . . .to provide for the General Welfare of the United States”) creates a government that addresses unmet economic needs. Hamilton’s fellow Constitution framer James Madison called for the new nation to enact laws that would “reduce extreme wealth toward a state of mediocrity, raise extreme indigence toward a state of comfort.”

  For 18^th century politicians, this type of government intervention was not hypothetical. Colonial governments instituted price controls on food and aggressively regulated gristmills to keep the cost of bread affordable for all.

  The founder with the most pronounced vision of economic rights was Thomas Paine, author of the seismic pamphlet Common Sense and a driving force behind the American Revolution and the new government it birthed. Paine called for the redistribution of wealth via progressive taxation and for direct government anti-poverty interventions like old-age pensions, support for families with young children, full employment, and a basic income. “It is not charity but a right—not bounty but justice that I am pleading for,” he said.

  The Meaning of the “Pursuit of Happiness”

  Beyond the founders’ own words, it is clear from historical context that a 1776 commitment to protecting the unalienable right to the “pursuit of happiness” includes ensuring that subsistence needs are met. Law professor and dean Linda Keller’s comprehensive review of political thought and contemporary use of this critical phrase during the 18^th century led her to conclude that basic economic rights are deeply rooted in the nation’s foundation.

  “Its inclusion was not merely a rhetorical flourish, but rather the pursuit of happiness established an ‘unalienable right’ that includes an economic dimension,” Keller writes. “In particular, there are minimum needs that must be met in order to pursue happiness, for instance food, shelter, and clothing. Thus the government must provide the conditions to enable individuals to pursue happiness.”

  Over the decades, other scholars have agreed. “The Declaration of Independence manifests a government’s affirmative role in protecting rights,” writes law professor Bert Lockwood. “Both the plain and ordinary meaning of happiness and its common usage in the eighteenth century indicate that the notion of happiness cannot be entirely separated from material well-being. Access to the minimal necessities of life, such as shelter or basic medical care, is thus an indispensable prerequisite to the notion of happiness.”

  Charles Black, the longtime Yale Law professor and civil rights advocate who helped argue the legendary desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education, said the point was obvious. “The possession of a decent material basis for life is an indispensable condition, for almost all people at all times, to the pursuit of happiness,” Black wrote. “The right to pursuit of happiness is going to be for all but a small minority of those in poverty, a pale sardonically grinning ghost of a right.”

  “Necessitous Men are not Free Men”

  U.S. leaders since the founders have underscored this same point: freedom and democracy cannot exist without first meeting the rights to basic human needs.

  “Necessitous men are not free men,” Franklin Roosevelt announced as the foundation of his proposal for a Second Bill of Rights ensuring access to housing, healthcare, and living wages.

  Soon after, the international community heeded Roosevelt’s call. Virtually every nation has ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, which enshrines into law the rights to housing, healthcare, and living wage incomes.

  Yet the U.S. has not ratified the treaty known as the ICESCR. Not coincidentally, every wealthy nation that has ratified does far better than the U.S. in protecting the pursuit of happiness. Those nations have comprehensive and successful programs ensuring housing, healthcare, and adequate incomes for their residents. In those countries, the grim eviction court scenes we witness every week are almost unheard of.

  We can do better, too. U.S. voters have consistently expressed concern over our rampant wealth inequality, supported a government jobs guarantee and called for recognizing housing and healthcare as government-enforced human rights.

  These rights are necessary for the pursuit of happiness. The founders knew it, and so do we. Along with fireworks and picnics, let’s celebrate the 250^th by finally fulfilling the real promise of the Declaration of Independence.

  Fran Quigley directs the Housing, Health, and Human Rights Clinic at Indiana University McKinney School of Law and hosts the We Can Do Better podcast and newsletter.

You can see those numbers, and the numbers for your own state, on the Center on Budget’s website, specifically an ongoing feature called, SNAP Tracker: People Are Losing Food Assistance as the Republican Megabill Is Implemented: https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/snap-tracker-people-are-losing-food-assistance-as-the-republican-megabill

Catlin is a data researcher, but he emphasizes here the human cost to children and to our communities. In fact, the CBPP has confirmed that hundreds of thousands of children are no longer receiving food assistance.

Catlin also explains how to fix this: the federal government needs to press pause on the transfer of SNAP financial responsibility to the states.

That pause could help ease the very real suffering going on in the short-term, while repealing these mean-spirited barriers (more on the impact of red-tape work requirements here ) is the long-term answer.

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As the author of the newsletter Polygraph and a co-founder of the Security Policy Reform Institute, Stephen is the best there is at explaining how the arms industry has used piles of campaign money to take over U.S. budgets via Congress and Presidential administrations, and the price we all pay for this domination.

You can listen to the episode here:

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Simply put, we can end poverty by slashing U.S. war spending. Now at over $1 trillion annually, the U.S. spends more on the war industry than the next nine highest-spending countries combined.

If there was any question that we spend this breathtaking sum at the cost of social needs, President Trump recently put that doubt to rest. “We’re fighting wars,” Trump said. “It’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things…we have to take care of one thing: military protection.

In this episode, we talk with Stephen about his journey from a short stint as an arms industry lobbyist himself to now writing amazing articles like, What $1.5 Trillion for the Pentagon Could Fund Instead.

Stephen found that those funds could:

· Eliminate global hunger and extreme poverty
· End homelessness in the U.S.
· Provide Medicaid for all persons in the U.S. without health insurance
· Implement universal pre-K for three- and four-year olds
· Issue $600 checks to 235 million Americans
· Build enough solar infrastructure to power half of all U.S. households.

Even all that wonderful work put together could not cover the U.S. war budget, Stephen tells us. He had $77 billion left over!

Polls show there is strong public support in the U.S. for dramatically reducing our war spending. There is wisdom in that crowd. Stephen proves that the basic math is clear: we can trade missiles and bombers for housing and food, and we should.

Sister Emily tells us about her journey through activism and service to become a Sister of Providence and organizer for economic justice. She tells us how “Giving Up Billionaires for Lent” is part of a program linking multi-faith values to direct advocacy to lawmakers, an agenda that was a key part of the abolition movement, the civil rights movement, and creating and defending the Affordable Care Act.

We learn how progressive organizing today can take a lesson from conservative movements, which have nurtured activism by emphasizing relationships and community first. Which leads Sister Emily and colleagues to be nurturing “squad goals” in the push for higher wages, paid family leave, and healthcare for all.

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Sister Emily on faith communities and working for justice: “Faith communities have been on the ground doing the work. In doing direct service, they’re close to and connected with some of these issues that our structural injustices are creating. They know the people who are forced to live in poverty by the systems that we have. They know the struggles and they can see in a real way. We’re not just creating policy in a vacuum, right? It has impact on the real lives of people, and so being that connection I think is a really important piece.”

Sister Emily on responding to Christian nationalism: “It is incumbent on faith communities to be an alternative voice and to say that, actually, Christian nationalism is not the Gospel. We need to prove that by being vocal and being faith-first in our messaging. We need to provide that alternate narrative so that folks for whom faith matters know that there’s another way to practice faith, that Christianity is rooted in generosity and justice and human dignity.”

Sister Emily on “Giving Up Billionaires for Lent”: ‘Sin is not just a personal thing. It is structural and systemic. And the Catholic Church has long taught that hoarding wealth, and societies that allow the hoarding of wealth, is sinful. We all deserve decent child care, a home that is safe, a neighborhood that is safe, the ability to put food on the table, to afford utilities, to have affordable, high quality health care that’s not going to put us in bankruptcy. And we can have those things, but instead we just have billionaires hoarding a whole bunch of wealth and continuously getting tax breaks.”

For more reading:

• Past articles on faith communities organizing for justice, including access to healthcare

• Ziad Munson on lessons from conservative organizing

Thank you for reading and listening!

As all of you who have kindly subscribed to the newsletter Housing is a Human Right know, I am a law professor who goes with my students every week to eviction court, where we represent people facing forcible removal from their homes.

They are among the tens of millions of people in the U.S. who are behind on their rent or already homeless, who are forced to skip filling prescriptions, and who often go hungry—despite living in the richest nation in the world.

We can do better.

Other nations already do far better, and the U.S. has often done better in the past.

So we will be lifting up the many people and organizations working to make housing, healthcare, and a decent life all enforceable human rights.

Our movement has a lot to build on. Polls show a strong majority of Americans believe housing, healthcare, and food are human rights. Other nations have proven for years that it is completely possible to ensure every person has a safe, secure home and has the healthcare and food they need. Every religious and moral tradition holds that making this happen is a sacred duty.

Early episodes of We Can Do Better will include:

• “Ending Poverty in California–And Beyond, “a conversation with Devon Gray, the president of End Poverty in California, EPIC. In this episode, we talk with Devon about EPIC’s work to change the narrative about poverty, focusing on amplifying the voices of workers through its #Listen2Workers campaign.
  
  Check EPIC’s website and social media, @EndPovertyCA, for direct conversations with fast food workers, child care providers, gig drivers, etc. Devon tells us about his journey from Stanford Law to working with Stockton, CA mayor and EPIC founder Michael Tubbs, who created successful guaranteed income and student scholarship programs.
  
  We discuss EPIC’s Blueprint to End Poverty, and the legislation they push, including a $21 minimum wage for healthcare workers, corporate transparency, and limitations on renter security deposits. We talk about the lessons for ending poverty that EPIC has learned that apply to all states, including the red ones.

  
  This episode is published now, and you can find it on:

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  In the coming weeks, you can listen to:
  

• “Giving Up Billionaires for Lent,” a conversation with Sister Emily TeKolste of NETWORK Advocates and Lobby for Catholic Social Justice. Sr. Emily tells us how “giving up billionaires for Lent” is part of the program linking multi-faith values to direct advocacy to lawmakers, an agenda that was a key part of the abolition movement, the civil rights movement, and creating and defending the Affordable Care Act.
  

• “How the Arms Industry is Robbing the Working Class of a Better Life,” a conversation with Stephen Semler, an arms industry expert and data journalist. Stephen explains how military contractors have used piles of campaign money to take over U.S. budgets via Congress and Presidential administrations, and the opportunities we have lost—in housing, healthcare, and beyond—as a result.
  

• “Hungry People are Being Denied Help,” a conversation with Catlin Nchako of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the topnotch research and policy institute documenting the devastating impact of the Trump/Republican “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” The law has pushed millions of people off of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) aka Food Stamps program through red-tape work requirements and shutting off eligibility for lawful immigrants.

We are grateful to all of these amazing folks for talking with us so we can share the conversations with you. Extra special thanks to Jack Quigley for using his expertise to guide this launch in a myriad of ways.

Please contact me directly, fwquigley@gmail.com, with any podcast or article ideas. We are always looking for inspiring campaigns and activists to highlight!

Because We. Can. Do. Better. Thank you for reading—and listening.

Last week, the previous week, and the week before that, we shared the first seven of ten reasons for realistic hope:

1. The Iran war billions show that we already possess the funds to ensure housing, healthcare, and other basic necessities for all;

2. A new push to ensure a subsistence income for our most vulnerable neighbors living with disabilities;

3. The people of Minnesota’s inspiring grassroots resistance to Trump’s violent siege on their city;

4. Unions are growing larger and stronger;

5. Tech can help tenants, too;

6. Progress in taxing the rich; and

7. Momentum for making the minimum wage a living wage.

This week, as we prepare for a pause in this newsletter, we conclude this series with Reasons Eight, Nine, and Ten, and share an announcement:

8. Universal childcare is gaining traction.

In a recent article entitled Childcare is a Housing Issue, we told the story of our client Monica, the parent of three young children, who we met in eviction court. Part of the reason that children under age five are the most common demographic facing eviction is that young parents are early in their working careers and more often earn low wages. But another reason is that child care is expensive and often difficult to find.

So it is very good news that, as of November 1^st, New Mexico became the first state to offer universal child care. – saving their families an estimated $12,000 per year. “New Mexico’s approach is rooted in data, driven by communities, and becoming a model for the nation,” says Neal Halfon, professor of pediatrics, public health and public policy at UCLA.

There is reason to hope Professor Halfon’s prediction that others will follow New Mexico’s lead comes true. New York governor Kathy Hochul and New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani are pushing for universal childcare in their state. Four states and the District of Columbia already offer universal pre-K. The importance of early childhood care and education, plus the proven durability of universal programs, make this trend very promising indeed.

9. A jobs guarantee program would be hugely popular.

One of the most successful government programs in U.S. history was the collective New Deal work relief efforts of the 1930’s. The Works Progress Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps, the Public Works Administration, and others put millions to work and built a huge amout of our U.S. infrastructure.

Today, available jobs are often low-paid and with tenuous hours, usually achieving little purpose but further enriching billionaires. So would an ambitious government job program being a good idea today as well?

Yes, says the American public, in resounding fashion. Last month, a survey conducted by the firm Verasight and commissioned by the Center for Working Class Politics (CWCP) found overwhelming popular support for a federal jobs guarantee financed by increased taxes on the wealthy.

CWCP researcher Jared Abbott summarized the results in a Jacobin article earlier this month. A majority of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans support a jobs guarantee, as do both working-class and college-educated voters, and people across all income categories.

This should be the center of any progressive candidate’s agenda, Abbott writes:

A major working-class realignment toward the Left will only occur if progressives deliver sweeping economic legislation that gives working-class Americans a concrete, lasting stake in the Democratic coalition — the kind of constituency-building that defined the New Deal era. A federal jobs guarantee is exactly the kind of policy that could anchor that project: universalist in scope, work-centered in design, and broadly popular across the lines of party and class that currently fracture the American electorate.

These survey results and Abbott’s analysis are important in a time when we need to wrest power away from the forces that are punishing the poor and working class. Which brings us to our final reason for optimism:

10. The American people get it.

As much as the U.S. state of affairs has deteriorated in recent years, political power here still lies in the hands of the people, especially in this election year. And the data show that the people of the US are ready to turn this thing around.

President Trump‘s approval ratings have dropped below 40%, with only 31% approving of his handling of the economy. The anti-Trump 2026 No Kings protests drew an estimated 8 million people, among the largest demonstrations in U.S. history.

A majority of Americans want to reduce war spending and raise taxes on the wealthy. They want to address climate change, and ramp up subsidies for housing, healthcare, and other basic needs. The demographics are trending in the right direction, too, with young people more likely to hold progressive views.

It is no small task to translate these widely-held opinions to election victories. It is even harder to move from public opinions to tangible policy changes that will impact the lives of our eviction court clients and others.

But the data show that the will of the U.S. people is compassionate, and their preferred solutions are wise. That is a great foundation from which to build on.

Announcement about this newsletter. Thank you to the 800-plus subscribers to this newsletter, especially those of you who have interacted with the articles, shared them, and/or said kind words about the work. After 129 articles starting in November 2022, we are pressing pause for a bit. We are exploring new approaches to this work, and will be sure to let you know when those plans are ready to launch. We appreciate you all!

Last week, and the previous week, we shared the first five reasons for realistic hope:

1. The bilions spent on the Iran war show that we already possess the funds to ensure housing, healthcare, and other basic necessities for all;

2. A new push to ensure a subsistence income for our most vulnerable neighbors living with disabilities;

3. The people of Minnesota’s inspiring grassroots resistance to Trump’s violent siege on their city;

4. Unions are growing larger and stronger; and

5. Tech can help tenants, too.

This week, Reasons Six and Seven:

6. Progress in Taxing the Rich

Our first reason for realistic hope was that the billions spent on the Iran war prove that money is available for the far better uses of housing and healthcare for all. Relatedly, as economists like Mark Paul have long insisted, we can fully fund universal social programs if we fairly tax wealthy individuals and corporations. The U.S. has done this in other eras, including the 1950’s, where the top marginal tax rate was 91%. As Bernie Sanders has said, “I’m not much of a socialist compared to Eisenhower.”

So it is heartening to see progress in this important mission to tax the rich. (By the way, Tax the Rich! is the title of a book my wonderful son Sam helped write, which describes the many loopholes exploited by the ultra-wealthy.) California’s proposed Billionaire Tax would target the 200 people in the state who are worth more than $1 billion, and raise funds that would be directed to healthcare, public K-14 education, and state food assistance programs.

The Billionaire Tax is on California’s ballot this November. It has the endorsement of Sen. Sanders, unions like Service Employers Union International (SEIU) and Teamsters California, Rep. Ro Khanna, and even billionaire Tom Steyer. Polls show a majority of Californians are in support.

The rest of the country likes this idea, too. National polling shows a strong majority of voters support increasing taxes on wealthy corporations and individuals. The Roosevelt Institute has a new proposal to tax the ultra-rich at the federal level.

Wealth inequality is at its highest level in decades. Not coincidentally, so are poverty indicators like record homelessness. Fairly taxing the ultra-wealthy is the path to fixing this, and the American people are demanding it.

7. Momentum for Raising the Minimum Wage to a Living Wage

The U.S. minimum wage is a shameful $7.25 per hour, a fraction of what it cost for even small families to make ends meet. Many states, including my home state of Indiana, have kept our minimum wage that low as well.

That leads to our eviction court clients, who work hard at jobs like home healthcare, food service, and security, falling behind on rent and often becoming homeless,

We should never see someone who wears a healthcare worker’s scrubs or a fast-food uniform in eviction court, much less sleeping in their car. I recently spoke with a man who is sleeping on the street, then waking up for an early bus to get to his restaurant dishwasher job. Working and homeless is a very real phenomenon in the U.S.

Photo taken by author in northern Indiana earlier this month. The living wage for even a single person in Indiana is nearly $22 per hour, and much higher if the worker has a child.

A new column in Time magazine by Arindrajit Dube, Provost Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst is entitled “America’s Cost-of-Living Crisis Is Really a Pay Crisis.” Prof. Dube explains that it is not enough to talk about “affordability” in general or high gas prices and rising rents specifically:

All these matter. But we’re missing half the equation. If we’re serious about making life affordable for working families, we also need to talk about the other side of the ledger: paychecks. And here’s the truth: over the past 45 years, wage growth for most Americans has been halting at best, often failing to keep up with the country’s overall economic gains . . .

Prof. Dube helpfully summarizes the evidence showing increasing minimum wages is politically popular and avoids negative economic impacts:

When minimum wage increases have appeared on state ballots, they have won nearly every time, in red, blue, and purple states alike. And in states that have raised their floors, workers have seen pay rise without the job losses often predicted by critics. Instead, companies see turnover fall and productivity rise as these jobs are made better. A combination of small price increases and somewhat lower profits helps businesses adjust to the higher pay.

The good news is that 34 state and district governments have raised their minimum wages above the federal level. As Prof. Dube referenced, even voters in red states approved minimum wage increases in 2024.

That momentum continues. Virginia has recently committed to raising its minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2028. Legislation to substantially increase the federal minimum wage has been filed in Congress, and hopefully will move forward after the next elections.

“Working and homeless” should be an oxymoron. Making minimum wage equate to a living wage is an important step in that direction.

Next week: Reasons Eight, Nine, and Ten to hold realistic hope!

Last week, we shared the first three of our ten reasons for realistic hope:

1. The billions spent on the Iran war show that we already possess the funds to ensure housing, healthcare, and other basic necessities for all;

2. A new push is on to ensure a subsistence income for our most vulnerable neighbors living with disabilities, and

3. The people of Minnesota’s provided us with inspiring grassroots resistance to Trump’s violent siege on their city.

This week, reasons for hope numbers four and five:

4. Unions Grew Larger and Stronger

In 2025, an increasing number of U.S. workers were represented by a union: 16.5 million workers, the largest number since 2009.

This is important for those workers. As the Economic Policy Institute explains, the numbers prove that union membership reliably leads to a significant increase in wages and benefits, including retirement security and health coverage, especially for Black and Hispanic workers and women.

More union membership and power are good for the rest of us, too. Good union jobs raise the bar in local economies, with overall wages and social benefits increasing in areas with higher union density. And the labor movement is a major force behind the push for healthcare for all, justice for immigrants, and increased minimum wages. We have written here about how many labor unions actively work for tenant rights.

Creative Commons image by Fibonacci Blue

“Trade unions are critical to protecting and promoting human rights, including economic, social, and cultural rights and the right to be free from discrimination,” Amnesty International says. “Unions are the fuel that keeps the fires of social justice and people power burning.”

Winning a union at a workplace is a difficult and significant accomplishment. Current U.S. law is deeply hostile to labor organizing and the current Presidential administration and Congress look to undermine unions at every turn.

So it is no surprise that less than half of U.S. workers who want a union at their workplace have one, and an increased number of workers were forced to go on strike last year. The gains in unionization we are seeing now can and should be much larger. When a new Congress passes the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would remove many of the barriers to workers forming unions, those gains will come.

5. Tech Can Help Tenants, Too

For tenants and those of us who advocate for them, technology can seem like a tool that works exclusively for the benefit of landlords.

Landlords have used rent-pricing software to collude to charge the highest possible rents, and they access tenant screening reports that often include inaccurate information and lead to refused applications. Landlords routinely use payment and communication portals that can lock our clients out of access.

But tenants can play this tech game as well, reports Sandra Larson in the wonderful publication Shelterforce. In a recent article, “Tech Tools Help Tenants Push Back Against Problematic Landlords,” Larson listed more than a dozen examples of technology that helps tenants protect their rights.

Those include sites like Landlord Mapper and Who Owns What, which help tenants uncover their landlords’ identity. (It is amazing how many layers of different business structures and names some landlords use to hide from accountability.)

And, recognizing the sad reality that most tenants go to court without a lawyer, legal self-help sites like the California-focused Tenant Power Toolkit and Greater Boston Legal Service’s MADE walk a tenant through a response to an eviction or bad housing conditions.

As Larson and those she interviews acknowledge, these tech tools alone won’t solve the huge power imbalance between landlords and tenants. Real protections in the law, aggressive government monitoring of landlords and their performance, and a tenant right to counsel are needed to balance the scales.

But, on the path to that destination, it is heartening to know that many people and organizations are building tools that can benefit millions of struggling U.S. renters.

Next post: More reasons for realistic hope!

There is senseless war, a widespread struggle to afford basic necessities, and federal agents seizing tens of thousands of hardworking, law-abiding neighbors. As this newsletter has recently highlighted, there are cuts in food and healthcare assistance, gaps in access to childcare, and dangerous, unsafe public housing.

We never want to minimize the real suffering going on, particularly the struggles of our eviction court clients. But change only happens when there is a vision for reform and belief that the reform can be achieved. In that spirit, we will share here ten reasons for realistic hope for a better future. This week, the first three:

1. Those War Billions? They Prove Dollars are Available for Housing, Healthcare, and More

Earlier this week, Axios published an article with a remarkable headline: “GOP Weighs Health Care Cuts to Pay for Iran War.”

Axios headline from March 30, 2026

With any luck, this is a profoundly self-defeating election-year strategy.

Public opinion polls show that President Trump’s $2 billion/per day war and requested $200 billion to continue it are deeply unpopular. Meanwhile, polls also show that access to healthcare is Americans’ top concern. Democrats quickly called the prospect of cutting healthcare to pay for war “shameful,” hoping that mid-term voters will agree.

But the government cash spigot quickly disgorging billions for death and destruction also highlights a fixable problem: the immoral choices made by every recent U.S. budget. Our truly insane levels of military spending are reliably chronicled by Stephen Semler and featured in our recent posts.

This can change, and with it a wealth of opportunities for a better future. The potential windfall from cutting our war spending is one of the many reasons economists like Rutgers University’s Mark Paul insist the U.S. can readily afford housing, healthcare, and food assistance for all who need it.

Trump’s $200 billion request for the Iran War helped make that case, spurring multiple public discussions about more productive ways to spend that money. For example, The Century Foundation listed 15 things the U.S. could buy with that sum. On the list: restore Affordable Care Act healthcare subsidies for six years, fund childcare for ten million kids, send millions of students to college, cancel all medical debt in the U.S., provide free school lunch for every child, etc.

To which we will add an item of our own as Reason for Hope #2: a boost in a program that would allow millions of people to be safely housed.

2. Progress on “One Neat Trick to Dramatically Reduce Homelessness”

One year ago, we published an article in Common Dreams and this newsletter telling the story of our eviction court client Sarah. Sarah is among the more than 7 million people in the U.S. who is unable to work due to disabilities and trying to survive on Supplemental Security Income, known as SSI. The maximum monthly allotment for SSI is $994 for an individual like Sarah, $1491 for a couple who are both eligible for SSI.

As Sarah and others on SSI can attest, that is nowhere near enough income to pay for rent, food, and other necessities of life. Which is why we see so many people in eviction court—and on the streets—whose sole income is SSI.

“It’s not like these are people who are in some way abusing the system,” Stephen Nuñez, director of stratification economics at the Roosevelt Institute, told CNBC last month. “They’re just living a bare bones, threadbare existence because basically people forgot about them.”

So our article was entitled, “One Neat Trick to Dramatically Reduce Homelessness.”: Raising the SSI benefit level to reflect the cost of survival would allow many unhoused or housing-insecure people to get safely housed.

The recent CNBC report was inspired by the introduction of the Supplemental Security Income Restoration Act by Sen. Elizabeth Warren and 30 other members of the U.S. House and Senate. The bill would raise the SSI rate to 100% of the federal poverty level. It would also allow SSI beneficiaries to keep more savings if they have it, remove marriage penalties, and stop penalizing people on SSI when their friends or family help out.

The Roosevelt Institute has done important work analyzing the proposal and promoting it. Their analysis shows that this long-overdue fix for SSI would cost about $61 billion per year—less than one-third the price of Trump’s Iran War. All but one of the sponsors of the SSI bill are Democrats, showing the prospects for real change if there is a shift in power at the federal level.

But not every change can wait for the next election. So we can look to the north for a wonderful example of how to get things done in a hurry:

3. The People of Minneapolis

One of the bleakest scenes of the winter was the Trump administration sending a horde of masked, violent federal agents to Minneapolis. ICE tear gassed families, arrested pre-school children, and abducted nearly 4,000 people—most of whom had no criminal record at all. The siege was just the latest Trump atrocity that seemed impossible to stop.

The people of Minneapolis thought otherwise.

They sheltered their immigrant neighbors, drove those neighbors’ kids to school, and delivered groceries to families who could not risk leaving their homes. They tracked the ICE agents’ movements and nonviolently but insistently protested their presence and abuses. Two of those protesters—Renee Good and Alex Pretti—sacrificed their lives for the cause.

Organizers called a January 23^rd “Day of Truth and Freedom” economic shutdown. Workers stayed home, a thousand local businesses closed for the day, and dozens of clergy were arrested in protest. Then tens of thousands of protestors filled the streets of downtown Minneapolis, all in sub-zero temperatures, chanting their loving slogan, “No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here!”

Minneapolis ICE Protest Photo by Lorie Shaull, CC BY 4.0

You probably don’t know the names of the organizers of these actions. This was not a movement led by a single charismatic individual. So it was the people of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul who were collectively honored with a John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award and the people of Minneapolis who were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

And it is the people collectively who deserve the credit for Trump cancelling the ICE siege of Minneapolis in early February. This is what a successful movement looks like.

Next post: Three more reasons for realistic hope!

Image by Wannapik

I live in Indiana, where our state became the most recent to criminalize homelessness, prohibiting people from sleeping or taking long-term shelter on public land. The new law is shameful.

But it is not the worst thing lawmakers did to our clients this year.

Because most of our eviction court clients are the hidden homeless, including children, who are the most common demographic to be evicted from their homes. Most of the hidden homeless are living out of their cars, doubled-up with others, or in motels. They won’t be impacted by the law that criminalizes “public camping.”

But they are definitely struggling. And our lawmakers just made it harder for them to get access to the food and healthcare they need to survive by creating red-tape barriers blocking access to Medicaid and SNAP/Food Stamps.

At the start of every semester, we devote a classroom session to our clinic students engaging in the PlaySpent exercise created for the Urban Ministries of Durham. It is a simulation that mimics the challenge our new students’ soon-to-be clients face every day, The students try—and usually fail—to afford rent, transportation, utilities, childcare, food, healthcare, etc. on a restaurant server or warehouse worker salary.

The saying has it that “the rent eats first.” But not when your children are hungry or the car that you rely on to get to work is broken and needs repair. And not when the heat is shut off in sub-zero weather, or a necessary prescription needs to be filled.

Those costs have to be met immediately. They are survival choices that land our clients behind on rent and hauled into eviction court.

Which makes our housing crisis unavoidably intertwined with our broader affordability crisis, highlighted by the cost of food and healthcare—and, as we discussed in a recent post, child care.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed last July will make the affordability crisis worse, as we noted several times in this newsletter, including here and here.

To recap, the OBBBA signed by President Trump in July, 2025 pays for enormous tax breaks for the wealthy by cutting nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid and $187 billion from SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program aka Food Stamps).

The preferred technique for cutting these costs? Using red tape to choke off access to healthcare and food.

As the Urban Institute and other analysts have explained, the Medicaid cuts will be most deeply felt by young adults, who are disproportionately represented among our clients and others facing eviction.

For people trying to access Medicaid under the Obamacare expansion of coverage, states will now be conducting Medicaid eligibility checks every six months, twice as often as previously required. It is a change that will both cost a lot to administer and will eject eligible people from coverage.

Work-reporting requirements will be ramped up as well, forcing applicants to prove compliance before getting enrolled and then twice a year afterwards.

Work Requirements Trigger Red Tape, Followed by Suffering

As we have written about before, work requirements for social programs may sound like a logical rule, but they have a long and ugly history.

They not only fail to encourage sustained employment, they end up punishing the children and persons living with disabilities who should be exempt from the requirements. The red-tape challenges of proving compliance with work requirements or disability exceptions have proven time and again to push very vulnerable persons off the assistance they need to survive.

Work requirements for Medicaid will definitely do the same. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that as many as 15 million people will lose health coverage due to these work requirements.

Importantly, that loss of coverage will happen even though almost all non-disabled adults on Medicaid are currently working. That is because confusing paperwork requirements and nonresponsive government agencies cause applications to be wrongly denied or eligibility revoked.

The negative impact is neither hypothetical nor ancient history. When the state of Arkansas rolled out Medicaid work requirements in 2018, 18,000 people lost coverage in less than a year—and employment was not increased at all. Analysis by Harvard public health researchers showed that more than half of the people who lost Medicaid delayed healthcare, with almost two-thirds delaying taking medications due to cost.

The OBBBA also tightens the work requirement chokehold on SNAP applicants. Previous exemptions for veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and older people between ages 55 and 64 are all being removed.

The OBBBA funded the tax cuts for the wealthy in part by pushing a lot of costs and choices on to states, and states are already making ugly decisions.

Thanks to our friends at Indiana Justice Project for pointing out that, in our state, legislators made the barriers to care even more daunting than the federal law demanded. Indiana applicants now have to prove three months of work requirement compliance to be eligible for Medicaid. They have cruelly banned the use of temporary hardship exemptions such as hospitalizations and natural disasters.

As we learn in the classroom and the courtroom, trying to survive on a poverty income is a zero-sum game. Once our clients are forced to spend more money for food or healthcare, that means less will be available when it comes time to pay the rent. More families and households will be evicted from their homes, and we have both our state and federal lawmakers to blame.

Speaking on a conservative podcast last week, Sen. Jon Husted punched down on low-income people, claiming they cannot handle daily challenges and lack basic budgeting skills

“People living in poverty are just not very experienced at navigating the real world, right?” said Husted, an Ohio senator facing a November election, likely against former Senator Sherrod Brown.

“I remember talking to one young lady who said, ‘Well, I don’t really know how money works at a grocery store,’ because she grew up and has lived all of her adult life using SNAP cards to buy groceries,” Husted continued. “So you literally have to teach people how to budget.”

Husted’s comments triggered pushback from Brown and others. Deservedly so. But his statements reflect a phenomenon that reaches far beyond just one out-of-touch politician. Husted was echoing a condescending slander about poor Americans that permeates the government and even some nonprofit organizations: people endure poverty not because they don’t have enough money, but because they don’t manage their money properly. This myth is often packaged in the guise of a call for “financial literacy.”

The U.S. Department of Treasury has an entire commission devoted to financial literacy. The Congressional Research Services has issued a report claiming that “African American and Hispanic adults, women, lower-income adults, (and) adults with less formal education” all are lacking in financial literacy. (Missing from the report was any acknowledgement of the generations of government racism in housing policy and beyond that has created massive racial wealth gaps.)

The International Federation of Accountants claims that a lack of financial literacy perpetuates poverty. Some nonprofit organizations create four-week training courses to teach homeless families about money management.

I have spent many years working with low-income people, most recently in the law school clinic where we represent tenants facing eviction. I can attest that nearly every client we have is remarkably precise with their budgeting.

They have to be. It is the only way home healthcare workers, food service workers, and persons living with disabilities can survive on incomes far below any reasonable definition of a living wage.

Sen. Jon Husted (R, Ohio). Image from Wikimedia Commons

Poor Outperform the Rich in Financial Choices

Our clients know to the penny what to expect on their utility bills, where to find the cheapest rice, beans, and pasta, and which health clinics are most likely to give out samples of prescription medicines.

While the Treasury Department defines financial literacy as understanding “investment diversification,” our clients are experts on knowing the last day they can pay rent without incurring late fees and which food pantries are within walking distance of the bus line.

(Speaking of food pantries, Husted’s alleged conversation with a SNAP recipient who has never paid cash for food is almost certainly untrue. SNAP benefits come up far short of covering the cost of even low-priced meals, so even maximum-benefit recipients are not exempt from paying for food each month.)

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that, compared with wealthier households, households receiving means-tested assistance spend a far smaller share of their income on entertainment, alcohol, and tobacco. So it is not surprising that, when safety-net benefits are increased or guaranteed income funds are distributed, low-income people reliably use the extra funds to cover basic necessities like housing, food, and healthcare.

Which leads to an obvious conclusion: it is Senator Husted and others who engage in gaslighting victim-blaming scolding on money management who need tutoring on “navigating the real world.” In Husted’s Ohio and across the country, people deserve living wages and a robust safety net, not condescending lectures.

Lessons From Eviction Court Book Talk

Thanks to everyone who has shown interest in my book, Lessons From Eviction Court: How We Can End Our Housing Crisis. I will be talking about the book at Indiana University McKinney School of Law on Thursday, March 26th at 4:30 PM. All are welcome. Click here for registration details.

Monica’s family demographic is enormously common among the clients we work with. The age group that experiences evictions the most? Children aged five years and younger.

That is a horrifying statistic, given what we know about the impact of evictions on children: they contribute to children’s mental illnesses, respiratory conditions, infections, delayed cognitive development, and struggles in school and social settings.

Yet kids losing their homes is an inevitable result of our U.S. policy choices. Young parents are more likely to work in sub-living wage jobs and thus have significantly lower income than other families, all while many of them sit on years-long subsidized housing waiting lists.

Photo property of USDA

Along with low wages and housing costs, we can add another burden on to the shoulders of Monica and other parents of young children: the spiraling cost of child care.

As Monica can tell you, making ends meet each month is a brutal zero-sum game. When she and other young parents struggle to pay their rent, it is often because they spend more than they can afford on child care.

Other Nations, U.S. Proposals Show We Can Do Better

In our state of Indiana, the average cost for infant care is a whopping $16,478 per year, even though wages for child care workers are quite low. (In a sad irony, a significant number of parents we see facing eviction are professional child care providers themselves.) As the New York Times reported last month, the average price for child care is higher than in-state college tuition.

Some low-income families get child care vouchers from the Child Care Development Fund. But in our state and many others, the number of vouchers and their reimbursement rates have both dropped, leaving tens of thousands of children on waiting lists.

Compare that to other nations with similar resources to the United States. They combine lengthy paid parental leave with universal preschool and after-school care. They prove that we can do far better for our children and their families.

The Roosevelt Institute has proposed the U.S. emulate the many nations that provide not just free early childhood care and education, but also living wages to child care providers.

There are many reasons why this is a good idea. High-quality child care boosts kids’ chances of leading healthy and productive lives. It allows parents to be in the workforce. And it prevents the abuse that too often happens when desperate parents are forced to leave their kids in sketchy arrangements.

Keeping families housed belongs on that list, too, as Monica and way too many of our clients can tell us.