Tag Archives: Human Rights Quotes

Iowa: Minimum Wage Needed for Rent

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#47 Iowa 

In Iowa, the Fair Market Rent (FMR) for a two-bedroom apartment is $758. In order to afford this level of rent and utilities — without paying more than 30% of income on housing — a household must earn $2,526 monthly or $30,315 annually. Assuming a 40-hour work week, 52 weeks per year, this level of income translates into an hourly Housing Wage of: $14.57 

–Out of Reach 2017, National Low Housing Coalition (NLIHC)

Maryland Child Trafficking Conference

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“The title of this conference was not chosen lightly,” continued Finigan-Carr, who is also director, Prevention of Adolescent Risks Initiative, and assistant director, Ruth H. Young Center for Families and Children. “Moving from awareness to response is really what we want. We need to do more than know human trafficking exists. We need to be able to respond, because the children that we serve, the youth that we serve, the citizens here in our state deserve us to be better, to do better.”

…

The school’s initiatives have led to:

A 2016 study by the Center for Court Innovation estimated between 4,457 and 20,995 13- to 17-year-olds are involved in the sex trade in the United States. In Maryland, between July 2013 and June 2017, more than 350 cases of suspected child sex trafficking were reported by local departments of social services statewide.

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Child victims of trafficking are recruited, transported, transferred, harbored, or received for the purpose of exploitation, Finigan-Carr continued, noting they may be forced to work in sweatshops, on farms, in traveling sales crews, in restaurants, hotels, brothels, or strip clubs, or for escort or massage services.

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Other speakers included Maryland Assistant U.S. Attorney Ayn Ducao, who chairs the MHTTF and said when she started prosecuting human trafficking cases, she focused on the wrong questions.

“I focused on the question of ‘Why does the victim stay? Why didn’t she leave? Why doesn’t she seek help?’ ’’ Ducao said. In her first human trafficking case, the “she” was a 14-year-old sex trafficking victim.

“I came to realize those are the wrong questions to be asking,” she said. “You don’t ask a robbery victim, ‘Why did she let herself get mugged?’ We shouldn’t be asking the human trafficking victim. ‘Why do you let yourself get trafficked?’ as if that victimization was her choice.”

Progress in the Fight Against Child Trafficking, University of Maryland Baltimore (UMB) News, By Mary T. Phelan, December 15, 2017

North Dakota: Minimum Wage Needed for Rent

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#28 North Dakota

In North Dakota, the Fair Market Rent (FMR) for a two-bedroom apartment is $851. In order to afford this level of rent and utilities — without paying more than 30% of income on housing — a household must earn $2,836 monthly or $34,028 annually. Assuming a 40-hour work week, 52 weeks per year, this level of income translates into an hourly Housing Wage of: $16.36 

–Out of Reach 2017, National Low Housing Coalition (NLIHC)

South Dakota: Minimum Wage Needed for Rent

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#49 South Dakota 

In South Dakota, the Fair Market Rent (FMR) for a two-bedroom apartment is $734. In order to afford this level of rent and utilities — without paying more than 30% of income on housing — a household must earn $2,447 monthly or $29,363 annually. Assuming a 40-hour work week, 52 weeks per year, this level of income translates into an hourly Housing Wage of: $14.12 

–Out of Reach 2017, National Low Housing Coalition (NLIHC)

Nebraska: Minimum Wage Needed for Rent

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#39 Nebraska

In Nebraska, the Fair Market Rent (FMR) for a two-bedroom apartment is $791. In order to afford this level of rent and utilities — without paying more than 30% of
income on housing — a household must earn $2,638 monthly or $31,651 annually. Assuming a 40-hour work week, 52 weeks per year, this level of income translates into
an hourly Housing Wage of: $15.22

–Out of Reach 2017, National Low Housing Coalition (NLIHC)

Constitutional Right to Sleep

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“Homelessness never left town because somebody gave it a ticket,” Tars says. “The only way to end homelessness is to make sure everybody has access to affordable, decent housing.”

–It’s unconstitutional to ban the homeless from sleeping outside, the federal government says, Washington Post, August 13 2015, By Emily Badger

In this case, Plaintiffs are homeless individuals who were convicted of violating certain city ordinances that prohibit camping and sleeping in public outdoor places.7 They claim that the City of Boise and the Boise Police Department’s (“BPD”) enforcement of these ordinances against homeless individuals violates their constitutional rights because there is inadequate shelter space available in Boise to accommodate the city’s homeless population. Plaintiffs argue that criminalizing public sleeping in a city without adequate shelter space constitutes criminalizing homelessness itself, in violation of the Eighth Amendment.

But these concerns are not at issue when, as here, they are applied to conduct that is essential to human life and wholly innocent, such as sleeping. No inquiry is required to determine whether a person is compelled to sleep; we know that no one can stay awake indefinitely. Thus, the Court need not constitutionalize a general compulsion defense to resolve this case; it need only hold that the Eighth Amendment outlaws the punishment of  unavoidable conduct that we know to be universal. Moreover, unlike the hypothetical hard cases that concerned the Powell plurality, the conduct at issue in the instant case is entirely innocent. Its punishment would serve no retributive purpose, or any other legitimate purpose. As the plurality in Powell itself noted, “the entire thrust of Robinson’s interpretation of the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause is that criminal penalties may be inflicted only if the accused has committed some act [or] has engaged in some behavior which society has an interest in preventing.” Powell, 392 U.S. at 533 (emphasis added)

-JANET F. BELL, et al. V. CITY OF BOISE, et al., STATEMENT OF INTEREST OF THE UNITED STATES, Case 1:09-cv-00540-REB Document 276, United States Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, Filed 08/06/15

Moral Worth of Social Systems

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Calls from liberal and left social critics for advantaged people to recognize their privilege also underscores this emphasis on individual identities. For individual people to admit that they are privileged is not necessarily going to change an unequal system of accumulation and distribution of resources.

Instead, we should talk not about the moral worth of individuals but about the moral worth of particular social arrangements. Is the society we want one in which it is acceptable for some people to have tens of millions or billions of dollars as long as they are hardworking, generous, not materialistic and down to earth? Or should there be some other moral rubric, that would strive for a society in which such high levels of inequality were morally unacceptable, regardless of how nice or moderate its beneficiaries are?

– What the Rich Won’t Tell You, Opinion, New York Times, written by Rachel Sherman

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Indiana: Minimum Wage Needed for Rent

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#40 Indiana

In Indiana, the Fair Market Rent (FMR) for a two-bedroom apartment is $789. In order to afford this level of rent and utilities — without paying more than 30% of income on housing — a household must earn $2,629 monthly or $31,550 annually. Assuming a 40-hour work week, 52 weeks per year, this level of income translates into
an hourly Housing Wage of: $15.17

–Out of Reach 2017, National Low Housing Coalition (NLIHC)

Homelessness and Health Care

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Although the tipping point is often the loss of a job, sickness or injury often precede it. Sickness and injuries make holding a job difficult, which leads to income declining and homelessness for those without a safety net. Due to the mostly employer-based health insurance coverage system in the U.S., no job means no health insurance. The combination of unemployment and poor health can then lead to financial ruin. Nerdwallet estimated that 57.1 percent of U.S. personal bankruptcies are due to medical bills, making it the leading cause of the financial calamity that often precedes homelessness.

We can learn from how one doctor addressed hunger, another so-called health-related social issue or “social determinant of health.” Decades ago, Jack Geiger founded the first federally funded community-health center in the U.S. There, he began giving impoverished patients prescriptions for food using its pharmacy funds. Nervous about this practice, federal officials tried to stop him, but Geiger responded, “The last time we looked in the book, the specific therapy for malnutrition was food.”

The specific therapy for homelessness and its associated health issues is housing.

–How Health and Homelessness are Connected—Medically: This doctor examines the web of medical conditions that lead to and compound homelessness, and vice versa, The Atlantic, 01/25/2016, written by Seiji Hayashi

Wisconsin: Minimum Wage Needed for Rent

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#31 Wisconsin

In Wisconsin, the Fair Market Rent (FMR) for a two-bedroom apartment is $838. In order to afford this level of rent and utilities — without paying more than 30% of income on housing — a household must earn $2,792 monthly or $33,501 annually. Assuming a 40-hour work week, 52 weeks per year, this level of income translates into an hourly Housing Wage of: $16.11 

–Out of Reach 2017, National Low Housing Coalition (NLIHC)