Daily equity news.

“Neighborhoods can affect children’s health,” - Palo Alto Daily News

There is no shortage of obstacles when it comes to raising healthy, active children. A healthy diet and exercise is overwhelmed by the Internet, sugary drinks, fast food, and our fast-paced lives. Now, leading pediatricians are pointing a finger at the design of our neighborhoods as another impediment to raising healthy children.

The American Academy of Pediatrics published a policy statement several weeks ago highlighting how the design of neighborhoods affects our children’s health. According to experts, neighborhoods play an important role either expanding or limiting children’s opportunities for regular, daily physical activity. While a pediatrician can recommend that a child get regular exercise, taking this advice is difficult for families whose homes are surrounded by busy streets, broken sidewalks and few parks. Fortunately, we have been addressing this issue here in San Mateo County for several years.

 ”A Warning About Disaster Housing,” - Washington Post
Repeat of Katrina’s Diaspora Is Feared

U.S. authorities remain unable to provide emergency housing after large-scale catastrophes and must do more to prepare survivors of such disasters for permanent relocation, the Department of Homeland Security inspector general is expected to tell a House panel today.

Nearly four years after Hurricane Katrina destroyed or damaged 300,000 homes on the Gulf Coast and led to billions of dollars of waste in the diaspora that followed, federal homeland security officials could face a repeat scenario if another storm struck a major coastal city or a high-magnitude earthquake hit population centers in California or the Midwest, according to prepared testimony by Inspector General Richard L. Skinner.

“Mental-health court for re-entering prisoners ‘long overdue’,” - Philadelphia Daily News

City and state officials yesterday announced the launch of a special mental-health court that is intended to reduce recidivism by helping mentally ill prison inmates transition back to society.
Mayor Nutter praised the program as another in a long list of innovative and successful First Judicial District specialty courts, which also include Drug Court, DUI Court and the former Eagles Court at Veterans Stadium.

“Some folks make some bad decisions or have challenges in their lives and find themselves in the criminal justice system,” Nutter said. “That doesn’t mean that they don’t need and deserve treatment with the utmost dignity and respect.”

Daily equity news

“A Green Way to Dump Low-Tech Electronics,” -  The New York Times

“Thousands still in FEMA trailers,” -  USA TODAY

“The Metro Crash: A Nation’s Aging Transit System,” - Times Magazine

Update on this week’s equity news.

“Study finds 1 in 5 obese among 4-year-olds,” - Associated Press

CHICAGO (AP) — A striking new study says almost 1 in 5 American 4-year-olds is obese, and the rate is alarmingly higher among American Indian children, with nearly a third of them obese. Researchers were surprised to see differences by race at so early an age.

Overall, more than half a million 4-year-olds are obese, the study suggests. Obesity is more common in Hispanic and black youngsters, too, but the disparity is most startling in American Indians, whose rate is almost double that of whites.

“Louisiana, a Test Case in Federal Aid,” - The New York Times

NEW ORLEANS — Years before Washington spent $787 billion on a national stimulus bill, it staged an unintended trial run in Louisiana, a huge injection of some $51 billion for which historians find few, if any, precedents in a single state.

The experiment is still playing out, but some indicators suggest that what occurred in Louisiana — dumping a large amount of reconstruction money into a confined space in the three and a half years since Hurricane Katrina — has had a positive outcome. The state’s unemployment rate of 5.7 percent in February was considerably below the national average of 8.1 percent, and it was the only state to see a drop in unemployment from December to January. It was also the only state with an increase in non-farm employment in February.

“Stimulus Aid Being Doled Out, Slowly,” - Washington Post
Meeting Guidelines Is Taking Time

Building repairs are underway on public housing in Imboden, Ark., and Cumberland, Ill., states across the country are receiving money to weatherize the homes of low-income residents, and the Silver Star Construction Co. is about to start work on two road-resurfacing projects in south-central Oklahoma with a total cost of $12 million.

“We were thrilled to get some work,” said Steve Shawn, president of the company. “Some of the work had started slowing down from the economy. The new work came in just around the right time.”

A recap of this week’s equity news.

“Defying economy, New Orleans keeps rebuilding,” - Los Angeles Times

The numbers aren’t so dismal here as pre-Katrina residents continue to return, creating a constant demand for construction. Nearly $35 billion in federal aid doesn’t hurt either.

Reporting from New Orleans — This city is a rarity in 2009: a place full of hard hats and big building projects and subcontractors roaring around in pickup trucks. A city where home prices have dipped only slightly, and where the unemployment rate is 5.3% — compared with 8.1% nationwide.

New Orleans, it seems, has largely dodged the Category 5 recession pummeling the rest of the country, thanks to its unique post-Katrina economy. For locals accustomed to bad luck and trouble, the good news can feel a little strange.

  ”Reinventing America’s Cities: The Time Is Now,” - The New York Times

THE country has fallen on hard times, but those of us who love cities know we have been living in the dark ages for a while now. We know that turning things around will take more than just pouring money into shovel-ready projects, regardless of how they might boost the economy. Windmills won’t do it either. We long for a bold urban vision.

With their crowded neighborhoods and web of public services, cities are not only invaluable cultural incubators; they are also vastly more efficient than suburbs. But for years they have been neglected, and in many cases forcibly harmed, by policies that favored sprawl over density and conformity over difference.

“Congress Approves Budget,” - The Washington Post
$3.5 Trillion Spending Plan Paves Way for Obama Goals

Congressional Democrats overwhelmingly embraced President Obama’s ambitious and expensive agenda for the nation yesterday, endorsing a $3.5 trillion spending plan that sets the stage for the president to pursue his most far-reaching priorities.

Voting along party lines, the House and Senate approved budget blueprints that would trim Obama’s spending proposals for the fiscal year that begins in October and curtail his plans to cut taxes. The blueprints, however, would permit work to begin on the central goals of Obama’s presidency: an expansion of health-care coverage for the uninsured, more money for college loans and a cap-and-trade system to reduce gases that contribute to global warming.

A recap of this week’s equity news.

“8,800 Road Home properties to return to private hands, ” - Times Picayune

Actor Wendell Pierce and trumpeter Terence Blanchard have come back to their old neighborhood, Pontchartrain Park, and are poised to take over one of every nine properties there — so they can build and sell affordable homes,
On Monday, the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority will vote on an agreement to transfer 114 abandoned and vacant properties to Pierce and Blanchard’s Pontchartrain Park Community Development Corp. It’s a big moment for the star of HBO’s cop drama “The Wire,” the Grammy-winning musician and some of their childhood buddies and fellow investors, who want to return New Orleans’ first middle-class black subdivision to its pre-Katrina glory.

“Homeless numbers ‘alarming’,” - USA Today

More families with children are becoming homeless as they face mounting economic pressures, including mortgage foreclosures, according to a USA TODAY survey of a dozen of the largest cities in the nation.

Local authorities say the number of families seeking help has risen in Atlanta, Boston, Denver, Minneapolis, New York, Phoenix, Portland, Seattle and Washington.

“ACORN fights back,” - San Francisco Chronicle

In the midst of the predictable partisan exaggerations, distortions and occasional lies that close election races generate, ACORN has become the focus of an extraordinary amount of attention over our voter-registration program. We submitted nearly 40,000 voter registration applications in San Diego and throughout California, and 1.3 million nationwide. In communities across the country, anxiety about the direction of our country, and more specifically our economy, is driving much of the interest in this year’s presidential election. Voter turnout is expected to be of historic proportions. What is surprising is that these attacks, issued from partisan sources, have become relentless, and wildly exaggerated. We’ve even been accused by some Republicans of causing the global economic crisis.

The truth, plain and simple, is that no illegal votes will be cast as a consequence of ACORN’s voter-registration program. In fact, illegal votes constitute fewer than 1 out of a million votes cast, and no illegal vote has ever been tied to ACORN, in spite of the almost 2 million registrations we submitted in 2004 and 2006. The small percentage of problematic cards that we have submitted to local election boards in 2008 - and that we are required by law to submit, even cards that we can plainly see are invalid - will not result in any illegal voting, contrary to over-the-top partisan claims. The irony in these attacks is that our registration drive and get-out-the-vote program is nonpartisan.

A recap of the week’s equity news

 ”Report: Road Home falls short,” - The Times-Picayune

Most storm-beleaguered Louisiana homeowners did not receive enough Road Home money to completely rebuild their homes, and limited recovery dollars will only help replace a portion of the state’s damaged rental units, according to a report to be released today.

The group PolicyLink produced the report, called “A Long Way Home: The State of Housing Recovery in Louisiana 2008,” after analyzing three major federally funded housing-recovery programs: the Road Home and the state’s small and large rental-repair programs. Researchers concluded that “enormous obstacles” blocked the recovery for homeowners, most of whom faced shortfalls to rebuild, and renters, who cannot find moderately priced places to rent.

“More families requesting free or reduced lunch,” - USA TODAY

The troubled economy may be prompting more families to turn to federal school nutrition programs that aid poor children, a survey suggests.

For the first time since 2004, a majority of cafeteria operators say the number of children getting free or reduced-price lunches has risen.

“Can NY infrastructure handle floods, intense heat?,”  - Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Flooded subways. Bridges deteriorating in the hot sun. Rising seas nipping at the edges of Manhattan. Those scenarios are up for review by a panel of scientists, government officials and private sector representatives studying how the city’s infrastructure will hold up to climate change.

The Climate Change Adaptation Task Force met Tuesday for the first time as part of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s plan to address global warming in New York City, which already includes orders to switch the city’s taxi fleet to hybrids by 2012 and to retrofit city buildings to meet greener standards.