Councilman Derek Green last month proposed a change to Philadelphia drug policy: he wants to stop testing people on parole for pot use. Making that change, he believes, would reduce Philly’s prison population and open up more treatment beds for people with addiction. (Read more.)
Every year, hundreds of kids are kicked out of suburban Philadelphia school districts for residency fraud. Maybe even thousands. This little-discussed corner of the K-12 world contains so many of the issues that shape education in Pennsylvania today. (Read more.)
Now a new program is trying to break that cycle by offering trauma therapy to children living or attending school in parts of North Philadelphia. Run by the Joseph J. Peters Institute (JJPI), a Philadelphia leader in trauma research and treatment, the program is free to children aged 3 to 18, regardless of parents’ insurance. Philadelphia already has a network of mental health providers offering trauma-informed therapy, but they are only open to Medicaid holders, and none had been based in the 22nd Police District. (Read more.)
From WURD Radio: Nijmie Dzurinko of the Poor People’s Campaign of PA talks to WURD Radio about why she and others are organizing a national revival of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s 1968 call for economic justice—and why she believes the movement must be led by those who earn the least.
We learned about this story thanks to a reader like you. We’re listening. ?? (Read more.)
Between 2006 and 2016, Philly’s poverty rate moved a total of .6 percent, and in the wrong direction. While over that decade the rate ranged from a low of 23.8 percent and as high as 28.4 percent. (Read more.)
With its myriad public gardens and 40,000-plus vacant lots, many of which have been transformed into community farms, Philadelphia is already a hub for community gardening. Philly also has a shortage of supermarkets in low income neighborhoods, which has made the city an incubator for novel ideas on getting healthy food into people’s hands, cheap or even free. (Read more.)
Philadelphia needs more cash. Admidst crippling poverty and a proliferation of struggling nonprofits, the city ranks 43rd of the United States’ 50 biggest cities in charitable giving, with residents donating an average of only 2.5 percent of their income. Could the savior of our charitable woes be … capitalism? (Read more.)
Every January, in the midst of blisteringly low temperatures, the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Homeless Services (OHS) conducts a point-in-time count of Philly’s homeless population. (Read more.)
After Leola Howell and her 4-year-old daughter became homeless last May, they stayed on Howell’s friends’ couches for eight months, fruitlessly looking for a subsidized accessible housing unit of their own. (Read more.)
As cities across the country show off how attractive they are to millennials in a mad dash to lure Amazon’s second headquarters, Mayor Kenney took a pause from the high-tech fanfare to announce to the city’s business community an ambitious strategy to train and connect Philadelphians to blue-collar jobs. (Read more.)
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