Housing vouchers, which typically cover a portion of a participant’s rent, are a key tool to fighting homelessness in an increasingly unaffordable city. But they can be hard to use. Host Kadisha Davis discusses those pitfalls and asks listeners to share what an ideal voucher program would look like to them.

New York City lawmakers and advocates at a 2023 rally calling for the expansion of CityFHEPs, the city’s main voucher program. (Gerardo Romo / NYC Council Media Unit)

Housing vouchers, which typically cover a portion of a participant’s rent, are a key tool to fighting homelessness in an increasingly unaffordable city like New York.

But they can be hard to use. Voucher holders often face discrimination in the city’s competitive rental market, and some assistance programs are bogged down by bureaucratic hurdles.

On the latest episode of the Hear Our Voices podcast—which shares stories, resources and information about family homelessness in New York City—Host Kadisha Davis discusses those pitfalls and asks listeners to share what an ideal voucher program would look like to them.

The question isn’t all hypothetical: this year, New York State committed to launching a pilot program for a new voucher, dubbed the Housing Access Voucher Program (HVAP), eligible to households experiencing or at risk of homelessness, regardless of their immigration status. It’s expected to launch next spring.

At the same time, Mayor Eric Adams and the NYC Council have been locked in a court battle over expanding access to New York City’s rental assistance voucher, CityFHEPS. Among other changes, councilmembers want to raise the income eligibility threshold—from 200 percent of the poverty line to 50 percent of area median income, equal to $81,000 a year for a four-person household.

To Davis, raising that threshold is key to an effective voucher program. “I think especially in this economy, a lot of people are working multiple jobs” to afford their housing, she said.

You can listen to the full episode below.

Editor’s Note: The “Hear Our Voices” podcast is produced by the Family Homelessness Coalition, whose members include Citizens’ Committee for Children, a City Limits funder.

The post ‘Hear Our Voices’ Podcast: The Ideal Housing Voucher appeared first on City Limits.

By DAVID FISCHER, Associated Press

MIAMI (AP) — A federal judge is set to hear closing arguments Wednesday over whether to stop construction indefinitely at an immigrant detention center in the Florida Everglades dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” as she considers whether it violates environmental laws.

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams ordered a two-week halt on new construction last Thursday as witnesses continued to testify in a hearing to determine whether construction should end until the ultimate resolution of the case.

The temporary order doesn’t include any restrictions on law enforcement or immigration enforcement activity at the center, which is currently holding hundreds of detainees. The center, which was quickly built two months ago at a lightly used, single-runway training airport, is designed to eventually hold up to 3,000 detainees in temporary tent structures.

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The order temporarily barred the installation of any new industrial-style lighting, as well as any paving, filling, excavating, fencing or erecting additional buildings, tents, dormitories or other residential or administrative facilities.

Environmental groups and the Miccosukee Tribe want Williams to issue a preliminary injunction to halt operations and further construction, which they say threatens environmentally sensitive wetlands that are home to protected plants and animals and would reverse billions of dollars’ worth of environmental restoration.

Plaintiffs presented witnesses Wednesday and Thursday who testified that the facility violates the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires federal agencies to assess the environmental effects of major construction projects.

Attorneys for the state and federal government have said that although the detention center would be holding federal detainees, the construction and operation of the facility is entirely under the state of Florida, meaning the federal environmental review wouldn’t apply.

The judge last week said the detention facility was, at a minimum, a joint partnership between the state and federal government.

Witnesses describe environmental threats

Witnesses for the environmental groups have testified that at least 20 acres (8 hectares) of asphalt have been added to the site since the Florida Division of Emergency Management began construction. They said additional paving could lead to an increase in water runoff to the adjacent wetlands, spread harmful chemicals into the Everglades and reduce the habitat for endangered Florida panthers.

Amy Castaneda, the Miccosukee Tribe’s water resource director, testified Tuesday that nutrient runoff from the detention center could flow into tribal lands, changing vegetation growth. That could lead to fish kills and block humans and wildlife from moving throughout certain areas, she said.

Marcel Bozas, director of the Miccosukee Tribe’s fish and wildlife department, said tribe members hunt and fish for subsistence and cultural reasons. Sustained human activity can drive away game animals, like whitetail deer, as well as protected species, like Florida panthers, wood storks, eastern black rails and bonneted bats, he said.

State official says Florida runs center

Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles executive director David Kerner testified that the 1,800 state troopers under his command are authorized to detain undocumented migrants under an agreement with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He said the federal government doesn’t tell the state where to detain immigrants, and that the Everglades facility was built to alleviate overcrowding at federal immigration detention facilities, as well as state and county facilities with agreements to hold federal immigration detainees.

Kerner couldn’t say how many of the “Alligator Alcatraz” detainees have been charged with violent crimes or whether any other sites besides the middle of the Everglades were considered for possible detention centers.

Attorneys for federal and state agencies last month asked Williams to dismiss or transfer the injunction request, saying the lawsuit was filed in the wrong jurisdiction. Even though the property is owned by Miami-Dade County, Florida’s southern district is the wrong venue for the lawsuit because the detention center is in neighboring Collier County, which is in the state’s middle district, they said.

Williams had yet to rule on that argument.

Facility faces a second legal challenge

In a second legal challenge to “Alligator Alcatraz,” a federal judge over the weekend gave the state more time to prepare arguments against an effort to get the civil rights litigation certified as a class action.

U.S. District Judge Rodolfo Ruiz in Miami said he will only consider a motion by detainees’ lawyers for a preliminary injunction during an Aug. 18 hearing. He set a Sept. 23 deadline for the state to respond to the detainee’s class action request. The second lawsuit claims detainees’ constitutional rights are being violated because they are barred from meeting lawyers, are being held without any charges, and a federal immigration court has canceled bond hearings.

The lawsuits were being heard as DeSantis′ administration apparently was preparing to build a second immigration detention center at a Florida National Guard training center in north Florida. At least one contract has been awarded for what is labeled in state records as the “North Detention Facility.”

When the one-two punch of Senate Bill 8—a 2021 Texas law that barred nearly all abortion care —and the U.S. Supreme Court’s subsequent decision to overturn Roe v. Wade befell Texans, Blanca Murillo felt like she was on the brink of hopelessness. Murillo had spent her entire career in the reproductive rights movement in Texas, and, as the development director with The Lilith Fund, the oldest abortion fund operating in the state, she worried for the many clients her group serves. 

Abortion funds like Lilith work on the frontlines of abortion care, providing financial assistance for the procedure or for travel, hotel stays, and childcare. The nonprofit, grassroots groups—often under the radar relative to large national organizations like Planned Parenthood—serve as a critical bridge to help largely low-income people of color access out-of-state care. And their hands are full under Texas’ strict abortion bans: More than 28,000 people are now forced to flee the nation’s second-most populous state annually. 

But Murillo’s despair soon shifted to hope when her group was met with a massive swell of what some call “rage donations,” sparked by anger against both SB 8 and the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson decision. While Lilith’s yearly budget hovered around $1 million before the back-to-back historic attacks on abortion rights, the group saw its coffers skyrocket to more than $6 million afterward. “People were understandably enraged and wanted to help. I was in awe of how much everyone cared at that time,” said Murillo. 

However, those “rage donations” have dried up—not just for Lilith Fund, whose revenue has fallen by half, but for five additional Texas funds the Observer spoke with. Mirroring a nationwide “crisis,” dwindling donations to Texas—home to more abortion funds than any other state—have left groups struggling to keep up with demand. 

After Dobbs, for the first time in its history, The Lilith Fund was able to give some assistance to every client who requested it, but now the future feels uncertain. 

“It’s such a gift to be able to help everyone that calls us, but we don’t know how long that’s sustainable,” said Murillo. “There’s definitely the fear of, can we actually keep this going? Will we have to start turning people away or changing operations?”

May 3, 2022, demonstration in Austin (Gus Bova)

While funds grapple with a decrease in donations, the price for abortion care is rising, creating a perfect storm. Living under abortion bans, Texans are frequently forced to travel 500 to 1,500 miles for the procedure—and sometimes more—adding substantial cost to their medical care. For instance, last year Lilith Fund clients traveled an average of 1,012 miles, with the most miles traveled by a client totaling nearly 4,200—and the group says those figures are only rising this year. 

Travel time for residents in banned states like Texas has increased from roughly 2.8 hours to more than 11 hours, and travel costs jumped from an average of $179 to $372, according to a study published in the American Journal of Public Health earlier this year that tracked access in 14 states. Of course, those costs vary and may be a modest estimate for some Texans who need to spend more than a thousand dollars in travel, say abortion fund leaders. More than half of those surveyed by researchers said their abortion care required an overnight hotel stay, while just 5 percent said the same prior to the bans. The National Network of Abortion Funds (NNAF) similarly found that practical support expenses—like travel, lodging, and childcare—increased by 30 percent in the past year. 

The price of the procedure itself is also on the rise: Costs grew by 37 percent from 2022 to 2024, according to data from NNAF. Texas groups say this is in part due to the many logistical barriers imposed by bans that force pregnant patients to delay care and undergo abortion later in pregnancy, when it becomes more expensive and more difficult to secure, especially as some clinics do not perform abortion into the second trimester. Out-of-state clinics have also found themselves spread thin, as they now see double the number of patients that they did before the end of Roe, according to the Guttmacher Institute. 

Overall, demand is increasing with funds nationwide seeing 56 percent more requests than before the historic loss of abortion access. 

As intake coordinator with the Texas Equal Access Fund, a North Texas-based group, Charlie Hughes hears the heightened stress from callers who are forced to trek long miles for care, primarily to New Mexico, Kansas, and Colorado. Appointments that were previously available within a day or two now could take two or three weeks, said Hughes. About 60 percent of the fund’s callers are already parents and must also secure childcare, adding another obstacle. 

Like other funds, Hughes’ group saw donations jump 120 percent post-SB 8 and Dobbs and was able to support more callers in the three years that followed than in its entire 20-year history. Then came the decline, leaving the fund with an “unsustainable burden.” In June, the Texas Equal Access Fund received about 500 requests for help and was only able to fund 87 of them.

“[Callers] need to travel farther and the procedure is costing more, and so we need to find more funding while our donations decline—it’s a stressful situation all around,” Hughes said.

Similarly, per-client cost more than tripled post-Dobbs for Jane’s Due Process, an abortion fund that connects teenagers with care. While the group previously centered its legal work on helping teens navigate judicial bypass for abortions, they’ve since had to shift to funding flights, lodging, transportation, and the procedure itself, with an average cost of $1,500 per caller.

“We continue to be underfunded while the demand—and the stakes—grow,” said Lucie Arvallo, the fund’s executive director. “And it’s not as if the attacks on abortion have slowed down in Texas, we still deeply need investment, possibly now more than ever.” 

Smaller than some of their counterparts in major cities, the Frontera Fund in the Rio Grande Valley serves a population within 100 miles of the Texas-Mexico border. The fund saw its modest annual budget of about $11,000 balloon to more than $650,000 from individual donations driven by 2022-era outrage. That infusion was instrumental in helping Frontera dramatically change its operations from assisting just eight callers per year in getting out-of-state care to 30 callers a month. Today, the budget has dipped by more than 70 percent as demand remains. 

“We’ve had to put limits on our services,” said Zaena Zamora, Frontera Fund’s executive director. “I worry we’ll have to downsize our already small fund, and just really hope we’ll never have to close.”

Last year, The National Abortion Federation, which runs a hotline that helps cover procedure costs, cut back funding for those who qualify for its financial assistance program from 50 percent of the cost of care to 30 percent due to fewer incoming donations. 

Abortion funds largely attribute the sizable drop off in contributions to abortion rights seemingly fading from the spotlight.

“Abortion was all over the news after SB 8 and then Dobbs, and getting so much attention at the time,” said Anna Rupani, executive director of Fund Texas Choice. “We are so grateful for the rush of donations, but now that there isn’t as much focus on abortion, I’m not sure people realize this is an ongoing, long-term need.”

Aggressive and intrusive legal attacks on abortion funds from anti-abortion activists and state leaders including Attorney General Ken Paxton may have also had a chilling effect on potential donors. Funds were forced to pause operations for nine months in 2023 before a court ultimately blocked an effort from Paxton encouraging district attorneys to criminally prosecute the funds.

Multiple leaders told the Observer they’ve heard first-hand from donors and foundations that philanthropy has shifted to political advocacy groups, candidates, ballot initiatives, and clinics in non-banned states. (Historically, abortion funds already receive just a small fraction of overall foundation support for reproductive rights compared to other abortion-related groups.) 

In an op-ed in The Nation signed by 30 local abortion funds across the country—including five in Texas—leaders criticized the priorities of “well-funded” mainstream national reproductive rights organizations, who are “disconnected” from the needs of on-the-ground grassroots groups directly serving their communities. “Local funds have been put in a position to disproportionately hold the weight of abortion access while being abandoned based on their more radical and staunch values,” leaders wrote. “Now is not the time to put policy advocacy and wealth hoarding over material support.”

For some donors, Texas—and the South—feels like a futile investment. 

“The irony of that logic to me is that you would think the groups that have withstood so many attacks on abortion and found a way to remain resilient and still standing would be the ones you would want to invest in,” said Rupani. “It’s pretty frustrating.” 

And the attacks here rarely cease: During this year’s regular legislative session, Republicans took aim at abortion funds by curtailing city governments’ ability to partner with them to provide residents with practical support services. Bills filed for the ongoing special session include a proposal that would criminalize anyone who helps a teen travel for abortion without parental consent; a measure that could subject all funds to criminal prosecution; and a proposal that would empower private citizens to sue manufacturers or health providers who mail or prescribe abortion pills—a revival of a measure that failed during the regular session. That last bill, SB 6, passed out of a Senate committee on Monday. (While progress on these bills has been slowed by the Democrats’ quorum break to protect voting rights, further dismantling abortion care is a priority for both Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and Governor Greg Abbott, who has the power to call legislators back for multiple special sessions.) 

With a mixture of gratitude for the initial boost in funding and fear of the future under depleting resources, Hughes offers a gentle reminder.

“I think some people assume that, because abortion is illegal in Texas, they don’t need to support abortion rights here—but in fact the opposite is true,” said Hughes. “We are still helping hundreds of Texans get the care they need, against all odds. Just because Texans don’t have the right to abortion in their state doesn’t mean they are not deserving of access.”

The post Abortion Funds See Dwindling Donations as Demand and Cost Rise appeared first on The Texas Observer.

By LINLEY SANDERS, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Fewer Americans are reporting that they drink alcohol amid a growing belief that even moderate alcohol consumption is a health risk, according to a new Gallup poll released Wednesday.

A record high percentage of U.S. adults, 53%, now say moderate drinking is bad for their health, up from 28% in 2015. The uptick in doubt about alcohol’s benefits is largely driven by young adults — the age group that is most likely to believe drinking “one or two drinks a day” can cause health hazards — but older adults are also now increasingly likely to think moderate drinking carries risks.

As concerns about health impacts rise, fewer Americans are reporting that they drink. The survey finds that 54% of U.S. adults say they drink alcoholic beverages such as liquor, wine or beer. That’s lower than at any other point in the past three decades.

FILE – Beer is displayed in a cooler at a store June 19, 2023, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)

The findings of the poll, which was conducted in July, indicate that after years of many believing that moderate drinking was harmless — or even beneficial — worries about alcohol consumption are taking hold. According to Gallup’s data, even those who consume alcohol are drinking less.

The federal government is updating new dietary guidelines, including those around alcohol. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, government data showed U.S. alcohol consumption was trending up. But other government surveys have shown a decline in certain types of drinking, particularly among teenagers and young adults.

This comes alongside a new drumbeat of information about alcohol’s risks. While moderate drinking was once thought to have benefits for heart health, health professionals in recent years have pointed to overwhelming evidence that alcohol consumption leads to negative health outcomes and is a leading cause of cancer.

Growing skepticism about alcohol’s benefits

Younger adults have been quicker than older Americans to accept that drinking is harmful, but older adults are coming around to the same view.

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About two-thirds of 18- to 34-year-olds believe moderate drinking is unhealthy, according to the new poll, up from about 4 in 10 in 2015. Older adults are less likely to see alcohol as harmful — about half of Americans age 55 or older believe this — but that’s a substantial increase, too. In 2015, only about 2 in 10 adults age 55 or older thought alcohol was bad for their health.

In the past, moderate drinking was thought to have some benefits. That idea came from imperfect studies that largely didn’t include younger people and couldn’t prove cause and effect. Now the scientific consensus has shifted, and several countries recently lowered their alcohol consumption recommendations. Earlier this year, the outgoing U.S. surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, recommended a label on bottles of beer, wine and liquor that would clearly outline the link between alcohol consumption and cancer.

The federal government’s current dietary guidelines recommend Americans not drink or, if they do consume alcohol, men should limit themselves to two drinks a day or fewer while women should stick to one or fewer.

Gallup’s director of U.S. social research, Lydia Saad, said shifting health advice throughout older Americans’ lives may be a reason why they have been more gradual than young adults to recognize alcohol as harmful.

“Older folks may be a little more hardened in terms of the whiplash that they get with recommendations,” Saad said. “It may take them a little longer to absorb or accept the information. Whereas, for young folks, this is the environment that they’ve grown up in … in many cases, it would be the first thing young adults would have heard as they were coming into adulthood.”

The government is expected to release new guidelines later this year, under the directive of health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has promised big changes. Kennedy has not hinted at how the alcohol recommendations may shift.

Drinking rates fall to decade low

Slightly more than half of Americans, 54%, report that they drink alcohol — a low in Gallup’s data that is especially pronounced among women and young adults.

Young Americans’ alcohol consumption has been trending downward for years, accelerating the overall decline in alcohol consumption. In sharp contrast with Gallup’s findings two decades ago, when young adults were likeliest to report drinking, young adults’ drinking rate is now slightly below middle-aged and older adults.

Americans’ reported drinking is among the lowest since the question was first asked in 1939. For most of the last few decades, at least 6 in 10 Americans have reported drinking alcoholic beverages, only dipping below that point a few times in the question’s history.

Americans who drink alcohol are consuming less

Even if concerns about health risks aren’t causing some adults to give up alcohol entirely, these worries could be influencing how often they drink.

The survey found that adults who think moderate drinking is bad for one’s health are just as likely as people who don’t share those concerns to report that they drink, but fewer of the people with health worries had consumed alcohol recently.

About half of those who worry moderate drinking is unhealthy said they had a drink in the previous week, compared with about 7 in 10 who did not think drinking was bad for their health.

Overall, only about one-quarter of Americans who drink said they had consumed alcohol in the prior 24 hours, a record low in the survey. Roughly 4 in 10 said that it had been more than a week since they had poured a drink.

Associated Press writer Amanda Seitz contributed to this report.