This newsletter provides information around revitalization strategies for rural communities before, during, and after disaster. By reviewing examples of how rural communities have responded to disasters, the major theme throughout the recovery process includes planning, community participation, and capacity building.

Hurricane Katrina brought issues of poverty into the media spotlight. While many issues surrounded the urban poor in New Orleans, one-third of the area affected by Hurricane Katrina was rural. This newsletter outlines the causes of poverty in rural areas as well as strategies for rural communities to reduce poverty.

The Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire conducted this study and found that predatory mortgage lending is prevalent in rural areas. Additionally, authors conclude that rural minorities are more likely to take out higher-cost mortgage loans. Focusing on predatory lending for mortgages, this practice can have a significant effect on low-income working families by threatening their assets and savings.

Traditional public housing rules that set rent as a percentage of a tenant's income have long been thought to discourage residents from taking jobs, because much of the extra income from employment is simply absorbed by an increase in rent. The Jobs-Plus demonstration project is testing ways to break that cycle by changing rent rules in combination with other incentives that make work pay. Making Work Pay for Public Housing Residents describes initiatives underway at seven public housing developments in six cities across the nation and their potential effects on residents' income and decisions about work.

Exceptional for its large scale, long follow-up period, and rigorous research design, the National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work Strategies (NEWWS) has yielded a trove of hard evidence about how best to help people get off welfare and into jobs. Concise and accessible, "Moving People from Welfare to Work: Lessons from NEWWS" distills the evaluation's key findings and explores their implications for policy as Congressional debate about reauthorizing the 1996 federal welfare reform law moves into high gear. This final product from NEWWS helps shed light on what level of work participation can be realistically required of welfare recipients, whether assigning people to education and training is effective, and how various program approaches affect outcomes ranging from employment and welfare receipt to family circumstances and children's well-being.

On July 16, 2002, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life hosted a panel discussion entitled, “The Compassion Component: Welfare Reform and The Tradition of Social Justice.” During the panel religious leaders and experts on welfare policy discussed how our values should shape social legislation. This report provides a summary of the panel discussion.

This report discusses demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of census tracts using data from the 2000 Census. Based on the data, the poverty rate for all people in 1999 was 12.4%, varying by region.

As place is an important factor for positive family outcomes, this Urban Institute article reviews types of neighborhoods and how surroundings can play a role in the well-being of families and children. By research a variety of indicators, it concludes that families residing in urban and rural areas face increased hardship than families residing in suburban areas.

From the National Center for Children in Poverty, this article explores trends in child poverty rates since 2000. Overall, the national child poverty rate has increased, and this report identifies the regions across the country in which families have been the most affected. Specifically, the Midwest experienced the most significant growth in child poverty rates, accounting for 43% of the national increase over the last five years.

Authored by Nancy Wemmerus, Carole Kuhns, and Renee Loeffler. This report describes the status of over 1,000 Virginia families 18 months after their TANF cases closed because of a time limit. It finds that nearly all parents worked after leaving TANF, with average hours, hourly wages, and total earnings increasing over time. Families also decreased their use of non-cash assistance--such as Food Stamps, Medicaid, and child care subsidies. As of November 2002, 15 percent of the families had returned to TANF.