Just over two months after legislative elections in USAthe White House and the Democrats are putting much of the campaign focus on the efforts and economic achievements under the presidency of Joe Biden, but the inflation fired that has hardened the blow of the pandemic and feeds citizen frustration does not advise a triumphalist message. The president also has on his table a list of demands from activists, experts and politicians who ask for more actions, and more decisive ones, to address the crises faced by millions of middle class and low income people.
At the beginning of the month, shortly after the White House organized a virtual forum in which advances in the pandemic in the fight against the evictions and in aid for rent paymentsa coalition of tenant associations, community organizations and legal groups sent you a memo asking you to declare a state of emergency regarding housing and explore ways to regularize rents.
That regulation is seen as “difficult” by Meredith Greif, a sociologist at John Hopkins University and the author of a recently published book on the role that landlords have played in the urban housing crisis. “The most important thing is to give financial assistance directly to those who rent, “says the expert, who rejects the idea with which moderate Republicans and Democrats oppose these aids, who believe they could raise inflation. “when people stay homeless It is more expensive for society,” Greif replies.
Biden has more claims on the table. Also this month, for example, nearly 60 congressmen and senators called on the government to increase emergency funding beyond the $4 billion set aside for 2023 to help lower-income households pay electricity bills.
Summit against hunger
The president is not sitting idly by. For September he has called a conference on ‘Hunger, nutrition and health’, the second in the history of the White House. The original, in 1969 with Richard Nixon in the Oval Office, left 1,800 recommendations and of those, 90% became a reality and aid programs for food and nutritional guidelines were created or expanded that have marked five decades in the country.
“I don’t know if we’ll get the big structural changes of the first, but at least those programs could be relaunched, which are good but do not reach as many people as they should,” says Jenique Jones, vice president of operations and policy at the food delivery organization City Harvest. She advocates ” rethink benefit programs” but also for “starting to expand what we mean when we say we are fighting hunger” and linking it “with other broader social issues,” such as educational and emotional development, mental health the crimen. Jones also leaves a clear and forceful message: “We need to do more.”