Tag archives: poverty

Poverty is Expensive?
By Robert Bernstein   |   August 23, 2022

A recent New York Times Opinion piece claimed that inequality is not as bad as it appears because “spending power” is a more accurate measure than income or wealth. I reached out to author Peter Coy and to Berkeley economist Alan Auerbach who wrote the original paper. I asked Coy if he was familiar with […]

CommUnify and Head Start at 55
By Steven Libowitz   |   May 10, 2022

Head Start, the federal early childhood education program, was established in 1965 as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty with a goal of promoting school readiness to young children from low-income families through providing health, educational, nutritional, and social services. Two years later, Community Action Commission, or CAC, incorporated as a nonprofit to […]

CommUnify
By Steven Libowitz   |   February 24, 2022

If the name CommUnify doesn’t ring a bell, Patricia Keelean, the nonprofit’s chief executive officer, thinks she knows why.  “We are our own best-kept secret,” Keelean said. There’s a good reason for that – CommUnify is actually the new DBA for what used to be called the Community Action Commission of Santa Barbara County – […]

Justice for the Little People?
By Robert Bernstein   |   February 1, 2022

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids all men to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread – the rich as well as the poor.” So wrote Anatole France in The Red Lily (1894). It is difficult to express the injustice of the legal system better than that one brilliant […]

CommUnify Embraces Urgent Needs of Santa Barbara County
By Nick Masuda   |   December 14, 2021

Tea was served in copious amounts as CommUnify invited dozens to an outdoor event at the gorgeous Santa Barbara Club on December 2. Good thing, because one simple statement was quite sobering. Santa Barbara County is essentially tied for first in California for highest poverty rate. With the sale of countless multi-million-dollar homes in the […]

A Revolutionary Plan for Santa Barbara’s Children
By Laura Capps   |   March 20, 2021

There’s a lot that has me optimistic these days: the declining case rates of COVID, millions of people getting vaccinated, kids safely returning to the classroom and a return to competency from the White House. One of many positive developments that will have massive ramifications is the inclusion of the child benefit in the COVID […]

Students Awash in Squash
By John Burk   |   September 6, 2018

What is the most effective way to break the cycle of poverty for kids and motivate them to enter college or trade school to make something of themselves? Answer: Capture their imagination and interest. then direct them down a new life-path.  I am talking about a program with the unlikely name of Santa Barbara School […]