Public Policy

Amy Castro of the School of Social Policy & Practice said “time scarcity” keeps many poor families trapped in poverty. “If you’re struggling to make ends meet and you’re knitting together two or three part-time jobs,” she said, “you don’t have time to plan for the future or even to think.”

Vincent Reina of the Stuart Weitzman School of Design spoke about the pandemic’s evolving effects on U.S. renters. “Historically, we have had a nonexistent housing safety net nationally. Then we suddenly have this allocation of resources, and we build this whole new infrastructure. Now it’s about to go away, and we have no idea if it will ever be rebuilt.”

Pilar Gonalons-Pons of the School of Arts & Sciences said failing to make permanent the child tax credit expansion “means a moment of optimism in which deep injustices and hardships could have been changed may be over.”

Dennis Culhane of the School of Social Policy & Practice said there should be clinics where people experiencing or emerging from homelessness should be able to clear their debts, akin to bankruptcy. “Otherwise, it’s just going to make it harder for people to survive, and that doesn’t serve anyone,” he said.

Research from the Housing Initiative at Penn found that 10.4 million households would be eligible for housing vouchers in the U.S., four times as many families as available vouchers.