Many Americans are now at risk of being evicted from their homes.
At least 44 million Americans have filed for unemployment in the past three months as the coronavirus pandemic devastated industries such as retail and hospitality.
Many who lost jobs were unable to pay their rent or utilities, prompting state and federal governments to issue a temporary ban on evictions.
But those bans are set to expire this summer, leaving many people at risk of losing their homes.
A burned Walgreens in Minneapolis on May 30
In many neighborhoods that have seen looting and vandalism over the past week, residents are now left with few — if any — grocery stores, pharmacies and other essential businesses. Which is made even harder by the fact that lots of stores are also closed because of the pandemic.
There’s a 6-mile long commercial corridor in South Minneapolis called Lake Street, and it has been destroyed.
“We no longer have pharmacies in our community,” said ZoeAna Martinez, who works for the Lake Street Council, a business association. “We no longer have gas stations as well. Our largest grocery stores are also gone,” Martinez said. “Right now, our community, we live in a food desert, which happened overnight.”
Continue reading… “Neighborhoods where stores were destroyed become food deserts overnight”
Arrested during the crisis, Roslyn Crouch feared she wouldn’t leave jail alive.
Community groups have pointed out the social costs of the prison system for decades. Now the pandemic has exposed its public-health risks.
On March 14th, Roslyn Crouch, a mother of twelve, left her house in New Orleans to stock up on toilet paper and canned goods, and didn’t return. Crouch, who is forty-two, with slender braids down to her knees, had been feeling anxious about the spread of the coronavirus. At home, she cared for her elderly mother, and for a half-dozen children, including a son with sickle-cell anemia, a blood disorder. She herself had chronic bronchitis, and worried that it put her at risk. Many people in her neighborhood lacked access to high-quality medical care. (Black residents of Louisiana have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic; they make up about thirty per cent of the state’s population, but account for almost sixty per cent of documented deaths from the virus.) She thought, This is some serious stuff. After scrolling through a few too many coronavirus stories on her phone that Saturday morning, she got dressed, spritzed herself with her favorite perfume, A Thousand Wishes, and drove to a dollar store with her two-year-old son, Kyi, to buy shelter-in-place supplies.
On the way, Crouch failed to stop at a stop sign in Jefferson Parish and was pulled over by the police. She was then arrested for a string of petty crimes, including driving without proper registration and with a stolen license plate that police valued at twenty-five dollars. The most serious charge resulted from a nine-year-old warrant for possession of marijuana. As Crouch was put in the back of a police car, with Kyi, she pleaded with the arresting officers to call her daughter Tae, who worked as a security guard. Tae sped across the Mississippi River, arriving just in time to pry her sobbing little brother from the police car and prevent him from being turned over to child-protective services. “I call him Hip Baby, because he’s attached to my mom’s hip,” Tae told me. She took Kyi home, but it was “hell on earth trying to tame him without her.” The cops drove Crouch to the Jefferson Parish jail.
Continue reading… “Will the Coronavirus make us rethink mass incarceration?”
A market area in Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital, crowded with people despite the coronavirus pandemic, May 12, 2020.
Sprawling urban areas in Brazil, Nigeria and Bangladesh are all seeing COVID-19 infections rise rapidly.
A billion people live in the slums of the world’s megacities—and they’re being missed by coronavirus plans
Having ravaged some of the world’s wealthiest cities, the coronavirus pandemic is now spreading into the megacities of developing countries. Sprawling urban areas in Brazil, Nigeria, and Bangladesh are all seeing COVID-19 infections rise rapidly.
We study the fragility and resilience of such cities and their urban peripheries, with the aim of encouraging data-driven policy decisions. Given its deadly trajectory in marginalized communities of hard-hit New York and London, coronavirus may well devastate much poorer cities.
Coronavirus is severely testing Africa’s social, economic and political resilience.
COVID-19 is forcing African states to invest in their health systems.
A lack of essential healthcare supplies has triggered a debate about the necessary industrialization of Africa.
In 1990, when Cameroon’s football team did the unthinkable and beat Argentina in the World Cup, the proportion of the world’s population living below the poverty line was 35.9%. Fast-forward 35 years to 2015, following a global adoption of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), this figure now stands at 10%.
Continue reading… “3 ways COVID-19 could actually spark a better future for Africa”
Critical reporting under threat as revenue losses leave independent news outlets hostage to government subsidies or whims of billionaires
Press freedom groups warn that the integrity of independent journalism could be at risk.
Fake news laws and political interference along with growing financial pressures has left many independent media groups in developing countries fighting to survive during the pandemic.
News outlets around the world have faced measures to muzzle critical reporting in an environment that has already seen dozens of journalists harassed, arrested and censored by governments, according to editors and press freedom groups.
Continue reading… “Covid-19 could trigger ‘media extinction event’ in developing countries”
We are not going back to our old economy. It’s over.
Right now, something incredibly positive is occurring in our society. It’s never happened before in world history (feel free to correct me if you can find an example).
Every scientist, health leader, politician, teacher, business leader, family member — everyone — is converging to solve one problem.
That’s incredibly powerful and gives me immense hope for our future.
In addition, I believe 3 factors will emerge going forward: convergence, disruption, and opportunity.
I’m seeing 2 convergences related to the American consumer that will have a massive effect on your business:
Continue reading… “These 4 industries are going to die”
Ben Greenzweig is itching to move his wife and three kids South, a plan that may get accelerated due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The CEO and co-founder of conference company Momentum Event Group, says he’s looking to move to either North Carolina or South Carolina from the New York City suburbs in Westchester County, for cheaper costs and bigger living space amid fears that a deep and prolonged economic slump in the state could eventually force residents to pay higher taxes.
“It would be an unbelievable escape,” Greenzweig, 42, says. He typically works from home which gives him flexibility.
“Our children’s involvement in school is the single largest tether keeping us here. If there’s a hint that school won’t resume in the fall for my kids, then the biggest reasons for us staying here, which are friendships and school activities, evaporates.”
(CNN) — Cleaning robots, temperature checks and antimicrobial coatings could soon become synonymous with airport trips.
Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) has provided a glimpse into what international airport procedures might look like once we’re traveling again, and a lot of disinfection technologies are involved.
The busy Asia airport claims it’s the first in the world to trial a live operation of CLeanTech, a full-body disinfection booth.
The short, but thorough, process sees those passing through undertake a temperature check before entering a small booth for the 40-second disinfection and sanitizing procedures.
According to the airport authority, the inside of the facility contains an antimicrobial coating that can remotely kill any viruses and/or bacteria found on clothing, as well as the body, by using photocatalyst advances along with “nano needles.”
Continue reading… “Hong Kong airport brings in cleaning robots and disinfection booth”
Australian think-tank the Grattan Institute has released three new trackers, or charts, that offer an up-to-date glance at what the economy looks like right now.
The Morrison government has thrown the kitchen sink at the domestic economy, with $320 billion in stimulus measures designed to cushion the damage.
The Grattan Institute’s charts are regularly updated with the latest statistics to form a quick view of how many jobs have been lost and where, the number of businesses that have been affected, and how consumers are feeling.
The impact of Covid-19 to the Australian economy has been described as the worst since the Great Depression by both the RBA Governor Philip Lowe and the Grattan Institute in a separate report.
Continue reading… “These 3 charts reveal the state of the economy”
The coronavirus pandemic is fundamentally reshaping global trade.
• The coronavirus crisis has revealed the fragility of the modern supply chain.
• Recent data shows the devastating economic impact as week-on-week trade in China, the US and Europe halved because of the crisis.
• Diverse sourcing and digitization will be the key to building stronger, smarter supply chains and ensuring a lasting recovery.
The COVID-19 pandemic has hit global trade and investment at an unprecedented speed and scale. Multinational companies faced an initial supply shock, then a demand shock as more and more countries ordered people to stay at home. Governments, businesses and individual consumers suddenly struggled to procure basic products and materials, and were forced to confront the fragility of the modern supply chain. The urgent need to design smarter, stronger and more diverse supply chains has been one of the main lessons of this crisis.
Continue reading… “Here’s how global supply chains will change after COVID-19”
Will COVID-19 deepen the retirement crisis? Yes and no — here’s how
The coronavirus crisis may worsen an already impending retirement crisis.
Remember when Americans struggled to save for retirement because they were juggling high housing costs, student loan payments, credit card debt and scanty access to workplace savings? Add in a global pandemic, record unemployment and an economic lockdown. How’s that for a retirement crisis?
The coronavirus poses a threat to many Americans’ health and current financial well-being, but it also has the potential to derail an individual’s future retirement security.
Many Americans were already underprepared for retirement, not having saved enough for their futures by the time they were ready to leave the workforce. The global pandemic may make it even harder to afford to retire. In the past four weeks alone, 22 million U.S. workers have filed for unemployment benefits, and people without jobs are not able to contribute to their workplace investment accounts, nor do they have any extra money to put away. People may also have to take distributions or loans from their retirement plans, which lowers their potential returns in the long-run.
Continue reading… “Here comes the retirement crisis, coronavirus-style”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.