Spare Change News

Author: Adam Sennott

  • City of Boston Announces Affording Housing Projects to Receive Funding

    The City of Boston is investing $40 million to create and preserve 718 units of affordable housing in Jamaica Plain, Dorchester, Chinatown, Hyde Park, and Roxbury, Mayor Michelle Wu announced Tuesday.  “[It’s] a huge number that we’re really excited to see make a difference,” Wu said in an interview with Spare Change News. The funded […]

  • MAYOR WU SHARES HOUSING PLANS AND HOPES FOR BOSTON’S FUTURE

    As Michelle Wu ran for Mayor she saw first hand the struggles some residents were having finding and maintaining affordable housing in Boston. She met with residents at the 147 unit Forbes apartment complex in Jamaica Plain, which houses mostly low-income seniors and persons with disabilities, who were worried about losing their subsidized housing. She […]

  • United Nations report: U.S. has the wealth to end homelessness and chooses not to

    In early December, United Nations Special Rapporteur Philip Alston landed in Los Angeles, the first stop in his tour of extreme poverty in the United States. It was a Sunday, a day before he was scheduled to begin, but Alston said he had decided to get a head start on his mission. One of the […]

  • Evacuated Homeless Campers Return to Houston Overpass After Hurricane Harvey

    Residents living in the homeless encampment under Houston’s 59 overpass got some good news recently when they received a temporary restraining order preventing the city from enforcing its anti-camping ban. The reprieve did not last long. Within 48 hours, the residents were forced to leave anyway, as Hurricane Harvey slammed into the region. The hurricane […]

  • Rev. Al Sharpton: “We Are Not Going Backwards”

    Rev. Al Sharpton: “We Are Not Going Backwards”

    On January 19, the eve of the presidential inauguration, the Rev. Al Sharpton stood outside Trump International Hotel in New York City with Mayor Bill De Blasio, filmmaker Michael Moore, actor Alec Baldwin and thousands of protesters to kick off their 100 days of resistance to the president-elect’s agenda. “We are sending you a message […]

  • SCN Exclusive: Carl Bernstein on Trump, voters, and the media

    SCN Exclusive: Carl Bernstein on Trump, voters, and the media

    In 1992, legendary journalist Carl Bernstein blasted the media for its obsession with celebrity, manufactured controversy,  gossip, and sensationalism in his article “The Idiot Culture” for the New Republic. At the time, the front pages of newspapers across the country were more focused on Donald and Ivana Trump’s divorce than they were on Nelson Mandela’s […]

  • Eric Alterman: Reviving the liberal label

    Eric Alterman: Reviving the liberal label

    For nearly a year and a half many journalists and media outlets have struggled to make sense on Donald Trump’s sexist, racist, xenophobic campaign for President. But not The Nation’s Eric Alterman. “I think Trump is in many ways a continuation of what we’ve gotten from the Republican Party for the past 20 years,” Alterman […]

  • Remembering Liam Cunningham

    Remembering Liam Cunningham

    I have a confession to make. When I took over as editor of SCN in 2010, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I had just graduated from Bunker Hill Community College and I was in WAY over my head. On top of that, I was quickly told we didn’t have the […]

  • Michael Patrick MacDonald: Families of All Souls “Are all Dealing with Heroin”

    Michael Patrick MacDonald: Families of All Souls “Are all Dealing with Heroin”

    (Photo: Bill Brett) When Michael Patrick MacDonald walks down ‘methadone mile’ he sees a familiar story among the addicts and panhandlers. “Most people down there come from places like I come from,” MacDonald said. Places of “poverty” and “trauma.” MacDonald grew up in the Old Colony housing projects during the height of the cocaine epidemic […]

  • Life on Skid Row

    Life on Skid Row

    (Photo: Zengzheng Wang) 1890 was a good year for California oil baron Lyman Stewart. His company had merged with Sespe Oil and the Mission Transfer Company to form Union Oil, Paul Rood, adjunct professor of political science and history at Biola University, said. At the time it was the largest oil company in California, responsible […]