Author: Noelle Swan
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The minimum wage buys less than it used to
Noelle Swan Spare Change News At 24 years old, Michaud is not backpacking abroad, sharing an apartment with friends, or beginning to build a professional resume. He is working 30 hours a week selling stuffed animals for $9 per hour in order to help his mother, a certified nursing assistant, support his three younger siblings.…
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We Are All In The Dumps: Remembering Maurice Sendak’s Fiction on Homelessness
Noelle Swan Spare Change News Maurice Sendak was being driven through Los Angeles in the early 1990s. It was the kind of journey into darkness found in his children’s books, only more real and scarier. The nation was struggling to emerge from the recession that had followed a worldwide stock market crash in 1987. Big banks reported…
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Keeping House: Local Organizations Collaborate to Help Boston Residents Stay in Their Home Post-Foreclosure
Noelle Swan Spare Change News When Jeril Richardson checked out of the hospital after he was hit by a car in 2009, he returned home to find that his landlord had not been keeping up with mortgage payments and the bank was foreclosing on his Hyde Park home. Canvassers knocking on his door told him…
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Anti-Hunger Network Struggles to Meet Growing Need for Healthy Food
Noelle Swan Spare Change News Nearly one in every 20 households in Massachusetts reported cutting back on the size and frequency of meals from 2008 to 2010, because they could not afford food, according to recent data from the USDA Economic Research Service. This figure represents only half the picture of hunger in Massachusetts, counting…
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Northeastern Students Promote Literacy in Family Shelter
Noelle Swan Spare Change News Nine college girls, one professor, one photographer, and a Spare Change reporter spill out of a tiny elevator and into the lobby of Families in Transition, a temporary shelter for families awaiting housing at the Huntington Avenue YMCA in Boston. “Why don’t you go get Sebastian?” Professor Therese O’Neil-Pirozzi asks…
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No Direction Home: When Coming Out Means Kicked Out
By Noelle Swan Spare Change News At 16 years old, Diamond McMillion was too young to check into a shelter. As a lesbian, she felt unwelcome at home and frequently slept in an elevator shaft with three friends. “We would ring every buzzer in the building until somebody got tired of listening to it ringing…
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Evacuation of Elderly Chinese Immigrants from Condemned Chinatown Building Underscores City’s Lack of Elder Homeless Services
Noelle Swan Spare Change News When the Boston Fire Department and Boston Inspectional Services condemned a building in Chinatown earlier this month, some 40 people were immediately displaced, sending the city officials scrambling to find emergency housing for the mostly elderly, non-English speaking residents. Some officials called Adrienne Beloin, Outreach Director at HEARTH—a nonprofit organization…
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New Initiative Targets Homelessness Among Veterans
By Noelle Swan Spare Change News At 60 years old, Art Griffin is about to graduate from UMass Boston with a bachelor’s degree in social psychology. His eyes brighten when he talks about his post-graduation plans. “I want to work with veterans,” he says. The slight tremor in his hands briefly calms as he tilts…
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New Initiative Targets Homelessness Among Veterans
New Initiative Targets Homelessness Among Veterans Noelle Swan At 60 years old, Art Griffin is about to graduate from UMass Boston with a bachelor’s degree in social psychology. His eyes brighten when he talks about his post-graduation plans. “I want to work with veterans,” he says. The slight tremor in his hands briefly calms as…