As you’ve (hopefully) heard by now, CHN held a June 16th briefing on Capitol Hill entitled “What Works—and What Doesn’t—to Reduce Poverty and Expand Opportunity.” The briefing included experts from a wide range of organizations working to combat poverty and featured remarks from House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi.
This week, we continue our Resources from around the Coalition blog series by highlighting important resources you should be aware of, specifically from the organizations that co-sponsored our Capitol Hill event. These CHN coalition members are doing great work to help reduce poverty and expand opportunity:

• In response to Speaker Ryan’s recently-released poverty plan, the Center for American Progress released their plan, “A Progressive Agenda to Cut Poverty and Expand Opportunity.” The report is a comprehensive evidence-based proposal that details how to build on successes and correct failings in moving forward with the fight to eradicate poverty. The five core areas around which CAP builds its policy blueprint are: building better jobs and wages, valuing all families, ensuring basic living standards, investing in human capital, and removing barriers to opportunity. For more on the presentation CAP’s Melissa Beteach gave at the Capitol Hill event, click here.

• The National Council of La Raza has published some helpful advice on how to avoid the payday lending debt trap. Though payday loans can appear to be a great way to help make ends meet at first, they often end up doing far more harm than good. Check out these tips on how to avoid this trap and be sure to call NCLR’s counseling hotline at (888) 532-3021 if you need help getting out of a payday loan.

• The Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) delivered a response to Speaker Ryan’s poverty plan in their press release, demonstrating how his plan would actually make poverty in America far worse. For instance, block granting school meals would deny millions of children the nutrition they need and cutting SNAP would harm both low-income people and local economies, yet both of these proposals made their way into Speaker Ryan’s plan. FRAC’s statement reiterates that we need a real poverty plan, not one that ignores reality and diminishes the safety net.

• The National Low Income Housing Coalition’s National Housing Preservation Database, created in conjunction with the Public and Affordable Housing Research Corporation, provides communities with valuable information on how to preserve their stock of public and affordable housing. The database includes all available data on federally subsidized housing and allows individuals to customize their searches by location, funding stream, ‘at risk of loss’ status, and more. Try using the interactive map to see all federally subsidized housing in specific areas and if you’re interested in becoming an advocate for this issue, check out NLIHC’s 2016 Advocates’ Guide.

• On May 24, the Center for Law and Social Policy’s (CLASP) Executive Director Olivia Golden testified before the House Ways and Means Committee at a hearing entitled “Moving America’s Families Forward: Setting Priorities for Reducing Poverty and Expanding Opportunity.” Her testimony provided strong evidence on the effectiveness of the nation’s core economic security programs and detailed the next steps that Congress should take to eradicate the gaps in the safety net to further combat poverty.

• The Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality recently released a report entitled “Lessons Learned from 40 Years of Subsidized Employment Programs.” The report reviews various models of subsidized employment from the past 40 years, delineates a framework to help practitioners develop more innovative and effective programs, and provides a set of recommendations for policymakers to further utilize and improve subsidized job programs.

• RESULTS just wrapped up its annual International Conference June 25-28 in Washington, DC. The event featured some incredible speakers and provided an opportunity for participants to hear from experts, learn new skills, meet fellow advocates committed to ending poverty, and take their message to Capitol Hill. Even if you missed the event, you can still check out RESULTS’ activist toolkit to improve your advocacy skills and learn how to get more involved.

We encourage you to watch a recording of our Capitol Hill event and visit the event webpage where you can get more resources. We also hope you’ll continue the conversation either by commenting at the end of this blog or by using #talkpoverty and @CoalitiononHN on Twitter. And for an analysis of the additional pieces of the GOP agenda released by House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) and the House Republican Task Forces he assembled this month, including policy pieces on national security, the economy, the Constitution, health care, and tax reform, click here.