District attorney elections linked to more prison admissions during ‘tough on crime’ era
**It's Friday October 2, 2026 and in this morning's issue we're covering:** District attorney elections linked to more prison admissions during ‘tough on crime’ era, 21% of poverty in Maryland driven by high housing costs, report says, Western NC housing recovery continues 2 years after Helene, NC received $75 million for childcare centers after Helene. Why haven’t any providers received funds yet?, Meet Chicago’s First Street Psychiatrist, NYC Ditches Federal Homeless Veterans Program, Citing Concern for Transgender Vets, $6B data center planned for Jefferson Davis, one of the poorest counties in the country, At meeting, community members ask to keep L.B. Landry High School open. But the district says that might not be viable, One-page ballot may not ease voting for Maricopa County voters with disabilities.
**Media outlets and others featured:** Stateline, Maryland Matters, Carolina Public Press, NC Local, MindSite News, The City Reporter, Mississippi Today, Verite News, Cronkite News.
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## District attorney elections linked to more prison admissions during ‘tough on crime’ era
By Amanda Watford (Stateline) Published: October 1, 2026
County and local district attorneys oversaw higher state prison admissions during election years than in other years during the height of the nation’s “tough on crime” era, according to a new study from Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law.
State prison admissions were about 3% higher in years when district attorneys were up for election compared with non-election years, the study’s author found. From 1986 to 2006, that amounted to roughly 63,000 additional prison admissions.
The findings suggest that electoral politics may have influenced prosecutors’ decisions about who enters the criminal legal system and how long people are sentenced to serve. But the study does not show that elections caused the broader rise in incarceration during that 20-year period, and its findings are limited to state prison admissions and sentencing during an era when incarceration was rising sharply nationwide.
The study, led by Chika Okafor, an economist and assistant law professor at Northwestern, examined more than 4,200 district attorneys and prison admissions in nearly 40 states. The study was published in the October edition of the Journal of Public Economics.
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Prosecutors represent the government and have broad discretion in criminal investigations over whether to bring charges, what charges to pursue, whether to offer plea deals and what sentences to recommend.
In his research, Okafor found that prison admissions were about 4.3% higher in election years than in the previous year. Months sentenced to state prison also increased by about 3% in election years, or about 4% compared with the preceding year, according to the study.
The increase was concentrated primarily in less serious, nonviolent cases rather than violent crimes.
“For high-profile murders, the behavior is going to be kind of agnostic to where you are in the election cycle,” Okafor said in a news release, in part because voters may be more likely to remember such cases.
Okafor also found that the election-year effects were strongest in parts of the South and in Republican-leaning counties. The effects declined as national support for harsher punishment softened after the mid-1990s, according to the study.
During the 1980s and 1990s, politicians frequently campaigned on being “tough on crime,” amid the war on drugs and passage of the 1994 federal crime bill under President Bill Clinton. Prison populations grew dramatically during those decades.
Okafor’s research suggests that prosecutors at the time may have responded not only to laws and formal criminal justice policies, but also to what they perceived voters wanted.
“The study provides evidence consistent with prosecutors having responded to perceived voter preferences,” Okafor said in the news release. “That is why efforts to change public attitudes toward punishment deserve as much attention as efforts to change policies or officeholders.”
But there are limits to what the research can establish.
The study compares election years with non-election years. It does not measure every form of political pressure a prosecutor may experience throughout a term, nor does it establish that an election itself caused the broader increase in incarceration during the period.
The broader “tough on crime” political climate could have influenced prosecutors outside election years as well, according to Okafor. Because of that, the 63,000 additional admissions associated with election years should not be interpreted as the total amount of incarceration attributable to electoral politics.
The research also focuses on 1986 to 2006, a period that predates many of the major criminal justice policy changes adopted by states in the years since.
“District attorneys are critical in promoting justice within the criminal legal system,” he said in the news release. “One responsibility is consistency: an office should charge and make plea offers the same way in an election year as in any other year.”
_Stateline reporter Amanda Watford can be reached at_ _awatford@stateline.org_ _._
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A new report says Maryland is among the states where high housing costs contribute most heavily to the state's poverty rate. (Photo Getty stock images)
## 21% of poverty in Maryland driven by high housing costs, report says
Maryland is one of 10 states where high housing costs contribute the most to the state’s poverty level, according to a new report by the Pew Charitable Trusts, that attributes as much as 21% of Maryland's poverty to its above-average housing costs.
By Danielle J. Brown (Maryland Matters) Published: September 30, 2026
Maryland is one of 10 states where high housing costs contribute the most to the state’s poverty level, according to a new report by the Pew Charitable Trusts.
The report, released Tuesday, said approximately 21% of Maryland poverty is attributable to above-average housing costs, stretching the budgets of the state’s low-income families and offsetting positive impacts of anti-poverty measures such as federal food assistance.
The Pew report says that Maryland and other states face a severe housing shortage that drives up housing costs. It urges states to prioritize building new units, arguing that a 20% decline in rental costs could significantly reduce poverty rates.
“Not only does adding housing reduce rents, it reduces poverty as well because people have more wiggle room in their household budgets, and their limited incomes aren’t as strained,” said Alex Horowitz, project director on housing policy for Pew.
While Maryland officials have pushed some measures to speed up new housing, Horowitz said more could be done to chip away at the state’s nearly 100,000-unit housing shortage.
“Maryland’s taken a couple small steps to make it easier to build housing,” Horowitz said. “Clearly taken some steps in the right direction, but not to the degree that would be needed to dig out of a housing shortage.”
According to state data based on the U.S. Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure in 2024, about 169,000 Maryland children fell below the poverty line that year, or 12.4% of that group. Approximately 400,000 Marylanders aged 18 to 64 fall below the threshold, or 10.6% of that age group, while 12% of those 65 and older, or about 131,000 people, fell below the threshold.
The report — “The Housing Shortage Is a Major Driver of Poverty” — is based on research by Zachary Parolin, a professor at the University of Oxford in England, who looked at 2023 housing costs and identified states where the greatest share of poverty was due to high rent.
Horowitz explained that the figures were calculated by looking at states with current affordability challenges and estimating how poverty may improve if rents were closer to the national average rental costs.
“Maryland’s median rent right now is over $1,800. In the U.S., the median rent is a little under $1,400. So if Maryland added enough housing so that its median rent was in line with the national average … how much of its poverty is caused by that gap?” Horowitz said. “The answer, 21% of Maryland’s poverty is attributable to that.”
Other states with the highest share of housing-driven poverty include Hawaii, California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Colorado, Connecticut, New York and New Hampshire, as well as the District of Columbia.
Hawaii topped the list, with the highest percentage of poverty driven by housing costs, at 34%. High housing costs are responsible for up to 42% of Hawaii’s child poverty, the report said.
Meanwhile, Maryland had the seventh-highest percentage of housing=driven poverty, at 21%. The report shows that 17% of Maryland’s child poverty is driven by housing costs, lower than most of the other states.
But the report says that efforts to boost housing supply can reduce poverty. They point to cities like Austin, Texas, and Minneapolis that built so much new housing that inflation-adjusted rents have fallen by 20%.
If Maryland were similarly able to reduce inflation-adjusted rent by 20%, the state’s poverty rate could fall by 24% overall and for children, according to the analysis.
“Housing costs are the biggest line item in most families’ budgets and so each dollar that goes to higher rents isn’t available to cover food, transportation, clothing, healthcare needs and day-to-day spending,” Horowitz said. “That’s why the poverty threshold is so sensitive to housing costs. High housing costs crowd out essential spending.”
What type of housing to build is a question for research analysts and lawmakers. Horowitz says that while subsidized housing is still necessary, even building new housing for higher income households can create an “escalator effect” that helps the affordability challenge at large.
“When there’s a lot of housing getting built, the escalator moves up, and people trade into better options,” Horowitz said. “High-income residents tend to move into new homes, and that frees up the homes that they were living in before. Those tend to be occupied by people whose incomes are a little lower, and so on.”
> Financing, permit challenges stand in the way of building new housing, officials say
But a significant housing shortage leads to the opposite effect, where lower-income households are frozen out of housing options and face increased risks of homelessness.
“When there’s not a lot of housing getting built, the escalator moves down, and people trade down to find something they can afford,” Horowitz said. “It’s important to build subsidized housing too and the lowest-income residents still need housing choice vouchers.”
The report suggests that lawmakers reform permitting and zoning laws to allow faster approval of new builds.
Removing red tape in permit approvals has been a legislative priority for Gov. Wes Moore during his term, though his efforts often run up against county officials who may be skeptical of policies that weaken local authority.
As lawmakers prepare for the 2027 legislative session, Horowitz suggests that they continue to push bills that encourage new housing options, such as legislation that makes it easier to convert office spaces into residential units, increase production of smaller “starter homes” homes on smaller lots, or remove the limit on how many non-relatives can live in a residential unit.
“When not enough housing gets built, low-income residents get frozen out, and there’s not much to choose from,” he said. “Anti-poverty programs are crucial, but rising rents are consuming a lot of the dollars that we’re spending on those programs, and that’s money that households need in their pockets to cover day-to-day bills.”
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# Places to stay. Western NC housing recovery continues 2 years after Helene.
by Walker Livingston, Carolina Public Press
September 28, 2026
**Connie Guinn** is the mayor of Elk Park, a little town in Avery County, just a couple of miles from the North Carolina-Tennessee border on Highway 19E. It’s right by Roan Mountain, which Guinn pointed out from the mountain ridge where she lives. A few days ago, she got the keys to her completely rebuilt home, replacing the structure that was significantly damaged during Tropical Storm Helene two years ago.
On Sept. 27, 2024, the remnants of Hurricane Helene, reduced to tropical storm strength, struck Western North Carolina, eventually causing the death of 108 North Carolinians. Many more people lost their homes and livelihoods. Many people who lived in Western North Carolina when Helene hit have since relocated to other areas because of a myriad of reasons — housing and financial pressures being some of the foremost ones.
When Helene hit two years ago, the Elk River flooded 30 feet, which swept away and destroyed many homes in its immediate vicinity. There was one reported fatality in town, and seven across Avery County, a shocking number in a county of about 18,000 people.
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Guinn wasn’t the mayor then, but she was heavily involved in the volunteer efforts. Her house wasn’t fully destroyed, but it was uninhabitable. Mud and debris had come down from up the mountain that their little neighborhood sits on and gotten up under her house. Guinn and Tommy returned to live in their home in the immediate aftermath of Helene, but they later discovered that there was black mold growing and that the home needed a new foundation.
She received some funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, but was later contacted by RENEW NC, the state Department of Commerce’s single-family home rebuilding program, last year about doing a full rebuild on her home, she told Carolina Public Press. RENEW is still continuing its long work across Western North Carolina, including four other homes in Avery County.
“The road is still bad in places down through there, down below Minneapolis,” Guinn said. Minneapolis is a small, unincorporated community in remote, mountainous Avery County that was heavily impacted by the storm. It’s one of a handful of communities in Avery that runs along the now-defunct East Tennessee-Western North Carolina Railroad, known better as “The Tweetsie.”
The new home of Elk Park Mayor Connie Guinn and her husband Tommy, seen on Sept. 22, 2026. The original home on the site was badly damaged in 2024 during Helene. Colby Rabon / Carolina Public Press
Guinn and her husband have been living in a short-term rental while her house has been under construction. They’ve been lucky enough to stay just down the road, she said. When she found out that she would be getting her home rebuilt so quickly, she couldn’t believe it.
She spent her career in local government, and when she retired, she got bored. So naturally, she ran for mayor in 2025 and was sworn in in December. She had spent her career working as the town clerk, but when she retired in 2023, she couldn’t stay away.
“I love this town,” she said. “My whole life's been here and working for the town, my kids grew up here, and I just want to give back and just do the best I can do for the town.”
Guinn lived in her home, which is just up the road from town hall, for the past 33 years with her husband Tommy. She said she wants to preserve Elk Park’s small-town charm while keeping it relevant. She said she’d like to see a restaurant open up in town.
Standing on the porch of her new home, rebuilt on the site of the old one damaged during Helene in 2024, Elk Park Mayor Connie Guinn looks out across her community in Avery County on Sept. 22, 2026. Colby Rabon / Carolina Public Press
RENEW NC started work on her house last fall, and now, two years after Helene, she’s just waiting on the general contractor to sign off on the last couple of things before she moves back in, but she just got her keys to the home.
“I didn’t think it was real,” Guinn said.
### Breaking down dollars
Helene damaged more than 73,000 homes across North Carolina, which cost about $15.4 billion, according to the state’s Office of State Budget and Management. North Carolina estimates that the storm cost nearly $60 billion in total damages — but federal and state funding toward the disaster has only covered about $14.4 billion. Federal funding for the disaster falls short compared to storms like Hurricane Katrina, where the federal government funded about 70% of recovery.
In **Gov. Josh Stein** ’s June letter to North Carolina’s congressional delegation requesting $10 billion for Helene recovery, he wrote that $3 billion should go to unmet housing needs. At a campaign rally in Gastonia earlier this month, President **Donald Trump** joked that he would withhold remaining federal recovery funds from North Carolina if Republican candidate **Michael Whatley** does not win the upcoming Senate election. He later said he was just joking.
In March 2026, FEMA extended housing and rental assistance to Helene survivors until Sept. 30, when individuals living in temporary housing will have to relocate. Individuals who were still living in temporary FEMA housing in Helene-affected areas have been paying rent on a sliding scale since then, according to the agency’s website.
FEMA gives disaster assistance grants to help with repairs, which max out at $42,500. The average cost of rebuilding a home is around $276,285, according to the Governor’s Recovery Office of Western North Carolina, or GROW NC. RENEW is one of the quickest-moving programs of its kind in terms of rebuilding single-family homes during disaster recovery.
RENEW helps low- to moderate-income families and individuals rebuild their homes that were damaged by Helene. The program is funded by a community development block grant for disaster recovery (also called a CDBG-DR) from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Ryan Walker, construction manager with Renew NC, shows Elk Park Mayor Connie Guinn around her new home on Sept. 22, 2026. The original structure on the site was badly damaged during Helene in 2024. Colby Rabon / Carolina Public Press
“It has been so gratifying to see how quickly the federal government approved our HUD action plan and got money to the state, and how quickly folks were able to get their applications turned in and select contractors,” **Scott Elliot,** the deputy director of engagement for GROW, said. “It's an amazing story of the good that the government can do.”
Families and individuals must make less than 120 percent of their area median income to qualify for the RENEW Single Family Housing Program. The program has 2,200 active applications and has currently completed 150 homes in Western North Carolina.
Many people who were affected by Helene don’t qualify for RENEW. The program has 5,696 ineligible or inactive applications, according to the program’s online dashboard. Applications for RENEW’s single-family housing program closed on Jan. 31 of this year. Funding gaps and the lack of insurance coverage for Helene damages have had a heavy economic burden on Helene survivors. Less than 1% of those affected by Helene had flood insurance.
A number of nonprofits and volunteer organizations, commonly known as Volunteer Organizations Active in Disaster, have avoided taking government funding for rebuilding efforts because of some of the red tape, hurdles and bureaucratic processes that come with construction. For instance, in order to repair a home damaged by Helene, government agencies must do extensive documentation on the ownership of a home before repairs even begin.
### Red tape of rebuilding after Helene
Disaster recovery happens in long, slow phases. In the immediate weeks after Helene, efforts were focused on doing water rescues and getting water and food into the region quickly. Last year, efforts worked to stabilize the region’s utilities and infrastructure. Today, as homes are still being rebuilt, recovery efforts are pivoting toward building back with resilience.
**Molly Maynard** , the chief program officer at Pisgah Legal Services, has worked to help families navigate some of this red tape and help individuals and families find the best relief option for their rebuilding processes. Along with rebuilding through RENEW NC, some families can opt to have their homes bought out by the Hazard Mitigation Program, which is managed by FEMA at the federal level and the state Department of Public Safety.
“A lot of times barriers that people are facing are that they have lived in a home for a long time and acted as the owner of the home, but it is inherited property, for example, and there isn’t a record that reflects their ownership,” she said.
The CDBG-DR grant is one of the few disaster-relief grants that can also be used for multifamily housing. Some housing advocate groups, including Pisgah Legal Services, sent a letter to the Asheville City Council in May 2026 requesting that the remaining CDBG funds be focused on multifamily housing, rather than RENEW’s focus on single-family homes. But the council ultimately decided to allocate the remaining $19.2 million from the grant to the single-family program.
Maynard also said renters were left out of Helene relief advocacy. She said some people continued to pay rent on homes that had not been repaired, and that is still the case in some areas, despite the FEMA rental assistance that is ending soon. A big misconception about Helene is that recovery is done — there are people who are still in temporary housing and many who have not found a new normal, Maynard said.
“The way it’s set up, it almost assumes that because you didn’t own a house that got destroyed, you're fine,” she said. “That’s just not the case.”
Extreme Weather Survivors is a national network that connects those who have experienced natural disasters, like Helene. **Gina Heath** is a community organizer with the group who was born, raised and still lives in Marshall in Madison County. After Helene, 25 of the 27 homes in her neighborhood near the French Broad River were destroyed. She did not lose her home, but lost property and utilities for her camper and was displaced for six months after the storm.
Heath said she thinks there have been minimal safety nets for those impacted by Helene. She’s seen some of her neighbors who have fallen through the funding gaps still live in trailers or in temporary housing. While FEMA maxes out at $42,500, some people with damaged or destroyed homes in Marshall got just a fraction of that.
“I did not hear any say, ‘Oh, I got a nice good FEMA check; that’s gonna really help,” she said. “I did not hear a single person say that even though I was on a street with homes that were completely destroyed.”
There are a number of nonprofits and religious organizations, such as Baptists on Mission, Samaritan’s Purse and the Appalachian Service Project, that have rebuilt homes that were damaged or destroyed during Helene. Baptists on Mission, an arm of the North Carolina Baptist Convention, has fully rebuilt 1,163 homes that were destroyed during Helene, with roughly 100 more in progress. Samaritan’s Purse, another Christian organization that is based in Boone, has rebuilt 300 homes damaged by Helene across Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee.
Some of these groups repaired homes in Heath’s neighborhood, along with a grassroots recovery movement in Madison County that has turned into the county’s long-term recovery group. These groups, which are now active in many Helene-affected counties, connect survivors of the storm with nonprofits that provide many different kinds of resources.
“If you didn’t have organizers on your street or in your holler with you, you might have fallen through the cracks,” she said.
### Coming home after Helene
In Black Mountain, about a 20-minute drive east of Asheville, **Vincent Groce** is finally getting back into his home, thanks to RENEW. After living in a motel while his rebuild has been in progress, he’s excited about being able to cook his own meals in his own kitchen and be in his own space again.
“I’m ready to get home and get my stuff in here, get set up and clean,” he said. “I just come home and just enjoy the peace and quiet again.”
Vincent Groce of Black Mountain stands in the kitchen of his newly rebuilt home, two years after Helene devastated his residence and those of many of the people in his community. Walker Livingston / Carolina Public Press
Like Guinn, Groce continued to live in his home in the months after Helene. Like Guinn, Groce is also a native of Western North Carolina and lived in his home for 12 years prior to Helene. He lives with his grandson and his dog. In the immediate aftermath of the flood, he traveled to Greensboro when I-40 reopened to stay with his daughter, but returned when power and water came back on.
But one day, his grandson, who lives with him, fell through the rotted flooring in his room on the other side of the home. He lives in a community of mobile homes — some of his neighbors have homes that still bear physical damage from Helene and others have had repairs completed.
On Sept. 18, Groce got to see his rebuilt home for the first time with members of the Governor's Recovery Office and the RENEW team. Groce feels like the new home has lifted a burden, and he’s been trying to help others in his community awaiting repairs find resources, either through RENEW or other avenues, he said. Rebuilding is still continuing in Western North Carolina, no matter which group or agency is doing it.
“Thank you for all that you have endured and for just being a beacon and a model, and for everyone else, and to remind us of why we do what we do, " Elliot told Groce. “Even though the government people would say this is short, it's been two years.”
This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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# NC received $75 million for childcare centers after Helene. Why haven’t any providers received funds yet?
by Lilly Knoepp, NC Local
September 24, 2026
When strong winds of Hurricane Helene devastated Western North Carolina in fall 2024, daycare teacher Amitra Tutt said she and her mother, Cynthia Logan, felt blessed. The Forest City in-home daycare they run avoided flooding and experienced only a three-day power outage, unlike nearby Lake Lure and Chimney Rock which saw massive flooding.
But their Tiny Tots Daycare building didn’t escape unscathed. A tree from a neighbor’s yard fell on the roof. The daycare, which Logan has operated for more than 25 years, closed for a month to make $36,000 in repairs to the roof and siding.
Tiny Tots is one of dozens of daycare facilities in the region that suffered physical and financial damage from Helene.
It looked like help was on the way for Tiny Tots and other childcare facilities in Western North Carolina when federal relief flowed to the state in February in the form of a $75.8 million grant for storm-related damage.
But now, two years since the storm, none of those funds have left state coffers, leaving childcare staff like Tutt wondering if they will ever get help.
Eight months after the storm, the Division of Child Development and Early Education (DCDEE), a unit in the state Department of Health and Human Services, put out a call for daycares in areas affected by Helene or by Tropical Storm Debby, another storm which caused a statewide emergency the month before Helene.
The announcement asked providers in affected areas to complete a report called a Disaster Impact Report. Childcare operators had until July 1, 2025, to complete an application so that the state could make its application to the federal government by mid-September 2025.
Across the region, 129 childcare facilities filed Disaster Impact Reports with DCDEE, noting damages, lost wages and additional services. Of those, 54 completed the reports, totaling approximately $5.7 million requested in assistance.
Tutt first completed the form in April 2025, hopeful for some relief.
She and her mother had received the $750 allocation from FEMA for food replacement, but they didn’t get any funding from FEMA for the roof.
While their home insurance covered a small part of the cost – about $4,500 – the business insurance did not provide any coverage. The pair was left on a payment plan with the roofing company that, because of interest, they estimate will cost nearly $70,000 to pay off.
“We're praying that we get it because it's been a big strain,” Tutt said.
The federal government notified North Carolina officials of the $75 million award in February 2026, but a DCDEE spokesperson told NC Local the funding was not released by the federal government until May.
Although “states were allowed to move forward with the funding after the kickoff meeting” in May, according to the DCDEE spokesperson, the department has yet to distribute funds to any of the 54 applicants.
The department has focused on hiring a disaster support team, developing a program for new childcare facilities on college campuses in the region and exploring a wage supplement program for providers, a DCDEE spokesperson told NC Local in an email.
The agency has also been “planning for statewide emergency preparedness and response events that will be conducted in 2027 for all childcare operators,” she said.
DCDEE declined NC Local’s requests for interviews.
The division has started hiring staff to “support and oversee the disaster funds,” the spokesperson told NC Local. DCDEE has spent $25,000 for staffing. That's the first chunk of the $75.8 million that has been spent, according to DCDEE.
The department said it hired a project manager in July 2026 and four disaster relief consultants this month. The staff “will be the first point of contact for childcare operators who are in need of assistance,” the spokesperson said.
The agency plans to begin reimbursing childcare operators in the fall, a timeline some potential recipients say is too little, too late.
Marcia Whitney, president and CEO of Buncombe County’s Verner Center for Early Learning, said she expected more help from the state.
“It's been disappointing, to be completely honest. I felt heartened when two weeks after the storm our state government said, ‘We're going to be doing something to help you all,’” she said.
Like much of Buncombe County, the Verner facilities – one at Warren Wilson and one at Emma Elementary School – closed for five weeks due to lack of water, leaving more than 200 children without a facility.
The centers applied for about $38,500 in DCDEE funding as reimbursement for business expenses including mental health support groups that Verner offered to families of young children in Swannanoa. The application request is just a small part of what Helene cost the center, Whitney said.
“It's better than nothing. And two years after the storm it feels less impactful. It would have been a great joy if it had been sooner, but here we are,” Whitney said. “We'll be glad to receive it, whenever it is received.”
## Waiting for help
In the 25 counties FEMA declared disaster areas immediately after the storm, 820 licensed early childhood education providers were in operation when the storm hit. The affected counties experienced a net loss of 145 childcare facilities from October 2024, immediately following Helene, to September 2026, according to the agency.
Rural counties suffered some of the greatest net losses of licensed childcare facilities, a March DHHS report showed. Some childcare centers in the region closed permanently after the storm.
Matt Calabria, director of GROW NC, the governor’s recovery office for Western North Carolina, acknowledged the need for a fast response.
“We have prioritized speed, and we know that dollars are most effective when they are deployed early and strategically to help folks get back on their feet,” he said. “It's much better to help a business or a childcare center bounce back a month after the storm than 12 months after the storm.”
Calabria said the recovery efforts aim to deploy state funds in the interest of speed, but there is a desire to leverage federal funding when possible.
While the recovery office pushes for quick and effective relief, the responsibility for providing assistance services ultimately rests with the agencies, he said.
“A lot of what we have done is programmatic oversight of the various programs trying to coordinate across agencies,” he said. “The details of this program and of most programs are handled by the agencies themselves.”
One area of concern expressed by childcare professionals in the region is the lack of communication from the agency about the funding.
The DCDEE spokesperson said information was distributed through a weekly newsletter for childcare facility operators and quarterly virtual and in-person NC Child Care Commission meetings.
Verner Vice President Kaitlyn Guyer, who submitted their application in July 2025, said they have not received any direct communication about their application since submission.
“There hasn't been a lot of that information and so it's just sort of been a waiting game,” Guyer said.
The report was submitted into an agency portal Guyer said she checks frequently hoping for any updates.
Guyer said she hopes their application included the correct information because she hasn’t filled out an impact report before.
“It's a little confusing. I imagine other providers who don't do a lot of grant applications might have been a little confused,” she said.
The Christine W. Avery Learning Center (CWA) in Swannanoa is one of hundreds of childcare centers that haven't applied for the DCDEE funding yet.
It’s not that the center, which opened under new leadership in the week before the storm, doesn't need the additional funds. But almost two years after the storm, the center has been working through a number of other grants.
Damage to school supplies and furniture totaled more than $150,000, not including damage to the facility. Lost income, which is eligible for reimbursement, totaled about $120,000. Managing director Sandra Lovelace said the center has been able to recover 70% of losses through grants and partner funding.
Lovelace said their head of operations focuses on grant writing, but it is difficult work.
“It's a paperwork hill to climb in order to get and achieve those funds,”Lovelace said. “It's on our to-do list. I know right now we're in a heavy grant writing season for a couple different things.”
## **Nonprofits and state funding fill immediate needs**
While the bureaucratic hurdles slowed the response of the federal funds, a state allocation of $10 million by the General Assembly to the North Carolina Partnership for Children for Helene-affected counties was the first line of defense for support. By the end of June 2026, the organization had distributed $6.35 million through local affiliates, serving 7,808 children in 14 of the 16 eligible counties, according to a GROW NC report.
Local partnerships gave out the grants to childcare centers in their regions. So far, these funds have served 7,808 children in 14 of 16 eligible counties, according to GROW NC’s August 2026 report.
Verner was one of the recipients of the state funds, receiving about $14,400 for mental health and bilingual resilience training they provided after the storm, Guyer explained.
While they waited on DCDEE funding, Verner received assistance from a variety of other sources including NC United Way and an Emergency and Disaster Relief Fund funded by Dogwood Health Trust, WNC Bridge Foundation, and the Community Foundation of Western NC (CFWNC). Liability insurance also covered lost revenue and food lost during the power outage.
“Basically all of our expenses and lost revenue that were directly related to Helene and its immediate aftermath have been covered by a variety of funding sources,” Guyer said in an email.
They still have a pending application with DCDEE, but Guyer acknowledged the other relief they received puts them in a better position than other applicants.
“We know that many other childcare providers in our region have not been as fortunate!” she said in an email.
Asked about the delays, Calabria said he understands the on-the-ground perspective.
“The paradox of recovery in virtually every major area is that you can be moving very fast compared to your peers and your past and the national experience and still from the survivors' perspective be moving slowly,” Calabria said.
Tutt in Forest City said the wait is taking a toll.
“It's been very stressful, and it's been causing a lot of stress, depression, anxiety," she said. "I wake up with a headache stressing myself every day. I know it's because I'm worried about my mom and her health problems and stuff, and she's stressed about it too.”
_Note: Dogwood Health Trust is a funder of NC Local. See our editorial independence policy_ here_._
This article first appeared on NCLocal and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
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# Meet Chicago’s First Street Psychiatrist
Sam Jackson was once a student of James Withers. This week, the pioneer of Street Medicine watched Jackson take over Chicago’s Street Psychiatry pilot program.
by Josh McGhee, MindSite News
September 28, 2026
Dr. Jim Withers (left) and Dr. Sam Jackson (right) at South Shore Cultural Center for the official launch of Chicago’s street psychiatry team. Photo: Roxanna De La Torre
To the young Sam Jackson, now a Chicago psychiatrist, his Uncle Mike was the All-American Man: quarterback and captain of the football team. And handsome with a curly-q cowlick like Elvis.
But, when Mike got sick — paranoid and hearing voices, symptoms of his schizophrenia — that all changed. There was no more school and no more football. He became a wanderer — not just around Iowa, where he grew up — but the country: Pittsburgh, Denver and Boston. Then, one day police burst into Uncle Mike’s apartment and shot him in the arm and stomach while he was holding a knife.
“The apartment manager knew he had an illness, knew he was off his meds and called for help specifically to get him to a hospital,” Jackson told MindSite News. “He was in the hospital for months, and in sort of a twisted sense of justice, the police department sued him for assault because he had a knife. He ended up in prison for several years for essentially the crime of having a serious mental illness and being in his home with a knife while people broke down the door and shot him.”
That incident, which occurred when he was just 10 years old, would propel his journey to become Dr. Sam Jackson, Chicago’s first street psychiatrist, he said Wednesday afternoon on the South Side at the official launch of the city’s Street Psychiatry pilot program. Two five-person teams composed of a psychiatrist, psychiatric nurse, social worker, peer responder and an addiction specialist have been working the streets since July.
Currently, the teams, which cover the entire city, have about six patients each. The goal is for each team to serve 25 patients, which they’re meeting at shelters, public transit stations, parks, park district buildings and, even, Cook County Jail. Each patient is seen at least twice a week.
“As a provider, there's no feeling more defeating than knowing someone needs help and not having the tools, resources or flexibility to meet them where they are,” Ryann Billitteri, project manager for the Officer of Substance Use and Recovery Services, said at the launch event. “Programs like these are changing that.”
## Chicago’s Street Psychiatrist: **The Beginning**
Dr. Sam Jackson in a talk after his speech at the South Shore Cultural Center (Photo: Roxanna De La Torre)
Jackson began working with the unhoused by volunteering at homeless shelters. Eventually, he met Dr. Jim Withers, who walked the streets of Pittsburgh in the early 1990s delivering medical care to the unhoused. After speaking with Withers, he aspired to become a street psychiatrist, especially after he saw how many people were already doing the work.
Still, his uncle’s story didn’t come to the forefront of his mind until George Floyd was shot in 2020, he said.
“I reflected not just on the community violence that I was seeing in Brooklyn by police, but also my own family’s trauma,” he said.
He interviewed his uncle and his grandmother because the details of the incident weren’t shared or discussed. That’s when he was given a box of medical records and court filings about his uncle.
“I was given the torch of injustice — figure out what you can do. As a psychiatrist, I wanted to have non-police crisis response. I wanted to improve our crisis response system generally, but I also wanted to dedicate myself more upstream to prevent the crisis,” he said.
Eventually, he was inspired to learn from Withers, a 2015 CNN Hero and founder of the Street Medicine Institute, on the streets.
Withers, who is considered a pioneer of street medicine, has introduced his methods to small groups of students for years taking them under the viaducts and into the woods where the unhoused live. Even after three decades of teaching students, Jackson was a memorable standout, Withers told MindSite News.
“He came with his own deep sense of purpose, commitment and imagination. I had hopes for him, but I think he’s exceeding them with his leadership in making this a field of medicine — street psychiatry — and his ability to collaborate with people,” he said. “I watched him in action yesterday, and the people love him that he serves.”
The pilot program is funded for a year with the option to renew for an additional two years. Grants and funding aren’t the key to success, but commitment and collaboration are, according to Withers.
“It’s about people that have gotten to know their sisters and brothers on the street and won’t turn their back on them no matter what,” he said. “A successful program has to have people with lived experience guiding them on the street, but also holding the team accountable for whether we’re drifting off the real needs of real people. When you’re in the street you realize, I can’t do this by myself. I have to get to know the other services, I have to talk to them. I have to find a way to make this work, not just get polarized.”
This article first appeared on MindSite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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# NYC Ditches Federal Homeless Veterans Program, Citing Concern for Transgender Vets
### The city says the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs would require it to discriminate against trans vets to receive funding. The VA says that’s “false.”
By Andrew Giambrone, The City Reporter
Sept. 24 6:07pm EDT
Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration is pulling out of a federal program meant to help veterans transition out of homelessness, alleging the Trump administration would have required New York City to discriminate against transgender vets seeking shelter to receive the funding.
But federal officials are denying that claim, and say the city walked away from the program after the veterans agency notified the Mamdani administration the city would receive less money than it had in the past.
The size of the funding discrepancy was not immediately clear, but the city will no longer participate in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ Grant and Per Diem program as of Oct. 1, the start of the federal fiscal year. The Borden Avenue Veterans Residence shelter in Long Island City has benefited from the program for nearly two decades and was not on the list of GPD grantees released last week. The department announced $318 million in those grants to hundreds of organizations nationwide for three-year periods beginning next month.
> _Know something about this story that we don't? Talk to our reporter Andrew Giambrone at agiambrone@thecityreporter.nyc._
In response to The City Reporter’s inquiries, the city Department of Homeless Services confirmed it is dropping out of the program — introducing uncertainty around future funding for the Borden Avenue shelter, which serves more than 200 veterans through a combination of federal and city dollars.
"The agency did apply for the grant, but the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs only awarded a small portion of the previous awards while requiring that the agency discriminate against certain veterans by excluding transgender veterans from seeking shelter in VA-funded beds,” DHS spokesperson Neha Sharma said in a statement late Tuesday. “As a right-to-shelter city, we decided it was in the best interest of the veterans we serve to ensure access to shelter for all veterans experiencing homelessness.
Veterans Day parade goers move up Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, Nov. 11, 2025.
“There has been no disruption to critical services for veterans residing at this site, and the city is actively assessing and planning next steps,” she added.
The city’s longstanding right to shelter generally guarantees a bed for anyone who needs one. DHS did not directly answer specific follow-up questions, including how the VA was purportedly requiring the department to discriminate against trans vets and whether DHS raised any concerns about this with federal officials.
Quinn Slaven, press secretary for the VA, said in a statement that the city’s allegation “is false.”
“VA has limited resources and distributes these awards based on past performance, demonstrated need and ability to provide high-quality service to veterans,” he said. “With these factors in mind, VA evaluated the Borden Avenue facility and determined that it could not justify a larger award.”
An Aug. 7 letter obtained by The City Reporter and signed by the acting executive director of the VA’s Veterans Health Administration said the city’s grant would end on Sept. 30, as DHS had “chosen not to pursue continuation of the grant.” According to the VA, the city agency relayed that intention after U.S. officials provided a preliminary award amount for the next grant period.
The revelations follow a cordial meeting between Mamdani and President Donald Trump at Gracie Mansion on Monday, after which the mayor said they had spoken about “how to improve the lives of New Yorkers,” especially when it comes to the city’s high living costs — a key driver of local homelessness.
## Lawmaker Demands Answers
City Councilmember Joann Ariola (R-Queens) sent a letter Tuesday afternoon to DHS Commissioner Erin Dalton, demanding answers about the agency’s decision to quit the GPD program.
Councilmember Joann Ariola (R-Queens) attends a full Council meeting, Oct. 10, 2025.
“The city has a responsibility to pursue every reasonable resource available to support our veterans,” Ariola wrote. “Federal funding opportunities should not be disregarded without a compelling, transparent justification, and the burden should not fall on veterans who depend on these services.”
Ariola’s office estimates the current grant amount at around $4 million a year for between 125 and 150 beds. It is unclear whether the Borden Avenue shelter is the only city shelter that currently benefits from the GPD program.
“This should not be an either-or choice,” Ariola told The City Reporter in a statement Wednesday. “We can make sure transgender veterans have a place to stay without walking away from millions of dollars that could help other veterans in need.”
In her letter to Dalton, the councilmember requested a “detailed written response” within two weeks about why the department was ditching the program, including supporting documentation and whether DHS “intends to reconsider its decision and pursue future federal grant opportunities.”
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# $6B data center planned for Jefferson Davis, one of the poorest counties in the country
By Katherine Lin, Mississippi Today
September 30, 2026
A $6 billion data center is being planned for Jefferson Davis County.
The developer, Eagle Rock Partners, hosted an informational meeting on Tuesday to talk with people about their concerns and answer questions about the project, which is called the Big Woods Technology Park. Construction could begin as early as 2027.
“Get informed. Get answers – straight from the people who know,” read a flyer for the meeting in Bassfield.
**READ MORE:** Your questions about Mississippi data centers, answered
Eagle Rock Partners told Mississippi Today that the company is in the design stage and is working on submissions. It is proposing a three-building complex that will be around 2 million square feet and said it will not request abatements or incentives. The company expects the project to create 200 permanent jobs and over 1,000 temporary construction jobs.
“Eagle Rock looks forward to creating new opportunities in Jefferson Davis County and creating resources for them to continue the ‘Mississippi miracle’ for their community,” the company said.
Gary Russell Bass, director of the Jefferson Davis County Economic Development Association, said residents can go to a website the developer has set up to find answers about the project. Bass said he wants the project to be transparent to the public and be a model for how to develop a data center well.
The website for the Big Woods Technology Park says the data center would use a closed loop cooling system to consume minimal water and use natural gas generation located on site that will need to be approved by the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality before operation.
The site is on private property, and Jefferson Davis County does not have zoning, which means that the developer has more leeway to build what it wants.
WDAM reported that some residents expressed concerns at Tuesday’s meeting over water usage, utility rate hikes, noise and opportunities for community feedback.
Bass said that he did not seek out a data center, rather the developer approached him. When he first met with the developers, he said he shared many of residents’ apprehensions but, through conversations and due diligence, many of his concerns about water usage and electricity were addressed.
He said the project is in an isolated part of the county, away from homes and that the Board of Supervisors is working on agreements between the county and the developer to make sure residents will have the best possible outcomes.
Jefferson Davis is one of the poorest counties in the country with a population of about 11,000 that has declined in recent years. Bass said the jobs, investment and expected tax revenue from the data center “could completely transform this county.”
Eagle Rock Partners is developing data centers in Georgia and South Carolina, and recently it canceled plans to build one in Illinois.
There are seven data center campuses under construction in Mississippi. Collectively, they represent over $55 billion of investment in the state.
Local officials in other counties have said data centers present an opportunity to boost tax bases and make infrastructure upgrades. Amazon is expected to pay millions of dollars in taxes each year to the Canton Public School District that could go towards repairing buildings or raising teacher salaries. Compass Data Centers has partnered with Meridian Community College on a workforce development program.
However, many data centers have faced stiff community opposition in Mississippi and across the country over water, electricity rate hikes, environmental impact and concerns about artificial intelligence. In Southaven, Elon Musk’s SpacexAI has resulted in multiple lawsuits over the company’s use of mobile gas turbines. Residents can hear the turbines day and night and worry that the turbines are hurting the area’s air quality.
_Correction, 10/1/2026: This story has been updated to remove incorrect information about a lawsuit filed by the Southern Environmental Law Center._
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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# At meeting, community members ask to keep L.B. Landry High School open. But the district says that might not be viable.
by Safura Syed, Verite News New Orleans
September 29, 2026
Hundreds of alumni and community members packed L.B. Landry High School’s auditorium Monday (Sept. 28) night, asking to keep the school open after its operator, Algiers Charter Schools, voted last week not to renew the contract that keeps the school running with the Orleans Parish School Board.
Wearing gold and blue, the school’s colors, supporters addressed NOLA Public Schools district Superintendent Fateama Fulmore and asked that the district either run the school directly or identify another charter operator to take it over after Algiers Charter Schools contract ends at the end of the 2026-2027 school year. The district was informed of the operator’s decision of nonrenewal on Sept. 3, according to a report by independent news site the Lamplighter.
“No decision has been made by NOLA Public Schools or the Orleans Parish School Board,” Fulmore said. “In fact, I haven’t even received the documents from the action that’s already been taken. It's not in my possession yet. I know the meeting has occurred. They have made a decision, but what I'm trying to explain to you all is that there is a process by which this happens.”
Fulmore said that a decision about Landry’s future would be formally made on Dec. 9, when the Orleans Parish School Board is scheduled to vote on charter school renewals and closures. During Monday’s meeting, Fulmore told community members that options to keep the school open might not be viable. The school, which is housed in a sprawling $54 million campus that was built with post-Katrina federal recovery funds, has experienced severe enrollment declines over the past several years. And another charter school network might not have the money or resources to take on an underenrolled school, Fulmore said.
With lower birth rates and a shrinking population in the city, the NOLA Public Schools district is experiencing some degree of underenrollment at a number of schools. But the decline at Landry has been dramatic. Its enrollment has fallen from more than 1,200 students a decade ago — when it was known as L.B. Landry-O.P. Walker College and Career Preparatory High School — to 496 during the 2025-2026 school year, according to district data. It has earned a D performance score for the past three years.
Responding to calls for NOLA Public Schools to take over Landry directly rather than hand it over to another charter operator, Fulmore noted that the city’s only district-run school, The Leah Chase school, is among the district’s underenrolled campuses.
“I’m direct-running a school now that people don’t send their children to,” Fulmore said.
The district has at least one “charter on the shelf” — an approved charter agreement without an operating school — that could run a high school. But the decision, Fulmore said, will be made in December.
For many attendees, the root cause of the issue isn’t district underenrollment — it's the charter school model itself. Bridgette Martin, who graduated from Landry in 2003, before the city’s schools were handed over to charters in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, said she wants the district to bring back the traditional public school system. She said the district should acknowledge that underenrollment isn’t just due to low birth rates. Around 23% of children in New Orleans either attend private schools or are homeschooled — higher than the national average of 14 percent, according to the Data Center. The city, however, had higher than average private school enrollment both before and after the switch to a charter-based model.
“There's so many schools that are still closed and yet you're still saying you're not succeeding,” Martin said. “So, is closing schools answering the problem? Or do we need to re-strategize a new way to answer the problem?”
The closure leaves Edna Karr, which is run by InspireNOLA, as the only high school on the city’s West Bank. Karr’s enrollment has been stable at more than 1,000 students for the past five school years, according to district data.
Wearing gold and blue, the school’s colors, L.B. Landry supporters called for the school to remain open next year. But district officials are not sure that will be possible.
### **New district policy**
The meeting at Landry was one of three community outreach events planned by the district to address and inform the public about underenrollment, and new policies that will be shaping the school system. The district has lost about 7% of its students since 2019, according to Fulmore’s presentation, partially due to declining birthrates and migration out of the city.
Fewer students in seats and stagnant per-pupil funding mean that schools can’t utilize economies of scale, and that serving students becomes more expensive, Fulmore said. To mitigate this, the district has encouraged charter operators to close or consolidate their schools, bringing more students into one location. The board has also enacted policies that make it easier to close schools, and the Louisiana Department of Education has changed its school performance score system, which will increase the number of schools receiving lower scores. The district factors those performance scores into their decisions on whether or not to keep a school open.
The district has said it needs to close five to six K-8 schools and two to three high schools by the start of the 2029-2030 school year to increase fill rates at individual schools.
Fulmore told the crowd that she came to speak “from a place of facts.”
But attendees at the meeting pointed to the legacy of the school, which first opened in 1938 and became a high school in 1942, and its namesake Dr. Lord Beaconsfield Landry. It was the first in Louisiana to be named after a Black person.
U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, who grew up in Algiers and still lives there, urged the district in an open letter to keep the school open, and to “begin a transparent search for a qualified operator, publish a clear transition timeline, and provide the enrollment, financial, and academic support Landry needs to remain open.”
_Robert Stewart contributed reporting._
_Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the date on which Algiers Charter Schools informed the NOLA Public Schools district of its decision not to renew Landry's charter contract._
This article first appeared on Verite News New Orleans and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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# One-page ballot may not ease voting for Maricopa County voters with disabilities
by Noah Flug, Cronkite News
September 24, 2026
PHOENIX – Maricopa County will reduce its general election ballot from two sheets to one in November, potentially improving efficiency for Maricopa County elections officials but not necessarily making the ballot easier for voters with disabilities.
Sey In, an attorney with Disability Rights Arizona who works on voting rights, said in a statement the effect depends on each voter’s individual needs, the ballot design and how the person votes.
“Generally, we can’t say whether a one-page ballot is more or less accessible than a two-page ballot,” In wrote in response to email questions.
Fewer statewide measures made the reduction to one page possible, though the average Maricopa County voter will still see more than 80 contests on the ballot, 57 of which are judges seeking to remain in office, the Maricopa County Elections office said.
Adrian Borunda, a communications officer for Maricopa County Elections, said moving from two sheets to one is “easier logistically” as the county will have half as many sheets to prepare, mail and tabulate.
The ballot in Maricopa County for the 2024 general election was two pages. In that election, Borunda said the county handled about 4.1 million ballot sheets.
When designing the ballot, he said the county considers readability and the number of contests a single sheet can hold. Arizona’s Election Procedures Manual says ballot text should be no smaller than 8-point type and must have enough spacing to be clearly understood.
Bill Gates, an Arizona State University professor who leads its Mechanics of Democracy Laboratory and served on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors through 2024, stated the shorter ballot has clear administrative benefits, but whether it makes voting easier, particularly for those with disabilities, remains to be seen.
“You can make the ballot physically shorter without making the voting task easier,” Gates wrote in response to questions. “Cognitive burden comes from the number and complexity of decisions, the amount of information voters have to process and how easy it is to find and understand each contest.”
An election staff worker analyzes a voting ballot in the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center on Nov. 5, 2024. (File photo by Dylan Wickman/Cronkite News)
For Robert Murphy, a 19-year-old college student with autism, the one-sheet format is less important than its readability and his ability to vote by mail. He said polling places can be stressful and transportation is difficult because he does not yet have a driver’s license.
Murphy said the new format would not pose a personal problem “unless the font’s really small or hard to read.”
Under federal law, voting systems must give voters with disabilities the same opportunity for access, privacy and independence as other voters. Maricopa County says each vote center offers curbside voting and an accessible voting device.
Voters using the device make selections through a touch screen, audio or tactile controls. The machine then prints their selections for tabulation. The county also offers braille and large-print ballots.
County records show those services are used. During the 2022 general election, 1,503 voters used accessible devices in person and 27 braille ballots and 362 large-print ballots were distributed.
David Carey, who has limited hand movement because of a spinal cord injury from a gunshot wound, votes from home. Although one sheet means less paper to handle, Carey said the key issue for him is whether he can vote without relying on another person.
“The main goal should be privacy, independence and equal access,” said Carey, who is chairperson of the AZ Disability Advocacy Coalition.
Maricopa County has expanded its accessible voting options after a 2018 federal civil rights advisory report said long lines may have prevented some voters with disabilities from casting ballots during that year’s election.
The county adopted a vote-center model in 2020, expanding accessibility and allowing voters to use significantly more locations rather than relying on one assigned precinct.
While the one-page ballot will make things easier for the county, Gates warned election officials against trading fewer sheets for a more crowded design.
“The danger is solving the paper problem by creating a readability problem,” he stated.
Borunda maintained reducing the ballot from two sheets to one would not affect readability. He said the ballot-design team considered all voters, including those with disabilities.
Officials considered “everything from readability to how many contests we can get on the page,” Borunda said.
This article first appeared on Cronkite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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