For years, Leon Hudson struggled to get high quality home internet in the countryside of Selma, Alabama. 

If he wanted the service, he would “have to get a petition, go to the neighborhood, and get people to sign it for them to put their stuff there,” the 50-year-old recalled last fall about what internet service providers told him.

Hudson lives in a remote area with few neighbors. It wouldn’t be enough to satisfy a petition, let alone persuade internet providers to build infrastructure that’s costly and not economically feasible. Communities in rural areas shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to get a service that’s readily available in non-rural areas, residents have told Capital B.

The only two providers available to him were HughesNet and Viasat, and they only provide satellite dish service. He signed up for HughesNet, which cost $200. The service was slow, unreliable, and expensive, he said, so he cut it off. But, he needed the internet to get his business off the ground. 

Last fall, he applied for the federal government’s Affordable Connectivity Program through Xfinity, his mobile phone provider. The program, administered by the Federal Communications Commission, provides a discount of up to $30 per month ($75 for tribal households) toward internet service and mobile services, and a one-time discount up to $100 toward a laptop, desktop computer, or tablet for eligible low-income households. 

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Read More: Disconnected: Rural Black America and the Digital Divide 

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He now pays only $30 per month for mobile hotspot and cellular service, but he received a notice in March that his benefit will soon be suspended. Without the discount, he can’t afford to pay the monthly expense. When asked last week how he will pay for the additional costs, Hudson told Capital B: “I have no choice but to figure it out.” 

Hudson is one of the 23 million Americans who are at risk of losing internet access or forced to pay higher prices to keep subscriptions. The funds for the ACP program are drying up. With the program ending in May, it’s unclear whether Congress will reauthorize funding for the program.

Several organizations, including the NAACP, Color of Change, and African American Mayors Association, have urged Congress to pass the bipartisan Affordable Connectivity Program Extension Act of 2024, which would provide $7 billion for the ACP program. The bill has been referred to the Senate Appropriations Committee. If it passes, it will move to the U.S. Senate for discussion.  

Brandon Forester, national organizer for internet rights at MediaJustice, fears the temporary lapse of the ACP could create additional hardships for individuals beyond being disconnected. In addition to the $7 billion, there needs to be more discussion about sustainability and addressing the root causes of the digital divide. Partly, how federal funds go directly to the internet providers who refused to make infrastructure investments in the first place.   

“I’m not saying we shouldn’t have the ACP, but it’s a Band-Aid — not a structural fix — that doesn’t go towards addressing the core issue,” Forester said. “In some ways, it inflames the core issue and inflates the issue of affordability.” 

“It’s so much more than the internet”

The program has been particularly helpful for low-income households in the rural South, where about 38% of Black households don’t have home internet — a higher percentage than white people in the same region and the national average. 

Almost half of the households that enrolled in the program are military families, and nearly half were over the age of 50, according to a White House fact sheet. At least one in four households were African Americans.

Although 5.4 million rural households were eligible for the program, only 37% had enrolled, the lowest percentage of all geographies, an analysis by the Daily Yonder shows. Despite this, the rural South, where folks are least connected, had the best participation rates. About 41% of eligible rural households in the South enrolled, whereas about half of eligible urban households signed up. 

Through The Black Churches 4 Digital Equity initiative, Pamela Price, deputy director of The Balm in Gilead in Virginia, made it a priority to enroll residents into the ACP program. She recalled their eagerness and genuine desire to learn and engage digitally. It wasn’t just about having the internet, but using it as a “launching pad” to connect with the larger world and improve their lives, she said. 

“They were extremely excited to see all that could be done with a fully functioning laptop and quality broadband. They then could be able to improve their well-being and economic statuses for their family,” she added. “We showed them just by having one digital skill — knowing that 92% of all jobs today require you to have at least one digital skill — increases your earning potential. It’s so much more than the internet.”

Despite the program’s success, outreach remained an issue. 

Whether the program dies or gets a new life, organizers caution that the suspension of the benefits will erode trust they’ve worked so hard to build with Black communities, who already don’t trust the government. 

“This was one that they volunteered for … and to now perhaps tell them, ‘Well you can keep it, but you’re going to have to pay what everybody else will be paying for it’ … it’s extremely disheartening,” Price said. “[We] consider how we will exhaust funds and find ways to pay for certain programs and activities for certain people in this country, as well as people outside of this country, but when it comes to something like the ACP, we can’t do it.” 

They also wonder whether people will reapply for the program — a process that is tedious and requires participants to share sensitive information. Individuals must complete verification, find a provider who accepts ACP, and apply the subsidy to the internet plan.

The process can take up to 45 minutes. In some instances, it can take longer to get approval if the applicant runs into issues with documentation, said Danielle Davis, director of technology policy at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

Capital B submitted a FOIA request to the FCC requesting the complaints regarding the Affordable Connectivity Program from January 2022 to November 2023. Of 7,000 complaints filed, Capital B reviewed a sample of 900. We found that customers had challenges verifying documentation, receiving the subsidy, or reapplying for the benefits. Some people mentioned their internet service provider tried to upcharge them for the service.

“Approval is not always immediate; about 45% of applicants are actually rejected,” Davis told Capital B. “Additionally, many applicants just abandon their application before submitting them.” 

Other options to consider 

Although affordability is one of the largest barriers to broadband access, there hasn’t been enough focus on it, said Alisa Valentin, broadband policy director for Public Knowledge. It wasn’t until the coronavirus pandemic hit that Congress instituted the Emergency Broadband Benefit program, a short-term emergency program to give up to $50 on internet service. That program ended in 2021 when the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law created the Affordable Connectivity Program. 

Prior to that, the only program that existed for low-income residents was the Lifeline program, which was created in 1985 through the Universal Service Fund to provide monthly discounts to either telephone or broadband internet, or bundled services. But the subsidy, a $9.25 discount for eligible subscribers and up to $34 for tribal members, isn’t helpful for families, advocates told Capital B. 

Advocates, organizers, and public interest groups aren’t giving up, as there are other legislative avenues to pursue if the Affordable Connectivity Program Extension Act of 2024 doesn’t pass, Valentin said. One option: reform the Universal Service Fund and fold the ACP into the Lifeline program. On the state level, lawmakers can find ways to continue to fund the program.

The government isn’t alone in solving the problem. More pressure needs to be put on internet service providers, too, said Jillian Morrison, Delta Legal Fellow with the Delta Directions Consortium, a network of individuals, academic institutions, groups and foundations to create solutions and positive change for communities in the Mississippi Delta region. She has hosted ACP signup events in Mississippi.

Through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, $42.5 billion went to states through the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program to build out infrastructure. The infrastructure is contingent on people affording the service.

“It’s not good enough to just have the actual infrastructure, people have to be able to adopt it. So affordability is key,” Valentin added. “We know that a new digital divide can occur in the future, especially when you’re talking about artificial intelligence. We do not want communities to be behind because they don’t have an affordable, reliable broadband connection. There’s a lot at risk.”

The post Millions May Lose Internet Benefits if Lawmakers Don’t Act appeared first on Capital B News.

Sonja Thompson Roach remembers the moment last year when a photographer took photos and interviewed her son and his friends for a Time magazine story on mental health and teens. 

 

The photo and interview shoot in her Northeast Georgia home required absolute quiet for the audio and the right time of day for the lighting. 

 

But one thing stood out the most.

 

Black rural Americans are still feeling the strain of the failed promises of the Reconstruction era and discrimination in lending, as redlining has pushed them away from homeownership into tenancy.

A new report illuminates the struggle: Southern Black counties have higher eviction filing rates than their white counterparts. In four states — Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina — rural counties have higher eviction filing rates that are near or above the national average. The rates are also higher than larger cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. 

In nearly every rural county, Black renters were overrepresented in eviction filings — even in majority-white counties. For example, in counties that are 20% Black, 50% of evictions are filed against Black households. In counties that are over 50% Black, around 75% of evictions are filed against Black households. 

About 17 million people in rural America rented homes in 2018, representing significant growth since 2000. During the same period, more than 220,000 evictions were filed against people in rural areas. White households made up 57% of evictions; however, the rates were four times higher for Black households, according to new research. The findings provide an analysis of the crisis in rural America using Princeton’s Eviction Lab national database. 

The crisis isn’t just about economics. It’s also about race. 

Poverty and racism in the housing and rental markets are major contributors to why the racial disparities persist, the report stated. Nearly 31% of rural Black residents live in poverty, compared to 20% of the urban Black population.

“While poverty leads to evictions, eviction has never been a strictly economic phenomenon,” the authors wrote. “The effect of race is so powerful that one can explain lower eviction rates in many rural communities in large part through the fact that so few Black Americans live there.”

The current day homeownership gap wasn’t a failure of the system, but an intentional result, said Christopher Tyson, president of the National Community Stabilization Trust, a nonprofit focused on creating affordable homeownership opportunities.

“The homeownership that is disproportionately experienced by white Americans was the result of intentional action by the government and was the result of specific policies that created the reality we have today,” Tyson said. 

Urgent call to address the crisis

Despite more affordable rent in rural areas, tenants are more likely to be cost burdened than rural homeowners, meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on housing costs. Additionally, they pay more in utility and transportation costs.

With the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s affordable housing programs set to expire on March 22, experts project the crisis will worsen as development and gentrification pushes rural families out. Another issue is the lack of uniform data regarding evictions, which advocates say could benefit such programs to assist tenants. 

Organizers demand federal, state, and local governments address the structural inequities by creating new programs and policies to protect Black families. Tyson added that his organization supports legislation such as the Neighborhood Homes Investment Act, a bipartisan bill that would create a federal tax credit to build new construction or rehabilitate affordable housing in distressed areas, which include rural neighborhoods. They are also working with other coalitions and federal agencies like HUD to build on existing programs.

Dara Gaines, a rural researcher and strategy communication engagement consultant, added that part of the solution is to increase wages, as well as provide education on tenants rights, more housing, and universal child care.

“People can then focus on working … and have more flexibility so that they can have money to pay rent instead of having to choose between paying for medical bills or paying for the rent,” she said. “During the pandemic we saw the eviction rate drop substantially, and we see it’s creeping back up, and it’s because a lot of the assistance programs are over.”

Without intervention, the report’s authors warn of continued negative outcomes of eviction on families, including job loss, deeper financial hardship, early mortality, and deterioration of physical and mental health. It also leads to decreased voter turnout and displacement, which increases likelihood of food insecurity, lead poisoning, and academic performance issues for children. By addressing the crisis, rural communities could increase economic growth and reduce population loss.

“We can continue to create opportunities to bring parity, to bring equity to the marketplace and that means we have to bring Black homeowners and others who were systematically excluded from the opportunity into the experience of homeownership,” Tyson said.

The post Rural America Has an Eviction Crisis, Too appeared first on Capital B News.

A new bill would restrict some new mining near the Okefenokee for 3 years; some environmental groups say it protects the mining company more than the swamp.

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Bill leaves out fishing access to streams navigable by small boats, canoes or kayaks.

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FAFSA change may mean fewer rural students at a time of declining college enrollment.

The post New FAFSA form may decrease aid to farm-family collegians appeared first on Youth Today.

In the letter, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra wrote that he was “deeply alarmed” by data showing that nearly 150,000 Georgia children had lost Medicaid coverage as of September.

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This is the second story in Capital B’s “Disconnected: Rural Black America and the Digital Divide” project, which explores the disparate effects of broadband accessibility on Black Americans in the rural South. This project is made possible by a grant from The Center for Rural Strategies and Grist. You can read our first story, “Digital Redlining and the Black Rural South,” here.

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SELMA, Ala. — On a warm afternoon in September, residents sit outside the Selma Dallas County Library, or in the parking lot in their cars, to connect their mobile phones to the library’s hotspot.

It’s rather quiet except for the sounds of muddled conversations and car engines in this Alabama town that became an epicenter for a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement. Less than a mile away from the library is the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the site of “Bloody Sunday” where 600 people were brutally battered and beaten by police officers for marching to secure voting rights. Nearly 60 years later, residents in the 84% Black town say they still struggle to obtain a basic service: adequate internet access.

Crystal Drye, who has worked at the library since the days of typewriters, says this is the norm. For some, it’s too costly to subscribe to internet service, the speeds are too slow, or they lack the skills to navigate an online landscape. As a solution, they stop by the library, said Drye, who serves as the technology director.

She knew the service became critical when residents came to watch funeral services, hop on Zoom calls, or watch graduation ceremonies. Even homeschooled students often utilize the resources. The library also purchased laptops and mobile hotspots to assist older residents and people with disabilities at their residences.

“I’ve taken our laptops to the nursing home so that a person can stream [church] service on Sunday,” Drye told Capital B. “I’ve taken it to a person to use to order their groceries when they need to because maybe they can’t drive to get it. … It’s nice that we can be a one-stop shop.”

This is a similar reality for millions of residents living without high-speed internet — especially Black folks in the rural South, where the digital divide is the greatest. In this region, about 38% of Black households don’t have home internet, a higher percentage than white people in the same region and the national average, a 2021 report from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies found. In Dallas County, where Selma is located, 17% of households do not have internet access, the same percentage statewide.

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Read more: Digital Redlining and the Black Rural South 

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Over four months, I made several trips across Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi and spoke to about 30 residents, experts, and advocates. Here’s how the digital divide is disrupting their everyday lives.

The high costs of low speeds

When Hans Hageman moved from New York to the Mississippi Delta to lead the Tutwiler Community Education Center last year, he didn’t anticipate his internet would affect his productivity. On a daily basis, he juggles between whether his home in Rome, an unincorporated community, or the education center in Tutwiler would be better suited for Zoom or phone calls.

He’s missed out on potential funding opportunities because he can’t upload grant applications online due to slow speeds.

“It’s always top three on the list of, ‘Is this going to work today?’” Hageman said. “I have a meeting this weekend and I have to be prepared to close my stuff and drive real fast to see if I get a better connection to make a $25,000 ask to a foundation. I could be much more productive if I wasn’t doing that.”

He’s also noticed how the inadequate service limits opportunities for the youth to participate in virtual or global activities. Hageman signed up his students for a digital sports tournament to compete with youth nationwide. During a Zoom training ahead of the tournament, his students kept “dropping off of the call” due to bad internet connections, which forced them to miss out.

Some of the kids in the 79% Black town of 3,000, want to pursue careers in content creation, media, and photography. They have dreams of being fashion designers, chefs, and entrepreneurs. He’s also working to put together a robotics program and a drone pilot program. In the back of his mind, Hageman knows they “don’t have the bandwidth to pull this off” because of the challenges with broadband.

Unfortunately, it adds to the many reasons why they want to leave their town — a place described as a food, job, and medical desert. The only place to get food is the Double Quick gas station.

“When you’re talking to the kids, none of them want to stay, and some of it is because of their access,” Hageman told Capital B. “It breaks my heart because when they go off, they are having to play catch up.”

Despite the barriers, Hageman is on a mission to figure it out.

At the height of the pandemic, nonprofit leader Gloria Dickerson learned that many families in her hometown of Drew, Mississippi — which is about 16 miles from Tutwiler and 11 miles from Rome — didn’t have access to computers or internet at home due to affordability.

The Sunflower County School District provided one mobile hotspot per household and one tablet per child. The costs of insurance — $5 for hotspot and $25 per tablet — rested on families. In households with multiple children, the fees were too costly, and one hotspot was simply not enough. Some children could not complete schoolwork at home, which caused some students to fall further behind, she said.

“Every child needs a computer at home. I see these computers as for information, but I also see it as a learning tool for the younger generation … to keep up with what’s going on in the world. Keep up with their homework. It’s just a necessity,” Dickerson said. “We can’t do it and expect these kids to thrive.”

Dickerson, who runs We2gether Creating Change in downtown Drew, opened her doors for children to use computers, and purchased iPads for every student in her program. At her building, she had a stable internet connection. About five minutes away at her home, her internet service was poor.

“It got so bad that I couldn’t watch TV. Every 10 minutes, it would go off and say it couldn’t connect. I’d call, and they’ll say, ‘Well, we can’t find anything wrong with it, maybe you need to just hit the reset button,’” Dickerson said. “You just get so disconnected. Every time you start to send an email, all of sudden it goes down in the middle of sending an email. Did that email send? Should I resend the email? It’s a mess.”

The service, which costs $75 monthly, should be better for how expensive it is, she told Capital B in September. A month before, she says, a technician finally came out, after a year and a half of calls.

Community resources aren’t available to all

In Devereux, Georgia, where Gloria Simmons has lived for over 50 years, there’s not much except a Dollar General and a few churches. She often travels for basic services, but this year, she decided the internet could help cut down on trips, specifically to pay bills and access bank statements.

One of the reasons she held out on getting the service was her lack of digital skills. Instead of relying on her daughter, who works full time, Simmons wanted to learn how to navigate the internet herself.

“We get complacent and dependent upon others. I like to try to set it up where I can at least do it and do some things on my own,” Simmons told Capital B at her home.

But, as a retiree on a fixed income, it’s too expensive, she says. She pays $60 a month for fixed wireless internet with AT&T. But some months, if she goes over her data usage, it’s $10 for each additional 50 gigabytes of data. If it increases, she says she’ll cancel the service, despite its convenience.

Back in Alabama, Henry Hall Jr. has switched back and forth between AT&T and Spectrum, formerly Charter, for years. They are two of the largest internet companies worldwide and the only options available to him. He lives in a remote area in the countryside of Selma, surrounded by trees, and his service is always “buffering,” he said. He walks nearly 20 minutes to the Selma library to use the computer and printer. Drye calls him a regular because he’s there so much.

The Selma library and the nonprofits led by Dickerson and Hageman help to provide resources to their communities to access the internet. However, many communities don’t have those resources.

In 2021, President Joe Biden signed into law the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which authorized $65 billion to fix broadband issues, including infrastructure, affordability, and digital literacy. Of that, $42.5 billion goes to states through the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program.

Currently, each state is planning how to disperse the funds, but the rollout will happen over the next four years or so. Given the history of neglect to Black communities, residents question whether the billions of dollars from the feds for broadband will reach their area.

While Hall enjoys his library visits, he hopes the federal government’s initiatives will result in better service for residents.

“It’s unfortunate that when you use the internet, it’s buffering, or if there’s too many people trying to get in on it at one time, the internet … it becomes stagnant,” he added. “As long as I get the quality,  I can use the internet when I need to use it, and that’s what I would like.”

The post How Black Rural Americans Navigate Internet Issues appeared first on Capital B News.

The new stipend for child care employees in Eagle County is funded through a lodging tax, a mechanism that Colorado communities, especially in mountain resort regions, are increasingly tapping to generate new dollars for housing and child care for people who live there. The idea is that local workers power the tourism industry, so visitors should contribute to efforts that support a stable workforce. Such taxes also reframe child care as a larger economic interest rather than just a mom-and-dad issue.

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Our study finds that over half of Florida’s 410 municipalities will be affected by 6.6 feet of sea-level rise. Almost 30% of all local revenues currently generated by these 211 municipalities come from buildings in areas that will become chronically flooded, potentially by the end of the century.

The Current is an inclusive nonprofit, non-partisan news organization providing in-depth watchdog journalism for Savannah and Coastal Georgia’s communities.