Date: January 16th, 2024 To: Chairman Brown and Members, Emerging Issues Committee From: Trina Ragain, Lead Policy Strategist, Empower Missouri Re: Support for SB 750 Founded in 1901, Empower Missouri is the largest anti-poverty advocacy organization in the state. As part of our work, we organize a statewide Affordable Housing Coalition. This coalition is made...Lee mas

I am so grateful to be a part of the Empower Missouri policy team as the newest Affordable Housing Policy Manager. I have been involved with the organization, first as a coalition member and then as a board member, before joining the staff, and I knew this was where I wanted to be. In this...Lee mas

Darlene S. has faced challenges in housing her entire life, but things have gotten progressively harder in recent years. After experiencing two evictions, the most recent being a decade ago, she has faced mounting barriers to housing. Combined with increased rents and requirements of 3 times rent in income, renting anything became impossible. Darlene has...Lee mas

Early this month we launched our first Housing Justice Fellowship, in partnership with Springfield Tenants Unite. For our pilot cohort, we brought together 12 tenants with varied experiences renting in Springfield. Some have prior experience with tenant organizing, some do not, but all are committed to learning how to organize their community to win policy...Lee mas

How much would a person have to earn to afford rent and utilities on a modest 2 bedroom apartment in Missouri today? According to this year’s Out of Reach Report, released by our partners at the National Low Income Housing Coalition, Missouri’s average fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment is $964 a month. Working...Lee mas

Missouri is short of nearly 115,000 affordable and available housing units needed to meet the housing needs of Extremely Low Income Missouri families. Of these 115,000 ELI households, the overwhelming majority, 85%, consist of workers, individuals with disabilities and seniors. These vulnerable households often need to pick between keeping the lights on, keeping their household...Lee mas

Among Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs are the lowest and arguably most important necessities humans require to exist; physiological needs. These include basic essentials such as air, water, food, sleep and shelter. Required needs. Not optional. Required. Housing is required for humans to survive, so why do we treat it as a luxury for those privileged...Lee mas

Empower Missouri started over 100 years ago as an annual conference, making the job of planning and executing our annual Anti-Poverty Summit even more significant. Ask any nonprofit staff and they’ll tell you that conference execution is no joke. I have to uplift our team and give them a round of applause: 2022’s return to...Lee mas

In 2018, I read Peter Temin’s book The Vanishing Middle Class. He got a lot of press coverage when the book was released, in large part because of his thesis that households who are working to escape poverty really need about 20 years without catastrophe. He theorized that on an individual level, it is sometimes...Lee mas

At Empower Missouri, we know that we can change lives through effective and targeted policy change. Too many of our neighbors struggle to get their everyday needs met. Housing insecurity, hunger, over policing, historical exclusion: these negative outcomes we see today are a result of intentional, targeted, often racist policy decisions made generations ago. We...Lee mas