(October 24) – It’s no secret that the War on Poverty hasn’t been as successful as Americans had hoped it would be when President Lyndon Johnson first announced his federal anti-poverty effort, known as the Great Society. After five decades of fighting this war, and despite the consistent growth of myriad bureaucracies and programs intended to lift thousands out of destitution, we’ve seen next to no improvement in the condition of America’s poorest citizens.

(October 20) – And, as part of our Chasing the Dream series, we just recently went out to rural North Carolina. And out there, we found a large group of people and a very large issue that the truth is the campaigns have nearly ignored. It is a place rich in landscapes and in spirit, fiercely proud of its Appalachian heritage. But amid that beauty and strength, the towns of Western North Carolina are struggling, and many feel no one is listening.

(October 20) – For years, many Los Angeles residents have watched with alarm as homeless encampments spread across the city, from the sidewalks of skid row to alleys in South Los Angeles, behind shopping centers in the Valley and even on the bluffs above the Pacific Ocean. Next month, voters will have to decide whether these concerns are strong enough to approve a new tax to fight homelessness.

(October 20) – They used to pray together before school each morning. Dawn Hawkins would take her son’s hands, and with clenched eyes she’d ask for safe passage from their home through the hard streets of North Philadelphia, a sometimes-dangerous maze of gang lines, drug corners and police dragnets. “Be a shield of protection for my baby,” she’d say as part of their daily ritual.

(October 18) – How can it be that the United States spends so much money fighting poverty and still suffers one of the highest child poverty rates among advanced nations? One in five American children is poor by the count of LIS, a data archive tracking well-being and deprivation around the world. By international standards that set the poverty line at one-half the income of families on the middle rung of the income ladder, the United States tolerated more child poverty in 2012 than 30 of the 35 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a grouping of advanced industrialized nations.

(October 17) – After walking more than 650 miles, an Atlanta man marching against poverty returned home to Atlanta Sunday. Terence Lester, a self-described minister, community activist, speaker and author who co-founded Love Beyond Walls, left his hometown of Atlanta Aug. 20 and headed to the District of Columbia.

(October 16) – San Francisco has made headlines as a hub for technology — giants like Facebook, Apple and Google are headquartered nearby, as are a plethora of tech startups. At the same time, residents complain that those same tech companies are part of the cause of the city’s astronomical cost of living — and in turn, contributing to the city’s big homeless problem. Homelessness in the city is a problem well reported — the San Francisco Chronicle even ran a front page editorial earlier this year calling the “level and pervasiveness of homelessness in San Francisco” a “civic disgrace.”

(October 15) – As U.S. cities struggle to address rising homelessness, they increasingly are turning to policies pushed by commercial-property owners that ban people from sitting or sleeping on sidewalks and begging for money. Business improvement districts—groups of commercial property owners who pool their resources to revitalize their neighborhoods—have worked with some city councils to create and help enforce new laws targeting public conduct in busy commercial districts. In Denver, Berkeley, Calif., and Portland, Ore., for example, BIDs have campaigned to prohibit people from sitting or lying in public rights of way, and even sued to reverse policies that encouraged tent cities and homeless camps.

(October 14) – The images are startling: Homeless men, women and children huddled on the streets of the San Francisco Bay Area — often in the shadows of start-ups and high-tech behemoths generating billions of dollars in wealth. It’s a stark contrast that has gripped the region, and prompted four county measures on the Nov. 8 ballot to generate $3 billion over the next 25 years for affordable housing and services.

(October 12) – Tens of millions of Americans live in poverty, yet the issue has received scant attention on the presidential campaign trail. We examine the candidates’ plans to address poverty. There’s been a lot of style over substance in this presidential campaign at the expense of issues that affect millions of Americans. One of those is poverty.