This is a cross-post, by Doug Foote, from Working America's Main Street blog. 

This week, Minnesota state Rep. Jason Metsa (D) is taking the Working America Minimum Wage Challenge—living on the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. He’ll report his experience back to the Minnesota legislature, where they are considering a bill to raise the minimum wage to $9.95.

On Wednesday, Metsa’s challenge was to find a place to live. Why a challenge? His budget that he set out on Monday allowed for only $359 a month for housing.

A growing chorus of voices across the country is calling for President Obama to replace the acting director of Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), Edward J. DeMarco. DeMarco, a holdover from the Bush administration, is responsible for overseeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. President Obama’s nominee to replace him in 2010 was blocked by Republicans.

DeMarco has prohibited Fannie and Freddie from providing responsible homeowners who are struggling to keep up with their mortgages with access to principal reductions. He has even refused to allow them to participate in the Obama administration’s principal reduction program (HAMP PRA), despite FHFA analysis showing that participating in the program could save $3.6 billion for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and $1 billion for the taxpayers.

Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) proposed federal budget, as we pointed out, is bad for the nation and for working people.

But it gets even worse: Ryan’s plan, which the U.S. House has approved already, would gut what little is left of state budgets by slashing funding for a range of programs. States and localities would lose $247 billion from 2013 through 2021, in addition to the cuts they would absorb because of caps on national spending, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). (Click on chart at left to expand.)

The bankruptcies of California cities Stockton and San Bernardino weren’t caused by unions, Washington Post op-ed columnist Harold Meyerson points out in a new column, “Bankrupt Cities? Don’t Blame Unions.” Contrary to reporting on the subject, the bankruptcies of these two cities were caused by Big Banks “peddling subprime mortgages to poorly paid workers.”

The Republican majority in the Arizona House just voted to approve a budget, a compromise with Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, that critics say underfunds education, health care and public safety. But the most shocking item in the budget proposal is a plan to transfer $50 million from funds intended to help homeowners facing foreclosure to the private prison industry. Worse, some Republican legislators want to "save money" by removing auditing and oversight from private prison contractors.

The family of Abe and Irene Pollin and Enterprise Homes Inc. broke ground on a new development offering affordable housing in Northeast Washington, D.C., in recent days. MetroTowns at Parkside: The Linda Joy and Kenneth Jay Pollin Community will offer 83 new three-bedroom townhouses that will be built to meet green building standards and create more housing for D.C.’s working people. In fact, employees of the District were given the first opportunity to purchase the homes.

Massachusetts AFL-CIO President Steve Tolman and Massachusetts Building and Construction Trades Council President Frank Callahan say a recent newspaper article mischaracterizes their efforts in support of the 246-apartment construction project in Vicksburg Square that will provide homes for working families, create jobs and pump tens of millions into the local economy. 

When the nation’s housing crisis—fueled by “unscrupulous operators looking to make fast cash”–was beginning to explode, writes Richard Cordray, newly appointed head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), in a column on Politico:

When housing prices began to take a dive, revenues to state and local governments plummeted. Housing construction shuddered to a halt, creating ranks of unemployed workers who began drawing unemployment benefits rather than paying local taxes on their previously middle-class salaries. The businesses of suppliers and  service-providers to contractors were forced into downturn. And many states continued to cut taxes, causing a perfect storm of budget woes for the states.

The richest 5 percent in the United States now own 65 percent of the nation’s wealth—making the wealth gap even more unequal here than the already gaping income gap. A new report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) cites foreclosures and falling housing values as contributing to the devastation of the net worth—the wealth—of millions of U.S. households.