Hunger and Homeless Summit hopes to shed light on rural poverty in Wisconsin

Rural leaders are meeting today in Wisconsin for the third annual Hunger and Homeless Summit, Jonathan Anderson reports for the News-Herald Media. The summit was started by Rep. Sean Duffy, a Republican whose hometown of Wausau (Town Maps USA map) has 39,000 residents, 681 of whom stayed in homeless shelters last year, up from 539 in 2013, according to the United Way. Overall, Wisconsin, with a population of 5.75 million, had more than 6,000 homeless people last year, according to a federal report.

"U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro is expected to attend, and Duffy said he hopes to show Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio, that poverty is just as much of a problem in rural areas as it is in urban centers," Anderson writes. Duffy told Anderson, “Hunger is not partisan. Homelessness is not partisan. It’s a human issue. It’s a community issue that we have to address.” (Read more)