Author: WisContext

As Wisconsin ages, and as its population of senior citizens grows, the health care workers who attend to them face growing risks of overwork and burnout. These factors are colliding to put nursing homes and other long-term care facilities around the state in a bind. While conventional wisdom is that health care is a growing industry that creates a wealth of opportunities for good jobs, the industry as a whole is facing worker shortages, and employees in Wisconsin’s residential and long-term care facilities are facing increasing levels of stress and fatigue, according to a report the Wisconsin Assisted Living...

Wisconsin’s latest dispute over landlord-tenant relations has crucial implications for people enduring abusive relationships. The state’s regulations on rental housing have been transformed over the past decade, with a new law being enacted every legislative session since 2011. These changes reduce local governments’ power to regulate the rental properties, and generally give landlords more leverage over their tenants. Passed by the Republican-led state Legislature and signed by Gov. Scott Walker, these laws have generally been supported by landlord interest groups. The latest round is no different. On April 16, 2018, Walker signed Act 317, which limits how long some...

Milwaukee area high school students looked to the example of youth leaders from the Civil Rights Era in an effort to change national gun policies. One day after the nationwide March for Our Lives, which included more than a dozen demonstrations around Wisconsin, a group of about 40 students from more than a dozen schools started a 50-mile long trek from Madison to Speaker Paul Ryan’s hometown of Janesville in the state’s 1st Congressional District, which he has represented since 1999. The group, called 50 Miles More, is calling for comprehensive changes to gun policy as part of the...

Discussions about international refugees in Milwaukee have focused largely on three groups: The long-established Hmong community, the newer Somali community and a small number of Syrian refugees who have resettled in the state over the past few years. But in the last decade-and-a-half, these three communities combined account for fewer refugees resettling in Wisconsin than those coming from the southeast Asian nation of Burma. Between 2002 and 2016, more than 5,000 refugees from Burma were resettled in Wisconsin, data from the U.S. Department of State shows. Over the same time period, more than 3,300 refugees from Laos arrived in...