Story Cleaveland: Poor and sick in Tennessee

Stevie and Lisa, a middle-aged couple, dealt with complex, chronic illnesses, lack of health insurance and no access to professional care.

Story Poverty simulation adds new depth to training for Chattanooga police

Researchers from Southern Adventist University are working with the Chattanooga Police Department to help provide cadets with a better understanding of the economic and societal barriers experienced by those living at or below the poverty line.

Story Chattanooga City Council approves new panhandling rules

After straightening out a misunderstanding with local street musicians, it took Chattanooga City Council members only moments Tuesday to approve new rules regulating panhandling citywide.

Story Chattanooga officials notifying homeless group about relocation effort, options

As Chattanooga officials work to inform about 100 homeless people who have set up tents on a downtown lot they'll need to relocate, city council members said Monday they're looking at several options to address homelessness, including additional temporary or emergency housing.

Story Tent city residents to be relocated from contaminated site [photos]

Behind a city-owned wellness center in the 600 block of East 11th Street sits a once-vacant lot. But now about 100 homeless men and women have taken up residence there, setting up dozens of tents on the property, just down the road from the Chattanooga Community Kitchen.

Story Volunteers take stock of Chattanooga's homeless with annual Point-in-Time count

Tucked away from the street, at the far end of a field and behind some tall, dry bushes, a homeless tent city lies.

Story Your neighborhood might be making you sick, study says

Your neighborhood might make your sick, according to a study by Vanderbilt University School of Medicine researchers that was published this January.

Story Momentum growing to help Chattanooga's poor, working class gain voice

A collective of local churches, unions and community groups hoping to reshape local politics and draw attention to the needs of working-class Chattanoogans is growing.

Story Sohn: City's poverty is down, but wages are stagnant

If ever we have needed a bit of good news, it is now.

Story Local poverty rate drops to 10-year low

The share of Chattanoogans living in poverty fell last year to the lowest level in a decade as the improving economy boosted employment to record highs, according to new estimates.

Story New initiative seeks to boost economy in Appalachia

Four U.S. senators and the nonprofit Bipartisan Policy Center have proposed 19 measures to boost the economy in Appalachia, including expanded broadband and telemedicine and tapping the region's "vast" natural gas reserves for chemical and advanced manufacturing facilities.

Story Tennessee sees overall improvement in child welfare

Tennessee children have experienced an overall improvement of their well-being, according to a report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Story Chattanooga organization wants to unite public on solutions to inequality

A local coalition is hoping to unite the public around solving Chattanooga's rising inequality problems.

Story Chattanooga-born filmmaker stirs civic involvement with screening

Local poverty, jails and public schools were the topics of conversation on Main Street Wednesday night, sparked by the work of a Chattanooga-born filmmaker who has been working to stir civil engagement around some of the community's most intractable problems.

Story Chattanooga holds summit aimed at preventing toxic stress in children

Almost 25 percent of Tennesseans went through three or more stressful or traumatic experiences during their childhoods, according to a recent study.

Story Legal service advocates to provide free legal advice clinics across Tennessee

Advocates for equal justice vowed to step up services Tuesday in Chattanooga as President Donald Trump's proposed budget threatens to cut federal programs for low-income people.

Story Purposity Chattanooga helps residents aid neighbors in need

For good Samaritans looking to help out neighbors in need, there's a new tool that might make it easier to be a philanthropist.

Story Chattanooga churches discuss partnerships to address poverty, disconnectedness [photos]

Thousands of families with young children in Chattanooga face insurmountable odds.

Story United Way calls Chattanooga churches to act on poverty

Local churches will gather this weekend to discuss how members of Chattanooga's faith community can work together to address the economic desperation some residents in the city are facing.

Story Report shows Chattanoogans increasingly concerned about public safety

A recent report from the city's Office of Internal Audit shows Chattanoogans have become more concerned about public safety and raising children in town, but local researchers say the report has fundamental design flaws.

Story Chattanooga police, inspectors stand by condemnation process despite criticism

It's a process the police tout as classic community policing — a way to solve a problem and rid a neighborhood of a troublesome house or tenant without necessarily slapping someone in cuffs.

Story Chattanooga activists call for more diversity in local philanthropy

When Tonya Rooks was elected to head the residents council of Chattanooga's most troubled public housing project in 2012, she thought she knew what her neighbors needed.

Story Research quantifies Chattanooga's rising child care and education divide

Chattanooga will face serious challenges if the rising share of young children living in poverty continues to go without the care and education other local children have access to, warns a study funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, a nationally known, philanthropic heavyweight.

Story Salvation Army seeks donations to help area residents beat the heat

As temperatures continue to climb in the Tennessee Valley, more and more people need help beating the heat.

Story UTC, Cleveland State get nearly $250,000 in grants to improve students' success

The state has awarded nearly $152,000 to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and another $90,700 grant to Cleveland State for programs aimed at enabling more students to move through their courses and graduate.

Story Brainerd student overcomes homelessness, appointed to Air Force Academy

After overcoming a period of homelessness in his teenage years, Brainerd High School Salutatorian Isaiah Smith graduated at the top of his class and is heading in July to Colorado Springs for four years at the U.S.

Story St. Louis area superintendent shares ideas for improving Hamilton County's struggling schools

Tiffany Anderson was the fourth participant in the Chattanooga 2.0 speaker series. Chattanooga 2.0 is a local initiative launched in January aimed at improving the county's public schools and increasing work force development.

Story More women turning to long-acting contraceptives

Shannon Fleming was sure she knew everything about birth control.

Story Innovator to share tools for turning around low-performing schools at Chattanooga 2.0 talk

The Jennings, Mo., school district does not look like it did five years ago before Tiffany Anderson arrived.

Story Barely living in the best town ever

No one thought Chattanooga would be a tourism magnet after Walter Cronkite told the entire country on the nightly news that Chattanooga was the dirtiest city in the nation.

Story Poverty Puzzle: About the reporting

THIS SERIES WAS reported for more than a year. To have a foundation of knowledge on the issues of poverty, income inequality and economic mobility, reporters Joan Garrett McClane and Joy Lukachick Smith read more than 250 peer-reviewed studies published by major research institutions and nonprofit organizations and read a dozen books written by social scientists.

Story America's hardest-hit county is reluctantly coming together after falling apart

A hard-hit coal mining community has a lesson to teach Chattanooga about the power of community bonds, the impact of humble leadership and the healing effect of restored trust.

Story A School Like Home

In Chattanooga, we ask schools to teach children, not raise them. But one local educator, who fears struggling schools have long been misunderstood, is crossing the line and proving that when disadvantaged children are truly supported, the impossible comes into view.

Story Poverty Puzzle: Here's why both sides of the culture war are right

Communities shape families and families shape children, but in the fight to bring economic mobility to poor and middle-class children in Chattanooga, the first step is the hardest.

Story There is a story behind every story; a reporter looks back

How searching for the solution to American poverty changed a reporter's life.

Story This unlikely alliance is bridging the divide between the penniless and the prosperous

A model that unites middle class families with their struggling neighbors is proving poverty can be beat.

Story Jesus came to restore the weak, and the soul of the church is at stake

A nascent movement coming out of Chattanooga is challenging American evangelicals and their long-held stance on poverty. Jesus came to restore the weak, a local disruptor with a growing celebrity status among Protestant churches, warns. At stake, he says, is the heart of the local church.

Story Once the backbone of America, working class men have lost their way

Young men from working class families have few lifelines as the dirty jobs their fathers and grandfathers worked slowly evaporate or evolve. But local approaches that connect those lost boys, many now lost men, to pride and purpose, are proving a rebound is possible.