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For the better part of last year, the pandemic eased its grip on Oregon’s economy. Awash in federal assistance, including direct checks to individuals and parents, many of the state’s most vulnerable found it easier to afford food, housing and other daily staples. Most of that aid, which was designed to be a temporary bridge, has run out at a particularly bad moment, the New York Times reported. Oregon, like states across the nation, has seen its economy improve, but prices for everything from eggs to gas to rent have spiked. Demand is growing at food banks like William Temple House in Northwest Portland, where the line for necessities like bread, vegetables and toilet paper stretched two dozen people deep on a recent day. “I’m very worried, like I was in the first month of the pandemic, that we will run out of food,” said Susannah Morgan, who runs the Oregon Food Bank, which helps supply William Temple House and 1,400 other meal assistance sites. In March 2021, President Biden signed into law a $1.9 trillion aid package aimed at helping people stay afloat when the economy was still reeling from the coronavirus. In addition to direct checks, the package included rental assistance and other measures meant to prevent evictions. It ensured free school lunches and offered expanded food assistance through several programs. Those programs helped the U.S. economy recover far more quickly than many economists had expected, but they have run their course as prices soar at the fastest pace in 40 years. The Federal Reserve, in an attempt to tame inflation, is rapidly raising borrowing costs, slowing the economy’s growth and stoking fears of a recession. While the labor market remains remarkably strong, the Fed’s interest rate increases risk slamming the brakes on the economy and pushing millions of people out of work, which would hurt lower-wage workers and risk adding to evictions and food insecurity. Several factors have driven prices higher in the last year, including a shift in spending toward goods like couches and cars and away from services. Supply chain snarls, a buying frenzy in the housing market and an oil price spike surrounding the Russian invasion of Ukraine have also contributed. While gas prices have fallen in recent months, rent continues to rise, and food and other staples remain elevated. Another factor fueling inflation, at least in small part, is the stimulus spending that helped speed the economy’s recovery and keep people out of poverty. More money in people’s bank accounts translated into more consumer spending. While the extent to which the rescue package fed inflation remains a matter of disagreement, almost no one, in Washington or on the front lines of helping vulnerable people across the country, expects another round of federal aid even if the economy tips into a recession. Lawmakers have grown increasingly concerned that more stimulus could exacerbate rising prices.

The cost of raising a child through high school has risen to more than $300,000 because of inflation that is running close to a four-decade high, according to a Brookings Institution estimate, the Wall Street Journal reported. It determined that a married, middle-income couple with two children would spend $310,605 — or an average of $18,271 a year — to raise their younger child born in 2015 through age 17. The calculation uses an earlier government estimate as a baseline, with adjustments for inflation trends. The multiyear total is up $26,011, or more than 9%, from a calculation based on the inflation rate two years ago, before rapid price increases hit the economy, the Brookings Institution said. Brookings calculated the cost of raising a family based on a 2017 estimate from the Agriculture Department. The estimate covers a range of expenses, including housing, food, clothing, healthcare and child care, and accounts for childhood milestones and activities — diapers, haircuts, sports equipment and dance lessons, among other costs. The annual inflation rate eased to 8.5% in July, down from 9.1% the prior month. Gasoline and other energy prices fell from the prior month, but food prices continued to climb. Prices for food at home were up 13.1% in July compared with the year before, the Labor Department said, adding pressure to household budgets.

Bank of America said on Wednesday overdraft fee revenue for June and July was down 90% from last year, as a result of lowering the fees charged to customers whose account balances go negative, Reuters reported. The second-largest U.S. bank was one of several to have reduced or eliminated overdraft fees over the past year after the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) put a spotlight on the charges, saying banks made more than $19 billion from them in 2019. Since December, Capital One Financial Corp. has said that it would stop charging overdraft fees entirely, while the largest U.S. bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, said it would give customers more time to bring their accounts back above $0 before charging them fees. Bank of America took a different route, cutting overdraft fees to $10 from $35 starting in May. It also eliminated the $35 non-sufficient funds (NSF) fee customers pay if a check or automatic payment causes their account balances to go negative, and it eliminated the $12 fee charged when customers use overdraft protection services.

A judge has rejected a challenge to a voter initiative aimed at limiting so-called predatory debt collection, finding that opponents of the measure did not prove a summary provided to voters who signed qualifying petitions was misleading, the Associated Press reported. The ruling by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Frank Moskowitz also turned away an argument by the attorney for a newly created group funded by Arizona debt collection agencies that alleged that paid petition circulators were improperly registered with the secretary of state’s office. Moskowitz said the Predatory Debt Collection Protection Act qualifies to appear on the November ballot. His ruling is not the last word, however. Attorney Kory Langhofer, who represents a newly formed group called Protect Our Arizona that was funded by debt collection agencies, said Wednesday he has already filed an appeal with the Arizona Supreme Court. The secretary of state also still needs to certify that that proponents turned in enough signatures, although the group backing the measure, Healthcare Rising, turned in more than twice the nearly 238,000 signatures, meaning it is nearly certain it has enough to make the ballot. Healthcare Rising is primarily funded by the California-based Service Employees International Union, which represents nurses and other health care workers, government employees and others in that state.

In a pair of aggressive moves targeting for-profit college chains, the Education Department on Tuesday wiped out about $4 billion in debts owed by students who attended ITT Technical Institute schools and sought to recoup $24 million from DeVry University, the New York Times reported. The moves are part of the department’s efforts to crack down on the for-profit education sector and help students who have been defrauded. The agency said that it would automatically discharge all remaining federal loans for 208,000 borrowers who attended ITT Technical Institute schools from 2005 until the chain’s collapse in 2016. It is the second time that President Biden’s administration has automatically eliminated the debts of defrauded students, after a similar move in June that forgave nearly $6 billion owed by more than 500,000 former students at Corinthian Colleges, another large for-profit chain that imploded. “In recent years, too many for-profit colleges and career schools have been caught defrauding and deceiving their students,” the education secretary, Miguel A. Cardona, said. “Their entire business model relied on driving students deep into debt, and then they laughed their way right to the bank.” Both ITT and Corinthian went bankrupt years ago, leaving taxpayers on the hook for the debts now being forgiven for the schools’ former students.

Eviction filings nationwide have steadily risen in recent months and are approaching or exceeding pre-pandemic levels in many cities and states. That’s in stark contrast to the pandemic, when state and federal moratoriums on evictions, combined with $46.5 billion in f ederal Emergency Rental Assistance, kept millions of families housed, the Associated Press reported. “I really think this is the tip of the iceberg,” Shannon MacKenzie, executive director of Colorado Poverty Law Project, said of June filings in Denver, which were about 24% higher than the same time three years ago. “Our numbers of evictions are increasing every month at an astonishing rate, and I just don’t see that abating any time soon.” According to The Eviction Lab, several cities are running far above historic averages, with Minneapolis-St. Paul 91% higher in June, Las Vegas up 56%, Hartford, Connecticut, up 32%, and Jacksonville, Florida, up 17%. In Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, eviction filings in July were the highest in 13 years, officials said. Some legal advocates said the sharp increase in housing prices due to inflation is partly to blame. Rental prices nationwide are up nearly 15% from a year ago and almost 25% from 2019, according to the real estate company Zillow. Rental vacancy rates, meanwhile, have declined to a 35-year low of 5.8%, according to the Census Bureau.