DC-Area Apartment Rents Rise, Vacancy Second Lowest in the Country (Urban Turf via DCentric): “… rents in the DC area for Class A and B apartments have risen 3.6 percent over the past twelve months while vacancy rates sit at 2.8 percent, the lowest for any metro area in the country except for New York City.” For Class A apartments (primarily large buildings constructed after 1991), the vacancy rate is just 1.6% and rental rates “averaged $2,582/month, up from $2,448/month in September 2010.” So not only is affordable rental housing difficult to locate in the city, any rental housing is not easy to come by — and the search alone can require both funds and time.

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CNN reported this afternoon that the “toll in the tornado that ripped through Joplin soared to 116 on Monday … tying it for the single deadliest twister to ever hit American soil since the National Weather Service began keeping records.” Staff and volunteers from over forty agencies are still on the ground looking for survivors. According to the Post, La Nina (“cyclical drop in temperatures in the Pacific Ocean“) might be behind the over 300 tornadoes that have swept from Mississippi to Tennessee in the past several weeks — and nearly five weeks still remain “until the traditional end of the season.”

The blog Post also provided a list of ways to help on the ground and from afar. While we’ve seen this continually (and recently), social media’s power during unexpected crises sure is striking. Case in point: the blog points out that Relief Spark is keeping track of which shelters are open and then links directly to the organization’s Twitter feed — which not only lists the open shelters, but also gives the phone numbers for triage centers and donation drop-off points. Numerous Facebook pages have sprung up to help “residents find loved ones [including pets] and help one another recover.”

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Welcome to Wednesday, Greater Washington! Non-profits news to come …

DC Collaborative Congratulates Mayor’s Arts Awardees — Many CFP cheers to the 2011 winners, who were announced last week at the Kennedy Center! A winner in 2007 for Innovation in the Arts, the Capital Fringe took home this year’s award for Excellence in Service to the Arts. Now in its 32nd year, Dance Place received a well-deserved nod for Outstanding Contribution to Arts Education. Congratulations!

Low Health Literacy May Have Deadly Consequences — WebMD Health News reported yesterday that, according to a new study from the Journal of the American Medical Association, “nearly one in five people with heart failure have low health literacy, making them more than twice as likely to die as a result of their condition … even after adjusting for other risk factors, such as age, heart pumping ability, and coexisting illnesses.” (Learn more about CFP’s Health non-profits, who are working to improve access to care and education) Read all »

Good morning, folks! Just a small bundle of non-profits news and notes this week …

How You Can Change The World in 40 Hours a Week — As James McBryan aptly points out on the Taproot Foundation blog, “Changing the world is hard. Changing the world while balancing social, professional, family, and financial needs is even harder.” But contributing to your community (or a community thousands of miles away) can be part of the job that you already have. He tells a great story about creating a volunteer-tracking system for a local rose garden pro-bono — which not only benefited the gardeners, but led his company to realize that “this idea was something many organizations could use and [we could] create a platform from which hundreds of organizations could all benefit.”

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