In Easthampton, Massachusetts, near Holyoke, work will begin next month to convert a vacant, three-story factory into 50 or so apartments for poor and working class people. The multi-million dollar project is funded partly by a state program that was created by activists in 2000. The Community Preservation Act uses money from taxes to create affordable housing and protect farmland, forest land and wetlands from development.

More information about the Act is at www.CommunityPreservation.org. Vermont has a similar program: www.vhcb.org.

The downtown Easthampton factory is a brick building on Cottage Street known as the Dye Works. The company that applied for and received the state money for the project is Arch Street Development of Boston.

As of 2007, the richest 10 percent of Americans controlled 73 percent of the nation's wealth. The bottom 60 percent of Americans controlled 4 percent of the nation's wealth. That data is from:

www.stanford.edu/group/scspi

One way to reduce inequality is to raise taxes on the rich and use the money to help the poor. Another is for workers to join a union, or to become more active in their union if they have one. On average, workers make more money when they join a union.