Posts about Poverty

A movement is most effective when blogs, traditional nonprofits, and elected officials work together to promote ideas in concert. The Coalition for Smarter Growth is working every day to turn what we believe in and discuss here on the blog into reality.

They're a small organization (4 full-time staff) and need our support, especially in this tough economic time, to continue doing their great work and to do even more. Plus, for the month of December, other donors will match every dollar you give to CSG.

Human services: Help those most in need this year with basic food, shelter, and more. This is especially important now with a bad economy, widespread unemployment, and governments cutting back on vital services. Direct service groups like Bread for the City and So Others Might Eat provide food, clothing, medical care, legal counseling, job training and more to the most needy.

The Capital Area Food Bank provides most of the food that the direct service organizations distribute. And DC Central Kitchen turns unused food from area businesses into meals for the needy, and trains unemployed people for culinary careers.

N Street Village helps homeless women find housing, get medical and mental health care, and job training; their center on 14th Street replaced an ugly parking lot and has become an anchor for more growth on its part of 14th Street. Charlie's Place helps homeless people with food, clothing and job training. AMEN gives emergency financial assistance to Arlington residents in crisis.

Advocacy membership organizations: Many nonprofit advocacy groups are structured as membership organizations. Being a member supports their work and sometimes comes with a few extra bonuses as well. Consider joining the Washington Area Bicyclist Association, and Maryland's Action Committee for Transit. The DC Sierra Club provided much of the driving force behind streetcars. And of course, if you think DC residents should have voting rights like all other Americans, join DC Vote.

Environmental groups: Sprawl constantly threatens our natural resources and, by extension, the quality of our drinking water, recreational opportunities, and more. Some of the many local groups working are the DC, Virginia, and Maryland Sierra Clubs, the Anacostia Watershed Society, Friends of Rock Creek's Environment, Anacostia Riverkeeper, Potomac Riverkeeper, and more. Casey Trees plants and nurtures street trees to help all neighborhoods develop a healthy tree canopy.

Education and mentoring: There are so many worthy education nonprofits it's not possible to do them justice here, but here are just a few to start with: For Love of Children connects underprivileged children with one on one volunteer tutors; they're looking for more volunteers as well as funding. College and Career Connections works in Ward 7 to encourage youth to stay motivated in school and go to college, which are key to success in the modern world. And Big Brothers Big Sisters of the National Capital Area has made a difference in so many children's lives.

Food security and urban farming: People struggling with hunger and homelessness aren't the only ones who need help with food. All children need healthy meals which are often difficult for poor families to afford. Urban farms and nutrition programs seek to make more fresh food available to poor neighborhoods.

Consider supporting the DC Farm to School Network, which gets healthy, local, and sustainable food to DC schoolchildren; Common Good City Farm, an urban farm and education center growing food for low-income residents; The Farm at Walker Jones is building a farm in the H Street area for kids to learn about food and to provide it to them and needy neighbors.

Your local aging in place "village": A number of neighborhoods have "village" associations which help senior citizens remain in their homes by providing assistance with illnesses and disabilities, small home maintenance tasks, and connections to community activities. A diversity of ages is healthy and important for every neighborhood.

There are villages in Capitol Hill, Dupont Circle, Kalorama, Palisades, Chevy Chase, and more. Also, Iona Senior Center not only provides services for the elderly but helped fund the Connecticut Avenue Pedestrian Action program to make upper Connecticut safer.

Others in the Catalogue for Philanthropy: This annual publication showcases valuable, small, effective nonprofits in the DC metropolitan area around sustainability, education, human services and more. It's a great way to find out about organizations worth supporting that you might not otherwise know about.

What other local and regional organizations do you support?

It's a lot easier to blame the victim than to take the time and resources to fix the problem. Mr. Barry told the Washington Times that one of his neighbors gets "$400 or $500 worth of food stamps but won't get up in the morning and fix breakfast" for her children.

Yes, there are differences in parenting styles by social class, but to assume that low-income parents are less caring, concerned, or invested, or unskilled caregivers is not true and unfair. If anything truly puts families and children at a disadvantage, it is growing up in poor neighborhoods without access to jobs, good schools, or child care providers.

Barry and Alexander's proposed legislation also fails to understand the dynamics of welfare usage. Most families do not intend to use welfare as their only source of income, but rely on welfare to make ends meet. Instead, most families that enter welfare exit relatively quickly to take low-paying jobs. Families able to maintain full-time, year-round work are much better off than before.

Others, however, end up returning to welfare. Not surprisingly, the most vulnerable are single mothers with little work experience or education. The wealth of research done since the 1996 welfare reform act indicate that there are numerous barriers that may affect a recipient's ability to transition from welfare to work, including physical disabilities or health limitations, availability of child care, mental health problems, health of behavioral problems of children, substance abuse, domestic violence, involvement with the child welfare system, housing instability, low basic skills, and learning disabilities.

Similar to the nation, welfare and food stamp usage in the District has fluctuated over the last ten years. The number of individuals on welfare was 46,576 in 2000, fell to a low of 42,300 in 2008, and rose to 45,136 in 2009. Since 2000, food stamp usage has increased by more than 20,000 individuals, from 80,510 in 2000 to 107,618 in 2009. It is clear that welfare and food stamp usage have gone up recently because of the recession, not an increase in long-term users trying to abuse the system.

Without supports, the families that Barry aims to help won't be able to overcome a multitude of barriers. Just like how education loans/grants, mortgage tax credits, etc., help middle class families achieve a higher standard of living, social support programs like welfare, food stamps, and child care subsidies present a potential solution for low-income families.

Instead of placing limits on welfare, the DC council should support the TANF Opportunities and Accountability Act of 2010 sponsored by Tommy Wells (Ward 6) and Michael Brown (at-large). The bill would invest in job training and educational programs as well as develop a better system to track welfare recipients in order to better understand when and why families enter and exit social programs.

The welfare system is far from perfect, but as the District faces continued economic turmoil brought on by the recession, this is not the time to limit access to important social safety nets. District food banks, shelters, and other social services are already strained and woefully unprepared to face coming economic hardships as the economy tries to build itself back up. Families that have not been able to leave welfare are some of the most disadvantaged families without any means of support other than social programs.

If Barry and Alexander are serious about reducing poverty and thus reducing welfare usage, they must propose more innovative policies with a multi-pronged approach that involves families, neighborhoods, educators, and employers.

In our latest report, Building Stronger Communities, we outlined both common sense solutions and innovative strategies to address this challenge, which we hope will inspire the new leaders in Prince George's County. We released this report in conjunction with our partner, Partnership for Renewal in Southern and Central Maryland (PRISCM).

Rev. Dr. Michael C. Turner, Sr., president of PRISCM and Pastor of the Miracle Center of the Faith Missionary Baptist Church in Capitol Heights has seen these challenge first hand in his congregation.

"We need leadership from a new County Executive and a new Director of Housing. While the County gives back unspent money to the federal government, many of our congregants cannot find a decent apartment to rent or a home they can afford to buy. Now is the time to transform how we meet the housing needs of our community," he said.

Our report, Building Stronger Communities, provides detailed findings and recommendations aimed at transforming the County's housing programs. We encourage the adoption of national best practices to meet the needs of Prince George's families struggling with high housing costs, poor housing conditions and other challenges. Despite the challenges highlighted in the assessment, the incoming administration offers hope for new leadership.

The Democratic nominee for County Executive, Rushern Baker, is running unopposed for the general election and the presumed County Executive-elect. During Baker's campaign, he frequently spoke about the need to focus development around the county's 15 largely undeveloped Metro stations and address residents' need for affordable housing. This is a hopeful sign for a county with so much unrealized potential.

The report provides a detailed assessment of the data and key challenges to existing housing programs. While residents in all jurisdictions face major housing affordability challenges, the statistics for Prince George's are stark:

• 46 percent of Prince George's households pay more than 30 percent of their income in housing, which is considered unaffordable by US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), compared to the D.C. region's average of 38 percent;
• By the end of 2009, the county counted 45,300 troubled home loans;
• Some 40 percent of renters cannot afford the median monthly rent of $1,131.

Boosting residents' incomes with increased local employment growth, improved education and training are part of the equation to helping families avoid paying more than they can afford for housing. Making housing more affordable to struggling families is also an important part of the solution. The county, however, has been beset by poorly performing housing assistance programs and weak leadership. According to HUD and an independent auditor's assessment, ineffective Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) program management has plagued the County:

• In winter of 2010, the County returned over $2 million in unspent HOME grant money to HUD;
• The County's FY 2010 allocation of HOME funds was already reduced by $2.2 million because of previous shortcomings within DHCD to spend allotted funds;
• Prince George's County in the 17th percentile nationwide in program performance for HOME grant funds;
• In spring of 2010, the County almost lost $2.8 million in Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds and was warned by HUD that it had failed to spend down funds in time for three consecutive years.

The County does not provide any of its own resources to leverage federal and state housing assistance. Given the substantial need, and diminishing resources, residents are looking to the incoming County Executive to fix the troubled agency and make quality housing for moderate and low income Prince George's families a higher priority.

Despite the poor record of DHCD, the County recently showed outstanding success. A one-time grant from the federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) of $10.8 million was given to the County to address the home foreclosure crisis. The County's NSP effort has been well administered and has met its goals of assisting over 600 households in purchasing foreclosed homes. NSP's success demonstrates that the County has the talent to execute a federally-funded program successfully when the outcomes of the program are given enough priority.

Our report outlines ways to improve DHCD's performance and more broadly address Prince George's residents' housing needs through new public policy actions:

1. Create a comprehensive strategy that identifies housing needs across a range of households (including income, size and composition), audits existing capacity to meet those housing needs, and strategizes with a diverse set of public and private sector stakeholders to make recommendations to fill gaps in capacity and resources.
2. Build capacity in the Department of Housing and Community Development to accomplish the County's housing goals by cultivating agency leadership and staff that demonstrate expertise in housing finance, effectively administering federal and state housing resources, and aggressively managing the County's interest in development deals.
3. Build capacity among small local nonprofits to help meet the County's housing goals by establishing a mentoring program between these nonprofits and high capacity housing development organizations. These partnerships could produce County-supported demonstration projects that would improve the County's housing stock while increasing the capacity of the smaller nonprofits.
4. Improve the existing housing stock by efficiently utilizing existing resources like HOME, CDBG, and state tax credits; establishing new, locally-funded resources like a housing trust fund and an acquisition fund; and using land use and zoning tools to promote mixed-income development.
5. Establish housing policies and processes that support development projects that fit the County's larger goals, are competitively selected, meet stringent underwriting requirements and are a good investment given the time and resources required.
6. Demonstrate political willingness to support and invest in a diverse range of housing options by aggressively backing DHCD to meet the county's housing needs and soliciting participation from industry investors, policy experts and non-profit developers through advisory committees and project review panels.

   Economic development and household wealth are built on the foundation of stable families and communities. The County has many opportunities to strengthen the economic base of moderate and low-income households who need quality housing that won't place excessive strain on their family budgets. Leadership at the highest levels is needed to create a comprehensive vision, goals and effective administrative procedures to execute programs.

   Drawing in the contributions of stakeholders outside of government, the new administration has the opportunity to transform the County' approach to addressing the housing needs of its residents and help more families enjoy the stability of decent, quality housing they can afford.

   Cheryl Cort is the Policy Director for the Coalition for Smarter Growth.

When the door opens on a weekday morning at 8 AM and our guests sign in we hope that our welcome sends a message to the men that we care about them. Throughout their stay with us they will hear us urge them to take a positive step in their lives to deal with their physical and mental health, look for work or improve their education and break the hold that alcohol and drugs have on so many homeless men.

It is relatively easy to provide a bowl of cereal in the morning and lunch at noon, to wash a man's clothes and provide him with a shower. The more difficult task is to sensitively inquire about why a man is homeless, what can we do to help him overcome his situation and what can he do for himself that will move him forward. The more interventions we do with individual homeless men the more the mental health needs of the homeless population become apparent. It is not that homeless men are crazy but that they are in many cases deeply depressed and resigned to the homeless deathstyle.

The messages we try to give our guests do not come in a vacuum. They are receiving many messages every day and our message is only one of them. What does it say to a homeless man who sleeps at the 801 East Shelter at Saint Elizabeth's when he realizes that there is one case manager at 801 for all 380 men who sleep there? It is hard to imagine that it says, "We care about you". Placing shelters far outside the mainstream of the city tells the homeless that we want them to go away.

Poverty is at the core of the homeless problem, a most complex problem. All too often we hear homeless men say that they never knew their fathers. They often had one strike against them before they could learn to talk. They often came to value the quick buck over the pains and sorrows of education. The allure of the quick buck got them involved in drugs that often led to prison. Many suffer from obvious mental illness while most suffer from mental illness that is not so obvious.

There is no simple one size fits all solution to homelessness but a solution begins with compassion that literally means "to suffer with". We can do better by the homeless and the homeless can do better for themselves so we have to work together.

Tom Howarth is the Director of The Father McKenna Center. Cross-posted at Defeat Poverty DC.

He worked the tire job after suffering health problems while filling potholes on a road construction crew. "I got asthma due to the asphalt fumes while working for the DDOT. I kept getting sick, weak to the point that I couldn't pick up the shovel with the asphalt." They fired him within a few weeks of the end of his one-year probationary period.

"I really do enjoy seeing the potholes along the roads that I had fixed down in Virginia and throughout the District."

The biggest obstacle for Calvin, however, has been his old criminal record. As a kid, Calvin was attracted to the fast life. "I was fascinated by the young guys driving Cadillacs, going to dances with alligator shoes, getting girls." He wanted that life, so as an adolescent, "I went wild."

"I didn't have to go that route. I had good parents. I had a job. I wouldn't tell my friends I had a job, but I would go out at night and then go to work the next morning."

His lifestyle caught up with him when he was arrested for armed robbery in 1973. Calvin maintains his innocence for this particular crime, saying he was fingered mistakenly and happened to fit the profile after cutting his hair shorter from an Afro in between the crime and his arrest. Nevertheless, he does acknowledge that he was engaged in other petty crime at the time.

Calvin served three and a half years in prison and six and a half on parole. He started to turn his life around while incarcerated, getting his GED, taking college classes and getting married. He saved a guard's life whose patrol vehicle turned over.

"After getting out of prison I went to work for an insurance company, but I didn't complete the training because the bills were catching up. I went to waterproofing and then job after job after job. I built experience to put myself in a position where I was more versatile and more marketable."

The 1980s ended up being a tough time for Calvin. "I started self-medicating when things weren't going so well. I did petty theft stuff and was working intermittently at the time."

Calvin has long since put those days behind him. He established himself as a law-abiding citizen and has been so for the past twenty years or more. "I did a lot of legwork that rebuts the arrests, but not the armed robbery conviction. It's the worst thing on my record. I did ten years that I can't get back."

Yet finding jobs has always been tough due to his past. "I've been paid eight dollars and hour, ten dollars an hour at companies well below my worth." He was denied a hazmat CDL because of his record. His current prolonged unemployment has been the worst.

"I was written off before I got a chance to put my foot in the door. I wouldn't hire me based on my record. The employer is responsible for a safe workplace. But companies dig deep into criminal history and don't think that people change. I am serving a life sentence."

Calvin's only current income comes from unemployment and SSDI. "There's no meeting basic needs on that. The budget needs to be well-planned. You can't go outside the box. You need a cushion for things like car and transportation problems and medications. I did receive food stamps, but I can't get SSDI and food stamps at the same time. I found out how important receiving food stamps really is. I've had to move in with my niece and together we take care of what we can."

Things are starting to look up for Calvin. He's become a WAGE (Workers Advocating for Greater Equality) advocate at the DC Employment Justice Center, and recently testified about his struggles before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee. The purpose of WAGE is to educate workers about employment law matters, provide advocacy and media skills, and help them identify and get involved in broad-based campaigns. He's going to vocational rehab now through Catholic Charities to become a certified addiction counselor and has some new prospects for employment.

"I want to help people avoid taking the route in life that I have. It's been a hell of a life."

Cross-posted from Defeat Poverty DC.

It's not just the child who pays the price.

Study after study proves that when children from low-income backgrounds have the benefit of high-quality early care and early education, they are much more likely to become productive members of society and less likely to become dependent on government assistance as adults. Investing early helps prevent a host of social troubles, from truancy to teenage pregnancy, high school dropouts to violent crime and everything in between.

In classic economic terms, there is also a multiplier effect that springs from the productive intervention in the development of our youngest citizens. Parents who are assured that their children are being well cared for are more productive at work and are less likely to call in sick. Early care and early education is also a source of good jobs with health benefits to thousands in our city, who in turn make it possible for parents to work or go back to school to find better jobs.

In fact, economists have found that investments in quality early care and early education promise a much greater return than other social programs. And just as the health care industry is turning toward more preventative measures to save costs in the long run, it makes sense that those invested in education reform should do the same by prioritizing early childhood development.

It's particularly heartbreaking to think that some children in our city are barely given a fighting chance to thrive. The Kids Count data also reveal that infant mortality is actually rising in the District. At 13.1 infant deaths per 1,000 live births, it's nearly double the rate nationally—right here in the nation's capital.

If that isn't a wakeup call, I don't know what is. We need to speak up and act now for our youngest citizens. The future of our city depends on it.

HyeSook Chung is Executive Director of DC Action for Children. Cross-posted from Defeat Poverty DC.

Save our Safety Net was pushing for new tax brackets for people making over $200,000 and then $1 million per year. As a resident who might well be in one of those tax brackets depending on the stock market, I can say for sure that I would not have been packing up to leave DC if the Council had enacted such a plan.

I didn't write much about the ongoing campaign because, frankly, I didn't have time to wrap my head around all the issues. For next year, we should do better.

But covering the needs of lower-income people and communities shouldn't wait until budget time. When we have debates about things like nutrition, some comments reveal that many people are misinformed about some of these issues. (For example, obesity in poor areas has a lot to do with federal subsidies for corn and high-fructose corn syrup.) We need to be taking the time to understand what life is like for folks who don't live in the nicest DC neighborhoods and richest suburbs.

The outpouring of energy for streetcars didn't just happen because we suddenly posted about streetcars when they were about to be cut. It happened because supporters, like Sierra Club, the Downtown BID, and DDOT had been building support for months. It happened because we had been talking about streetcars for months, and debating them, so that people could make up their minds.

To make a political issue successful, it isn't enough to talk about it when the time for action has come. It's important to talk about it beforehand and educate people who are sympathetic but haven't really thought about the issue thoroughly.

While I am not an expert on poverty, I would love for some folks who are to come start a conversation on a regular basis about how we can make Greater Washington greater for its neediest residents. If that's you, let us know at info@ggwash.org.

This illustrates what Mark Monmonier calls a "Blunder that Misleads" in his book How to Lie With Maps. According to the report, map 4 combines "census tracts where 51 percent or more of the population lives at incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty level" and census tracts with "below-average access to full-service grocery stores."

The blunder—not a lie but rather a "cartographic fallibility"—comes from using census block group data. Entire block groups get designated as food deserts that either have no living residents (such as cemeteries and parks) and so do not have much income and require no access to food, or house institutions (like hospitals) and so do not have much income but likely provide food on site. Nearly 1/4 of the areas designated as food deserts may technically, but not realistically, fit the working definition.

Particularly during this time of increasing unemployment, homelessness, and hunger, advocacy groups across the District and the country are working overtime. Like many others, I want to help in the fight for social justice, but we need to be sure our data are airtight in order to effectively convey our messages.

Cross-posted at The District Curmudgeon.

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