Greg Kaufmann | The Nation

In Houston, more than 3,200 janitors clean the offices of some of the largest and most powerful corporations in the world: JP Morgan Chase, Shell, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Wells Fargo, KBR and Marathon Oil, to name a few. For their labor, they are paid an hourly wage of $8.35 and earn an average of $8,684 annually. Two janitors together would earn about $17,300 a year—still well below the poverty line of $22,314 for a family of four.

Yesterday, the contract between the janitors and the cleaning contractors expired. SEIU Local 1 spent the past month trying to reach an agreement to raise the janitors’ hourly wage to $10 over the next three years. But the contractors countered with an offer of a $0.50 pay raise phased in over five years and—according to SEIU spokesperson Paloma Martinez—said that they “wouldn’t budge.” The contractors claimed that the building owners and tenants—the aforementioned corporations—aren’t willing to pay anything close to a living wage.

In response the janitors voted to authorize their bargaining committee to call a strike. For workers already struggling on sub-poverty wages, this was no easy decision.

“The workers were really insulted by the offer,” said Martinez. “The contractors said they weren’t going to move and they blamed it on the building owners, but we all know the state of the real estate market here.”

With the city enjoying the fruits of the energy industry, Houston’s commercial real estate market is indeed the best performing market in the United States in terms of demand. It has the highest number of new corporate real estate projects in the nation, vacancy rates below the national average and rising rental rates.

Nevertheless, the city’s janitors are among the lowest paid in the nation, with workers in cities with far weaker real estate markets earning a significantly higher hourly wage: Cincinnati ($9.80), Cleveland ($10.30), Detroit ($10.97) and Chicago ($15.45) are a few examples.

“While many of us do all that we can to provide a decent living for our families, we are paid poverty wages and are full of despair not knowing how are we going to get to the end of the month,” said Hernan Trujillo, who cleans offices in downtown Houston and has been active in organizing his colleagues. “We can’t provide education for our children or buy medicine when we get sick.”

The janitors are now reaching out directly to the building owners and tenants and asking for their help. Martinez says that even though these parties aren’t directly involved in the negotiations, an ExxonMobil or a Wells Fargo could easily influence any outcome.

“This is a good opportunity for them to say, ‘We’re going to do right by Houstonians. We’re going to do right by working people,’ ” said Martinez. “But so far there really hasn’t been much of a response.”

In a city that has a poverty rate which has risen steadily over the last four years and is higher than the national average, and a cost of living estimated at approximately $47,200 annually for a family of four, the significance of these negotiations extends beyond the lives of the janitors and their families.

“People who have never worked poverty jobs in their lives suggest that the solution is to find another job,” said Trujillo. “[But] these jobs will always exist. Housekeeping jobs are going to be needed. Instead of ignoring the problem, we need to improve these jobs. All hard work should be respected with living wages.”

Martinez notes that opponents of living wages often argue that low-wage workers simply need to better educate themselves so that they can qualify for higher-paying jobs.

“People can’t get other jobs because they have to work two or three jobs to make ends meet,” she says. “They want to get new skills, to get educated, but how are they going to do that if they literally have to figure out every single day how to put food on the table? We need to move towards making these positions full time-family sustaining jobs, emulating the standard of many other cities.”

One can imagine an executive at Wells or Chevron or Shell who might develop a rapport with a worker cleaning his or her office—ask about the family, their other jobs, that sort of thing. Maybe when Christmas rolls around there is a cash gift. But when push comes to shove, and the stakes are high as they are at this moment, how many people will actually step forward for the workers who sanitize their bathrooms and workspace, empty the trash, vacuum the floors—do the hard work they depend on every day?

“We are always perceived as a low category of people. People assume because we are janitors we must be uneducated, rude or thieves,” says Trujillo. “For years we’ve been ignored and when we try to improve our lives many laugh at us. But despite the obstacles, we’re going to do whatever it takes to make it happen, which includes going on strike. Everyone who works hard deserves a good life. We want to make Houston a city that works for workers.”

Conversation with Tianna Gaines: Holidays, Hunger and Poverty

In recent months, I’ve had the opportunity to get to know many participants in Witnesses to Hunger—a project in which people living in poverty use photographs and testimonials to advocate for change at the local, state and national levels. Tianna Gaines-Turner is a Witness living in Philadelphia with her husband and children. She works at Drexel University’s School of Public Health and as a homecare worker for an elderly person. I spoke with Tianna this week about her Memorial Day weekend and she had a lot on her mind. Here are excerpts from our conversation:

Holiday weekends always put a stir on things and make people feel a little more pressure than normal. I think a lot of times people forget what the holidays are for—this holiday was to remember the troops, those who do the great work to keep our nation safe. It wasn’t really about barbecues and pool parties and things like that….

Unfortunately, a lot of people who live in impoverished neighborhoods—especially children—they look forward to holidays because it’s the only day they know for sure they’re going to get a good meal. To me it’s sad, it’s sickening, that you have people who have to wait for a barbecue or an event to know they don’t have to worry about scrambling up food because, for example, they’re going to Auntie’s house and there’s going to be a cookout; or the kids know they can go outside and someone on the block is going to be having a cookout and they can just pretty much eat all day….

I feel like the city wastes a lot of money on nonsense, but then we criticize a person who’s on public assistance or cash assistance. Don’t point a finger at a person who is needing these benefits, but at the people making decisions that are taking away from programs which low-income people rely on….

I understand that the mayor is working really hard at bringing new programs—like healthy eating programs—to the city. But we’re also building an ice skating rink in the heart of center city while just last week we had unions—teachers, janitorial staffs—in front of the school board talking about getting laid off and [city] budget cuts. And right now the city of Philadelphia is sponsoring a Jay-Z concert. People make a big deal out of little things and don’t pay attention to the big things: you have food pantries not being able to feed people because there’s more demand; senior citizens who have nothing to eat; people getting foreclosure notices on their homes and people left to live in squalor in abandoned buildings; people lying out on the streets, panhandling.

So where is city money going? Is it going to a school district to make sure kids can learn? Is it going to go into reopening a homeless shelter? Who is paying attention to where the money is going…?

At the end of the day, it’s about children that are going hungry; it’s about the mother worrying about her house being foreclosed on and where is my family going to sleep—the shelters are over filled, and I can’t stay at Auntie or Uncle’s house because there are already family members there. But people think about these problems as, “It isn’t me that’s losing my house, it isn’t my child that’s going to sleep hungry.” And then they say mean things like, “Why do they keep having children they can’t take care of?”—once again, pointing the finger. The end result is no one is really looking at the big picture.

There should be no person that has to go to sleep hungry in the United States, period. It should not be accepted anymore. It should not be something where people have to feel ashamed to say, “I’m hungry.” Because there’s no shame in hunger. The shame is for those who continue to be pointing a finger at those who are hungry.

We’re people. You can’t continuously try to separate us as if people who live in low-income families are not people. We are people. And we’re getting sick and tired of being sick and tired of people just mistreating us—talking about us as if we don’t exist. We’re not standing down anymore. We’re speaking out, and we’re going to continue to speak out wherever we need to speak—for people to understand that hunger and poverty are real. It’s not a black thing, it’s not a white thing, it’s a people thing. Hunger has no color.

Next Week on the Hill

The Senate is expected to take up the farm bill on Tuesday. Although it will be weeks before a final vote, this is a process to stay on top of, especially because this bill will play a major role in determining funding for the food stamp (SNAP) program.

The importance of food stamps as an anti-poverty measure can’t be overstated. The program lifted 3.9 million Americans above the poverty line in 2010, including 1.7 million children and 280,000 seniors. The average beneficiary household has an income of only 57 percent of the federal poverty line (so about $9,900 for a family of three), and 84 percent of all benefits go to households with a child, senior or disabled person.

While the Senate bill is far better than the draconian House bill—which would cut $36 billion from SNAP and throw 2 million low-income people off of the program—it nevertheless would cut an estimated $4.49 billion, reducing benefits for 500,000 households by $90 per month. Since the average SNAP recipient receives just $133 per month ($4.46 per day), the cut is deep and significant.

I’ll write an update on the bill next week. In the meantime, readers can contact their Senators and let them know that at this time of record poverty, we need to strengthen—or at the very least protect—the SNAP program.

Guest Post: Deborah Weinstein on Poverty, Children, and Diabetes

A few years ago, I attended a community forum on poverty in Utica, New York. There was a sense of urgency at the meeting because poverty in the region had been persistently and extremely high: in 2010, nearly 43 percent of children in Utica were poor, compared to 20 percent of all US children. At one point in the meeting, a presenter talked about going to a fifth grade class and asking how many children knew someone with diabetes. Many hands went up.

I was reminded of this last week when stunning new findings about diabetes in teenagers were reported in the New York Times. A little more than a decade ago, about one in ten 12- to 19-year-olds were at risk of—or already had—Type 2 diabetes. By 2007-2008, that number had jumped to 23 percent. High rates of obesity and low levels of physical activity are said to contribute to this dramatic rise. These are factors associated with poverty.

These findings were immensely troubling: when Type 2 diabetes occurs in children, it is more resistant to treatment than it is in adults. Diabetes that is not adequately controlled by medication, diet or physical activity increases the likelihood of heart disease, kidney failure, amputations and other serious conditions, so children with the disease are at risk of having a lifetime of health problems.

As an editorial in The New England Journal of Medicine points out, it is easy to see why poor children find it difficult to change their eating patterns and increase their levels of physical activity. Empty calories are cheaper and more readily available, playing video games indoors is safer than playing outside in bad neighborhoods, public schools have cut back on recess and gym and parents may not be able to afford paying for their kids to participate in afterschool sports.

Type 2 diabetes is hard to control even under the best circumstances. A teenager who might be inclined to reject adult advice and who is in an environment filled with the wrong choices is not going to be fighting the disease in optimal conditions. A large body of research over the past few decades has documented that poor children are also already at a greater risk of chronic health problems, hospitalizations and developmental problems. These difficulties are all associated with falling behind at school, dropping out and reduced earnings in adulthood.

Many poor children do beat these odds; children are miraculously resilient. But the extreme risk of diabetes that we are now seeing—with more serious health complications likely for children than for adults who get the disease—makes the hurdles in front of them even harder to clear. What kind of future do these kids look forward to?

One thing is certain: young people entering adulthood with diabetes urgently need the new healthcare law, so their pre-existing conditions will not place health insurance out of reach. To help defend the new law, sign up for Families USA’s Health Action Network. Or to fight those in Congress whose budget proposals deepen poverty and compound its consequences, sign up for alerts from the Coalition on Human Needs.

Deborah Weinstein is the executive director of the Coalition for Human Needs, a Washington, DC–based alliance of national organizations working together to promote public policies that address the needs of low-income people and other vulnerable populations.

Get Involved

The Alliance for Appalachia’s End Mountaintop Removal Week in Washington
Stop Elimination of Commission Jobs at JC Penney
Home Defenders League
Support Paid Leave

Articles

“Why Your Grocery Store Makes Farmworkers Poor,” Greg Asbed and Lucas Benitez
“Plantations, Prisons, and Profits,” Charles Blow
“Study Ranks US Second-Highest in Child Poverty,” Center for Community Change
“Raising Threshold for Bush Tax Cuts… Would Lose $366 Billion,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
“Peter Edelman on ‘Why It’s So Hard to End Poverty in America’,” Karen Dolan
“…Threat to Working Families in Louisiana…” Melissa Flournoy and Vicki Shabo
“Time to Fight For a Minimum Wage Increase,” Katrina vanden Heuvel
“America’s Families Speak Out,” Kathy Mulady
“Why the Unemployed Are the ‘Forgotten Man’ of 2012,” Tim Price
“Wasting Time is New Divide in Digital Era,” Matt Richtel
“… Obama Rejected Bush Administration Concession to Write Down Mortgages,” Matt Stoller

Other Resources
“Arsenal of Exclusion and Inclusion” blog
“Asthma’s Impact on the Nation—Infographic,” Centers for Disease Control
“New Educational Materials on Trends in Inequality,” Stanford Center on Poverty & Inequality
“What Works in Reentry Clearinghouse,” Urban Institute & Council of State Governments

Studies

“Uninsured Veterans and Family Members: Who Are They and Where Do They Live?”
Jennifer Haley and Genevieve Kenney. Ten percent—or 1.3 million—nonelderly veterans don’t have health insurance coverage or use VA care. Nearly 950,000 adults and children in veterans’ families are uninsured. 41 percent of uninsured veterans have unmet medical needs, while nearly 34 percent report having delayed care due to cost. The Affordable Care Act could increase uninsured veterans’ coverage: nearly half would qualify for expanded Medicaid, and up to 40 percent could qualify for subsidized health insurance exchange coverage if they lack access to employer coverage.

“Diverse Charter Schools: Can Racial and Socioeconomic Integration Promote Better Outcomes for Students?” Richard Kahlenberg and Halley Potter. This paper examines the causes of the current trend of charter school funders and government program guidelines to develop racially isolated high poverty schools in urban locations (as well as segregated white schools in some other locations) and suggests a series of policy changes and incentives that could increase racial and economic diversity in charters.

Vital Statistics

US poverty (less than $22,314 for a family of four): 46 million people, 15.1 percent of population.

Children in poverty: 16.4 million, 22 percent of all children, including 40 percent of African-American children and 37 percent of Latino children.

Number of poor children receiving cash aid: one in five.

Poverty rate for people in female-headed families: 42 percent.

Single mothers with incomes under $25,000: 50 percent.

Single mothers working: 67 percent.

Deep poverty (less than $11,157 for a family of four): 20.5 million people, 6.7 percent of population. Up from 12.6 million in 2000.

Increase in deep poverty, 1976–2010: doubled—3.3 percent of population to 6.7 percent.

Americans with no income other than food stamps: 6 million, 2 percent of population.

Twice the poverty level (less than $44,628 for a family of four): 103 million people, roughly 1 in 3 Americans.

Families receiving cash assistance, 1996: 68 of every 100 families with children living in poverty.

Families receiving cash assistance, 2010: 27 of every 100 families with children living in poverty.

Impact of public policy, 2010: without government assistance, poverty would have been twice as high—nearly 30 percent of population.

Quote of the Week

“People assume because we are janitors we must be uneducated, rude or thieves.”
                                           —Hernan Trujillo, janitor in Houston

This Week in Poverty posts every Friday morning. Please comment below. You can also e-mail me at WeekInPoverty@me.com and follow me on Twitter.

There are 12.5 million unemployed people still seeking work in the United States, and over 5 million of them have been looking for work for twenty-seven weeks or longer.

These are “the long-term unemployed,” and their prospects for finding employment or getting assistance are rapidly diminishing.

The long-term unemployed now make up over 40 percent of all unemployed workers, and 3.3 percent of the labor force. In the past six decades, the previous highs for these figures were 26 percent and 2.6 percent, respectively, in June 1983.

Instead of helping these folks weather the storm and find ways to re-enter the workforce, our nation is moving in the opposite direction. In fact, this past Sunday, 230,000 people who have been looking for work for over a year lost their unemployment benefits. More than 400,000 people have now lost unemployment insurance (UI) since the beginning of the year as twenty-five high-unemployment states have ended their Extended Benefits (EB) program.

What makes the denial of this lifeline all the more absurd is the reason for it. As Hannah Shaw, research associate at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), writes, “Benefits have ended not because economic conditions have improved, but because they have not significantly deteriorated in the past three years.”

It’s all about an obscure rule called “the three-year lookback.”

Under federal guidelines, for a state to offer additional weeks of benefits it must have an unemployment rate of at least 6.5 percent, and—according to the lookback rule—the rate must be “at least 10 percent higher than it was any of the three prior years.”

“Unemployment rates have remained so elevated for so long that most states no longer meet this latter criterion,” writes Shaw. She points to California as a prime example. For more than three years, its unemployment rate has remained above 10 percent, but it fails the three-year lookback test because the rate didn’t rise sufficiently. As a result, over 90,000 Californians lost their benefits on Sunday.

Prior to Congress reducing the maximum number of weeks of unemployment benefits earlier this year, there was some discussion of changing the lookback rule to four years, or even suspending it. But in the end there wasn’t the political will to do it and there certainly isn’t now.

Shaw wants people to understand the real impact that these cuts have on the long-term unemployed.

“Many of these people have been looking for work for well over a year and now their UI benefits have ended sooner than expected,” she says. “Many families rely on these benefits to make ends meet [and now] many are left with little else.”

Indeed in 2010, unemployment benefits kept 3.2 million people above the poverty line—which is roughly $17, 300 for a family of three. A report from the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) gives some indication of what might lie ahead for people who exhaust their benefits.

Of the 15.4 million workers who lost jobs from 2007 to 2009, half received unemployment benefits, half didn’t, and about 2 million who did receive benefits exhausted them by early 2010. Those who exhausted benefits had a poverty rate of 18 percent, compared to 13 percent among working-age adults; more than 40 percent had incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty line (below about $35,000 for a family of three), which is the level where many economists believe people start really struggling to pay for the basics.

While one might expect to see budgetary savings from reduced unemployment insurance payments, anti-poverty advocates say a shift in demand is more likely, as more people—especially families with children—turn to other safety net programs like food stamps, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Assistance will be much harder to come by for individuals or couples without children, especially since state General Assistance programs have been decimated.

It is all the more alarming—as National Employment Law Project executive director Christine Owens testified in Congress this week—that older workers ages 50 and up are disproportionately represented in the ranks of the long-term unemployed. They made up over 29 percent of long-term unemployed workers in 2011, compared to just 26 percent in 2007. In 2011, more than 54 percent of older jobless workers were out of work for at least six months, and those high rates have continued into 2012. Owens noted that prolonged periods of unemployment can have a severe impact on older workers’ retirement prospects and later-life well-being.

In addition to legislation protecting older workers from discrimination, Owens urged Congress to invest in subsidized employment and workforce development and job training programs—vital to unemployed workers of all ages.

According to the Center for Law and Social Policy, a 2005 study of seven states found that adults and dislocated workers receiving Workforce Investment Act (WIA) services—including job training—were 10 percentage points more likely to be employed and to have higher earnings (about $800 per quarter in 2000 dollars) than those who hadn’t received services. They were also less likely to need public assistance. A 2011 study by Washington State found that WIA services boost employment and earnings for adults, dislocated workers and youth.

House Republicans are attempting to “reform” federal workforce programs through the positively Orwellian-named “Workforce Investment Improvement Act.” When they say reform, they mean pulling out their handy-dandy, favorite tool: the block grant.

“Basically, the legislation would throw funding that currently is used for specialized training programs into one big pot—and reduce the amount of money in that pot,” says Shaw.

It’s true that job-training programs need improvement but simply cutting funding and eliminating programs won’t do a thing to help anyone. What is needed is a serious effort along the lines of what economists Dean Baker of the progressive Center for Economic and Policy Research, and Kevin Hassett of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, describe in a New York Times op-ed:

Policy makers must come together and recognize that this is an emergency, and fashion a comprehensive re-employment policy that addresses the specific needs of the long-term unemployed. A policy package…should spend money to help expand public and private training programs with proven track records; expand entrepreneurial opportunities by increasing access to small-business financing; reduce government hurdles to the formation of new businesses; and explore subsidies for private employers who hire the long-term unemployed.… Managers who are filling open [government] positions should be given explicit incentives to reconnect these lost workers.

If there isn’t enough urgency for legislators and their constituents already, people should consider this: things are about to get worse. Not only did Congress fail to address the lookback earlier this year, it also made changes that will shorten the number of weeks people can receive temporary, federally funded benefits after exhausting their state-run programs. Those reductions will begin at the end of this month.

“It’s not going to be as dramatic as the end of the Extended Benefits program—there won’t be hundreds of thousands of people losing their benefits all at once,” says Shaw. “But the changes are coming down the pipeline and will affect people in every state. The UI program will look very different in a few months than it does today.”

So Rich, So Poor by Peter Edelman

When it comes to public policy and poverty in the United States, few people know more about it than Georgetown University law professor Peter Edelman. He has battled poverty for nearly fifty years, most notably as a legislative assistant to Senator Robert Kennedy and as an assistant secretary of health and human services in the Clinton administration—a post he resigned in protest over the 1996 welfare reform bill. He’s taught and written extensively on the subject, too, including his new book, So Rich, So Poor: Why It’s So Hard to End Poverty in America.

Full disclosure: Edelman is a friend of mine and a mentor when it comes to anti-poverty work. I also had the opportunity to advise him on this book. Still, I wouldn’t be writing this if I didn’t value the book, nor would he want me to.

So Rich, So Poor is a sweeping historical account and analysis of anti-poverty policy that will give readers a sense of where this nation has been—and where it’s headed—with regard to confronting (or failing to confront) poverty. Edelman examines the challenges of concentrated and intergenerational poverty, the safety net, the plight of those in deep poverty, disconnected youth, low-wage work, race and gender issues, housing policy and much, much more.

If you are a layperson, the book is a chance to absorb more than you probably ever realized is at the heart of the fight against poverty; if you are someone who has long been involved in the fight against poverty, I have little doubt you will find new ideas, angles or inspiration in these pages.

This is a man who has devoted a lifetime to fighting poverty and is passing along what he’s learned. It’s a gift, frankly.

I had an opportunity to speak with him about the book and his perspective on poverty. This is what he had to say:

Greg Kaufmann: What do you hope readers get out of your book?

Peter Edelman: I hope to reach a broad audience of people who don’t know a lot about why so many people are poor in this country. I want people to understand that we’ve done a lot of things that have worked in reducing poverty, but also to understand why we still have so much poverty.

What do you say to people who respond that the reason we have so much poverty is that these programs don’t work and they are a waste of money?

The programs do work, and about 40 million more people would be poor if we didn’t have them. The problem is that we have so much low-wage work and too many people who are coping as single parents trying to live on income from one low-paying job. A second problem is that we have so many people who have incomes below half the poverty line—who are in deep poverty—and we are doing very little to help them. Since 2000 we’ve seen a rise in the number of people living in deep poverty from 12.6 million people to 20.5 million—they are living on incomes of less than about $11,000 annually for a family of four. And then we have the even more challenging problem of persistent and intergenerational poverty.

Can you say a little more about how that’s a different kind of problem to address?

Most people who are in poverty or deep poverty go in and out of those categories. But among those who are very poor, and others who remain poor for long periods of time—especially people who live in places where there is a lot of concentrated poverty—many of them have personal problems, and there’s a lot more of the consequences of inadequate education and a lack of jobs. So that whether it’s in an inner-city, or Appalachia, or on Indian reservations, or in the Mississippi Delta, we have places of poverty in this country that are even more challenging in terms of what we need to do.

What are some of the least talked-about aspects of poverty today?

The poverty problem in this country is, on the one hand, more a problem for white people than any other group; and on the other hand, it’s a problem that’s very much connected to race, and we need people to understand both sides of that.

The largest number of people in this country who are poor are white—they are the largest group. It’s also true that African-Americans, Latinos and Native Americans are poor at a rate that’s nearly three times the rate of poverty among whites. Why is that? It reflects continuing issues of race and gender. There’s disproportionate poverty among people of color because of history, continuing discrimination, structural racism in the way that our schooling is arranged for children, and the way our criminal justice system operates, and in residential patterns.

The American reaction to poverty tends to be a reflexive image of a person of color, and that in turn—because of the way our politics are structured—hurts the case for taking action. So we need to put race and gender on the table as part of the discussion.

Looking at the breadth and depth of the challenges involved in the fight against poverty, do you feel hopeful that we can rise and respond to them?

We know much more than we did at the time of the Great Society about what works, so that’s a good thing. But we do need much more political will, and we need more public understanding that these are problems that can be solved. We can help people get more income from work, we can have a better safety net, we can do a much better job of educating our children.

Some of the problems are very difficult, that’s for sure, but I think the biggest issue is for people to understand that it’s in our self-interest as a country to act. Not just because it’s morally right—although it is—but because an economy that includes everybody is going to be a better economy for everybody. It pays off economically for the whole country, not just for the people whose personal quality of life is improved. It costs us a huge amount of money in terms of lost productivity, crime-related costs and increased costs of healthcare not to act. One estimate is that we are losing at least $500 billion per year just due to the costs of child poverty.

What is the importance of the book coming out at this particular moment?

I hope that the book does some good in the context of the current election campaign—that people will want to discuss the question of inequality not just at the top, not just the 1 percent, but also the 99 percent all the way down to the bottom. The table has been set by the Occupy Movement for a national discussion of inequality that includes the reasons why people are hurting so much at the bottom as well as why some people have so much at the top. We need to talk about poverty. The p-word needs to be in the discussion.

The Economic Hardship Reporting Project

Best-selling investigative journalist Barbara Ehrenreich and the Institute for Policy Studies have launched the Economic Hardship Reporting Project to help move the crisis of poverty and economic insecurity to the center of the national conversation.

The Project aims to let unemployed, underemployed and those whose employment situations are tenuous know that they are not alone, that the current economic crisis is not their fault and that they are not always getting the information they need to find solutions. Through innovative journalism on poverty and economic hardship, reporters will tell compelling stories of individuals and families that are linked to the bigger picture—exploring extreme inequality and the decline of the middle class.

Significantly, the Project is inspired in part by the Depression-era Federal Writers Project and is collaborating with several unemployed or underemployed journalists. Freelancing is a tough road, especially right now. In recent months I’ve heard from talented reporters who have had to turn to the safety net themselves. I’ve spoken with highly accomplished journalists—whose names many of you would know—who have been asked by major media outlets to write for free just to keep their names out there (and because the outlets know they can get away with it).

“I am impatient with the standard liberal discourse on poverty,” said Ehrenreich. “We can’t go on talking about poverty without talking about how it’s being manufactured and intensified all the time.”

Ehrenreich launched the Project this week with her article, “Preying on the Poor.” I’m proud to be one of a number of advisers involved with this important effort and I hope you will follow and support it.

Video: “Still Face Experiment”

Much has been written in recent years about the link between “toxic stress” in young children and their educational, health and social outcomes later in life, as well as the public policy implications when it comes to addressing poverty. The brain is extremely pliable in the prenatal and early years, and brain architecture can be changed for the better or worse during this window. It then becomes increasingly difficult to modify over time.

For an incredible demonstration of the impact of stress on a baby—and this stress isn’t even all that toxic and lasts less than a minute—check out this video from ZERO TO THREE, a nonprofit organization working to improve the lives of infants and toddlers.

Jodie Levin-Epstein, deputy director of the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), reacted to the video this way: “From CLASP’s perspective, this video shows the fall-out from the time-poverty of parents. Fully 40 percent of working low-income parents (below 200 percent of the poverty line) have no paid time off of any kind—no parental leave, no vacation, no sick days. This is a no-brainer to fix. The US should join virtually every other nation on the globe and provide paid leave for parents. So far, the presidential candidates have not addressed this issue head-on. It’s time. And then we need to ensure good early child care.”

Get Involved

Put Childcare on the Map. Currently only about one in six children that qualify for federal child care assistance actually receives it, and it’s not on the minds of too many members of Congress. Make sure they understand just how urgent quality, affordable child care is for working families. RESULTS, the National Women’s Law Center and the Early Care and Education Consortium have launched this new long-term campaign to put child care on the map.

Raise New York’s Minimum Wage. Good news for New Yorkers: the Assembly has voted to raise the state’s minimum wage to $8.50 and index it to inflation. But Governor Andrew Cuomo has not committed to the bill, nor has he urged the Senate to pass it. The National Employment Law Project notes that the wage would be over $10.50 today if it had maintained its value since 1970. The current wage is $7.25 an hour so a full-time worker earns $15,080 annually.

“Poverty wages are good for Walmart and McDonald’s, but they’re not good for New York,” said Dan Cantor, executive director of the Working Families Party. New Yorkers can urge Governor Cuomo and Albany to take action here.

Hold the House Accountable. Last week I wrote about the cuts to “lower-priority spending” that House Republicans voted for in order to protect defense spending and tax cuts for the wealthy. The bill would slash food stamps, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, the Child Tax Credit, the Social Services Block Grant and other programs poor people rely on at a time of record poverty. In an email, the Coalition on Human Needs (CHN) writes, “The people who want to protect or increase military spending and tax breaks at the top are making their views known, day after day. We cannot be silent.” CHN is giving you the opportunity to express your displeasure or approval with your Representative’s vote here. The only way they will know we care about poverty is if we start telling them we care about poverty.

Save the American Community Survey. The House voted last week to eliminate funding for the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. It’s the only source of objective and comprehensive information about the nation’s social, economic, and demographic characteristics down to the neighborhood level. The information is used by the public, private and nonprofit sectors for everything from funding programs and assessing their effectiveness to enforcing the Voting Rights Act to delivering goods and services. You can find your Senator and tell him or her to save the American Community Survey here.

Notable Studies

“Welfare Reform: What Have We Learned in Fifteen Years?” Urban Institute & MDRC. Fifteen years after the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program replaced America’s longstanding cash-assistance entitlement, eight briefs by the Urban Institute and MDRC assess how well TANF works within the larger social safety net and to what extent it helps families receiving aid toward self-sufficiency.

“Policy Matters: Public Policy, Paid Leave for New Parents, and Economic Security for US Workers,” the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey and the National Partnership for Women & Families. The report shows how paid leave policies can be viewed as proactive public investments in the health and well-being of children and families in the United States. Also, public assistance and food stamp receipt are lower for new mothers who live in states with paid leave policies.

Further Reading

“A Mom Struggles as Budget Crisis Deepens,” Dan Morain
“WPB Neighborhood Concerned About Trash and Transients,” Dan Corcoran
“The Human Disaster of Unemployment,” Dean Baker and Kevin Hassett
“Social Justice Movements in a Liminal Age,” Deepak Bhargava
“The Outlook is Still Grim for Women in the Job Market,” Bryce Covert
“For Mother’s Day: A Present that Values Families,” Hannah Matthews & Jodie Levin-Epstein
“An Alarming Number of Americans Think Poor People Are Simply Lazy,” Mandi Woodruff
“Community Struggles With Poverty Rate Twice National Average,” Spencer Platt
“Hunger Among Senior Citizens Continues to Rise,” Alfred Lubrano
“Recession Added Debt, Drained Families’ Savings,” Christine Dugas

Vital Statistics

US poverty (less than $22,314 for a family of four): 46 million people, 15.1 percent of population.

Children in poverty: 16.4 million, 22 percent of all children, including 40 percent of African-American children and 37 percent of Latino children.

Number of poor children receiving cash aid: one in five.

Poverty rate for people in female-headed families: 42 percent.

Poverty rate for children under age 5 in female-headed families: 59 percent.

Single mothers with incomes under $25,000: 50 percent.

Single mothers working: 67 percent.

Deep poverty (less than $11,157 for a family of four): 20.5 million people, 6.7 percent of population. Up from 12.6 million in 2000.

Increase in deep poverty, 1976–2010: doubled—3.3 percent of population to 6.7 percent.

Twice the poverty level (less than $44,628 for a family of four): 103 million people, roughly 1 in 3 Americans.

Families receiving cash assistance, 1996: 68 of every 100 families with children living in poverty.

Families receiving cash assistance, 2010: 27 of every 100 families with children living in poverty.

Impact of public policy, 2010: without government assistance, poverty would have been twice as high—nearly 30 percent of population.

Quote of the Week

“People want to say people on welfare are sitting around. I’ve been hustling. I’ve been begging. I’m on my knees. I cry every day. My daughter doesn’t deserve this.”
                                        —Jonetta Hall, single mother of 4-year-old Kayla

This Week in Poverty posts every Friday morning. Please comment below. You can also e-mail me at WeekInPoverty@me.com and follow me on Twitter.

To understand how 350 people—including more than 100 people from across the country who are experiencing poverty and hunger firsthand—arrived in Philadelphia last week for a conference that culminated in a call to action, you have to go back to 2008.

Dr. Mariana Chilton of Drexel University was doing cutting-edge research on the relationship between poverty and child nutrition—and the trauma of living in poverty—and testifying about her findings at the national, state and local levels.

But the hearings never included any witnesses whose very lives were the topics of discussion. Chilton also didn’t feel like her words sufficiently described the hardships that families in poverty were enduring and revealing to her in interviews.

So she gave forty-four women cameras and told them to document their experiences as “Witnesses to Hunger.” They began taking pictures—a child with an outstretched hand asking a caseworker for food; puddles of blood on the sidewalk at a bus stop; a child treated for asthma being cared for by his father who was missing work; drug paraphernalia next to a slide on the playground….

Thousands of photographs documented the experiences of families with food and health, banking and finance, work and opportunity, education, housing and energy, and access to technology. The photos were turned into an exhibit, and the women also learned to advocate for themselves at the local and state levels, and then at the federal level, too, when Pennsylvania Senator Robert Casey Jr. invited them to Capitol Hill to testify and speak with members of Congress. The women testified on issues like housing, WIC, the Earned Income Tax Credit, food stamps, child nutrition and more.

The Witnesses also began to form their own informal groups in their neighborhoods to support and counsel one another—talking together about issues ranging from food and nutrition to confronting domestic violence and past trauma; from fighting back against the stigma of being poor to navigating a welfare system that seems like a labyrinth designed to deny services; from providing childcare for one another to pooling resources to help make ends meet.

Word spread about this project that was putting the voices and experiences of people living in poverty front and center, and empowering women to overcome their despair and social isolation. Witnesses expanded to Boston, Providence and Baltimore (where one Witness is a single father). There are now seventy-three Witnesses and they have taken over 10,000 photographs and shot over 200 videos. There have been twelve formal exhibitions and many smaller showings. Currently, there is interest in starting new groups in California, Camden, Omaha, Pittsburgh and New Orleans.

With this kind of track record, it was somewhat natural for these women—and the advocates they work with at Drexel University’s Center for Hunger Free Communities, where Chilton serves as director—to break the conference mold and bring people together to pursue a new model of antipoverty work, one that builds a bridge between the advocacy community and people on the ground in low-income neighborhoods.

For three days philanthropists, advocates, researchers, journalists and government officials shared panels with Witnesses and other people living in poverty who came to the conference from as far away as San Diego and Sacramento, Denver, Oklahoma, New Orleans, Minneapolis, Nebraska, Texas, up and down the East Coast—and India.

Screenwriter Antwone Fisher was a keynote speaker. He described his experiences with trauma, homelessness and hunger, and turning his life around through telling his story.

“If you can do it, tell your story. It will be cathartic and healing,” said Fisher. “So many of us here—we could learn from one another. Some people don’t even know the kind of pain that exists…but it goes on. So if you’re in a position to tell it, just knowing that people are hungry or kids are hungry—you can do something about it.”

Gwen Ifill of Washington Week and PBS Newshour also grew up poor and said that we don’t talk about poverty “because we don’t like to talk about race.” But in her view now “race has the power to bring us together for a change, instead of driving us apart.”

She praised Witnesses for Hunger for doing its part to help people understand what is happening with poverty in America.

“The fact that you’re willing to step up and speak—and witness, I love that title, witnessing, because I think that speaks more to what we’re talking about here than almost anything else,” said Ifill. “If you don’t see it, if you’re invisible, nobody’s witnessing their misery, their need, their demands…. We don’t like ‘the other’ so much—something that seems different or alien to us. And once that’s stripped away, people begin to listen, people begin to hear, and then you can speak.”

Ifill viewed Witnesses and the people attending the conference as creating an opening for effective mobilization and political action.

“In the end it comes back to what the abolitionist Frederick Douglass said, ‘Power concedes nothing without a demand,’ ” said Ifill. “And I might add it has to be informed demand. Rosa Parks didn’t just sit on that bus, she didn’t happen to be there that day—she signed up for civil rights training first.”

In that spirit, the conference ended with a call to action. The organizers had planned to focus on one clear action—such as protecting food stamps (SNAP)—but that plan changed. Instead, people wanted a working group to devise strategies to pursue multiple goals—as well as ways for the conference-goers to stay connected with one another.

In addition to protecting SNAP, the group wants to promote and support the voices and experiences of those who know hunger and poverty firsthand; simplify the eligibility criteria across safety net programs; demand a changed culture in the human services sector so that people are treated with respect and dignity, and case workers are trained to address trauma; push for an expanded understanding of poverty that includes access to food, energy, housing, health and education; and create a national plan to end hunger in the United States.

The working group will issue a report in the coming months that will detail next steps, and I’ll certainly let readers know about that and ways to get involved. In my opinion, only through action undertaken jointly by those in poverty and those who want to eradicate poverty will a broad, bold antipoverty movement emerge.

Finally, something else very important and unique came out of this gathering. The participants from India were part of the Society for the Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP) in Andhra Pradesh, Hyderbad, India. Chilton went to India last summer to see the organization’s work and explore whether its approach could work in the United States as well.

SERP supports over 900,000 village-based, self-help groups that provide employment to more than 11 million rural poor women. The women all save money as a group, and leverage those assets for larger loans from banks. Some of the self-help groups have now started feeding centers where any mother who’s very poor can come and receive three meals a day, seven days a week. They are also providing day care centers, early childhood education centers, HIV and STD education, preventative healthcare centers and many other entrepreneurial activities that are lifting people out of poverty. Whatever projects a self-help group undertakes, they continue to meet and contribute to group savings on a weekly basis, so savings becomes the constant thread for continuity through the years.

Lakshmi Durga Chava, director of Community Managed Health and Nutrition for SERP, attended the conference and visited some of the neighborhoods and homes of Witnesses, too. She had little doubt that through the structures already in place—the groups of women meeting and supporting one another through Witnesses to Hunger—SERP-like activities and group savings could be undertaken by women within their own neighborhoods. (Chava estimates that a two- to three-block radius in Philadelphia is the equivalent of a SERP-participating village.)

One Witness has already stepped forward and is forming the first group of ten women to try out this model. The women will develop their rules for saving together and lending to one another, and determine which three or four issues they want to focus on to help their community. (Those issues could be anything—from taking on slumlords to addressing special education in schools, or working on health education, for example.)

“There is hope,” Philadelphia Witness Tianna Gaines told me. “As long as we keep having this conversation, and keep having people who really want to come into the neighborhoods and find out what they are about and talk about them—we can change things. Unfortunately we have so many kids that can’t wait—so many families that can’t wait and are being lost to the system.”

Images credit: Greg Kaufmann

At an Appropriations hearing in the Illinois State House last week, the Department of Human Services (DHS) informed the legislature that it has insufficient funds to meet its Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) obligations through the fiscal year ending in June.

This is particularly disturbing since Illinois provides TANF benefits—which is cash assistance—to just 13 of every 100 families with children in poverty, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). Prior to welfare reform in 1996 the state helped nearly 87 of every 100 families with children in poverty. Further, the benefit level is only 28 percent of the federal poverty line, or roughly $4,800 annually for a family of three, similar to that in a majority of states.

According to Dan Lesser, director of economic justice at the Shriver Center in Chicago, Illinois will find the funds to pay the TANF benefits one way or another—but just how the state will do it is a significant question.

“The governor has asked the legislature for a $73 million supplemental appropriation to pay for it,” says Lesser. “Historically, supplementals are approved here when they are needed. But nowadays nothing is assured. If it’s not approved, we face a real possibility of crashing the state’s child care system.”

That’s because without the supplemental, Illinois will pay cash assistance by diverting money DHS had intended to use to fund the state’s childcare assistance program.

Under welfare reform, a state can use its federal TANF block grant in a variety of ways, including cash assistance, childcare, education and job training, transportation, aid to children at risk of abuse and neglect, and other services to help low-income families. Since the block grant was set in 1996 and isn’t indexed for inflation, those dollars don’t go nearly as far—in fact, the block grant has lost nearly 30 percent of its value since that time. Also, because it’s locked in at the 1996 funding level, the program has proven unable to respond to greater need during the recession.

Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

This inability to expand during an economic downturn came into play in Illinois, when unprecedented long-term joblessness and an increase in the number of people exhausting their unemployment benefits resulted in a greater need for TANF assistance than the state anticipated.

“Unlike many states, Illinois did not actively discourage families who were eligible for TANF during the recession from receiving it, so caseloads grew,” says Lesser.

Currently, 165,000 low-income children are in the Illinois childcare assistance program, making it possible for their parents to go to work or school. Lesser says if the supplemental appropriation isn’t approved, and funds intended for childcare are therefore diverted to meet TANF cash assistance obligations, payments to childcare providers will perpetually run one month behind schedule.

“Childcare centers aren’t very well capitalized,” says Lesser. “They don’t have access to credit, by and large. And particularly in lower-income neighborhoods this is a major source of income—there aren’t too many ‘private-pay’ children. So we’re definitely looking at missed payrolls, facility closings and thousands of families without access to childcare in the very communities that are the most vulnerable to further economic hits.”

While Democratic Governor Pat Quinn has done the right thing in requesting the supplemental appropriation, his plans for the poor aren’t all good news. Next fiscal year—which begins in July—he proposes raising parent co-payments for child care by an average of 52 percent.

“That raises $36 million all on the backs of low-income people,” says Lesser. “It will drive people out of the system, threaten providers and make it more difficult for low-income people to work.”

The governor also wants to reduce the maximum TANF eligibility from five to three years.

“Shortening time limits retroactively is bad policy in any environment, but it is really bad policy when unemployment is high,” says Dr. LaDonna Pavetti, vice president of the family income support division at the CBPP. “The people most likely to be cut off are the people least likely to find employment.”

In addition to the Shriver Center, another group pushing back on Governor Quinn’s proposal to reduce TANF eligibility is the Illinois Commission on the Elimination of Poverty. Comprised of legislators, advocates, agency representatives and individuals with particular areas of expertise, the commission was established by statute in 2008 to develop a plan to cut extreme poverty in Illinois in half by 2015. There are currently over 1.7 million state residents in poverty and close to 765,000 in extreme poverty—living below half the federal poverty line, or less than about $11,000 annually for a family of four.

It’s clear from the post–welfare reform experience that making it more difficult to access cash assistance results in an increase in deep poverty. In factf, according to the New York Times, roughly 4 million women and children are now jobless and without cash aid. Research also shows that for children in low-income families, a modest “$3,000 annual boost to family income is associated with a 17 percent increase in adult earnings” and “135 additional work hours per year after age 25.” To make that income boost harder to obtain is—at best—shortsighted.

“We need policies that help lift Illinoisans out of poverty, not push them deeper into it,” says Kimberly Drew, a Poverty Commission staffer and a policy associate with Heartland Alliance for Human Needs & Human Rights. “Reducing the lifetime limit for TANF will have a devastating effect on many of our most vulnerable children and families.”

“The situation Illinois is facing is exactly what people feared would happen with a block grant,” says Pavetti. “When you have limited funds that don’t increase with need, helping poor families becomes a zero sum game and some families inevitably lose. With a fixed block grant, the only way you can provide cash assistance to more poor families is to take the money from somewhere else. In the case of Illinois, that happens to be child care. TANF is a broken system that desperately needs to be fixed.”

Finally, another piece of legislation in Illinois that would make a real difference in the lives of low-income people: a proposal to increase the minimum wage from $8.25 to $10.65 per hour over four years, and then index it to inflation. Tipped workers—currently paid only $4.95 per hour—would also be paid the new, full minimum wage. Currently, 100,000 state residents work full time, year-round, and still live below the poverty line, earning about $16,500 per year. The bill is expected to be voted on in committee next week.

This is a critical moment for people living in poverty in Illinois—hard times could get a lot harder in the coming months. If you’re a state resident, contact your representatives—tell them to oppose reducing TANF eligibility to three years; oppose raising child care co-payments; support the supplemental appropriation to pay for TANF benefits; and support raising the minimum wage.

Greenstein: Countering Safety Net Myths with Facts

At a hearing before the House Budget Committee last week, Robert Greenstein, president of the CBPP, testified on the need to strengthen the safety net. While his testimony fell on deaf ears with regard to House Republicans, that doesn’t mean his insights aren’t invaluable to the rest of us.

You can read Greenstein’s entire testimony here, but here’s a summary of some of the main points made by a guy who has been working on budget issues since 1972, and runs an outfit that knows the intricacies of policy and data as much as anyone in this town.

Greenstein cites a statistic that is a good one to remember when you hear the myths “we don’t know what to do about poverty” or “we waged a war on poverty and poverty won”: without the safety net in 2010, the poverty rate would have been 29 percent, nearly double what it is today. The Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit alone lifted 9 million people in low-income working families above the poverty line, including 5 million children. Food stamps (SNAP) lifted another 4 million people out of poverty.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan would have you believe that the safety net is in danger of becoming a “hammock,” lulling otherwise able-bodied workers to sleep and creating a culture of dependency.

But Greenstein notes that 91 percent of all spending in 2010 on federal entitlement benefits went to people who either are not expected to work because they are 65 or older or disabled, or were members of working households. Another 7 percent went “for unemployment insurance, Social Security survivor benefits for widows and orphans of deceased workers, Social Security benefits for retirees aged 62-64, or medical care.” If you add major non-entitlements—low-income housing assistance, WIC and low-income energy assistance—90 percent of benefits still go to people who are elderly, disabled or in working households.

Greenstein explores the increase in deep poverty—people living below 50 percent of the federal poverty line, or less than roughly $11,000 for a family of four—that resulted from welfare reform in 1996. Single mothers “with less education and skills and more physical, mental health, or other problems,” and children in particular took a hit as they faced deep cuts in benefits and other obstacles to getting assistance. In 1995, cash assistance under the old AFDC program lifted 2.2 million children out of deep poverty. By 2005 the TANF block grant lifted only 650,000 above that level.

One positive aspect of the safety net is SNAP (food stamps), which in 2011 cut nearly in half the number of children living below the World Bank poverty standard—less than $2 per day, per person. Without SNAP, 1.46 million households with 2.8 million children lived below the standard; but when SNAP is taken into account 800,000 households with 1.4 million children lived in these extreme conditions. (Still far more people than this country should stomach.)

“The importance of retaining the SNAP program structure alongside the TANF block grant cannot be overstated,” Greenstein writes. He also reminds that before there were national eligibility and benefit standards for the food stamp program—under President Richard Nixon—we had childhood malnutrition and related diseases in some poor areas “that were akin to those in some third-world countries”; kids with open sores that wouldn’t heal, distended bellies, complete lethargy. The House proposal to block grant SNAP—and Medicaid too—as we have done with TANF, would be tremendously regressive, resulting in the kind of inability to respond to need that we see with TANF.

Finally, Greenstein cites research showing the tremendous “beneficial effects on young children in low-income families” that result from a $3,000 increase in a family’s income, “whether the increase comes from earnings or other sources such as government assistance. These findings underscore the importance of programs such as SNAP, the EITC, and the Child Tax Credit as work supports.”

After reading Greenstein’s testimony—which I recommend reading in its entirety, since it goes into far more detail than I go into here, and it’s a great tutorial on the safety net—the actions taken by House Republicans this week on the budget were all the more striking.

Melissa Boteach, director of Half in Ten, reveals some of the choices the GOP made in an effort to avert military cuts scheduled for January 2013 under a bipartisan agreement reached last summer. These include: at least $33 billion in cuts from the SNAP program (it’s worth noting that nearly half of the program’s 46 million participants are children, and subsidies to corporate agriculture were left untouched); the elimination of the Social Services Block Grant, which helps over 11 million kids through funding for child abuse prevention and intervention, foster care and child protective services; and eliminating the Child Tax Credit for parents who pay federal income taxes using an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number instead of a Social Security number. That mainly hurts American children whose parents are low-income working immigrants.

“The $1,800 the families will lose, on average, could otherwise go toward decent nutrition and stable housing—all associated with better development and school performance,” says Deborah Weinstein, executive director of the Coalition on Human Needs.

“That’s $1,800 less per year for the families of 5.5 million children—working families with incomes below the poverty level,” adds Boteach. “This at a moment when more than 1 in 5 kids are living in poverty.”

E-mails from Readers

Dear Greg,

Over the almost sixty years I have been on this earth, I have straddled social movements and seen change come about. It began with racism, moved on to include sexism, then to discrimination of disabilities and then to gay rights, not necessarily in that order. Poverty is on the horizon awaiting the chance to be the next movement. Poverty is ready to raise its voice and some of us who are living in it are prepared to speak.

You will see something quite remarkable happening with the This Week in Poverty discussion on poverty—something that seldom happens with the major media: actual poor people are being given a voice too. Readers might consider that while we poor aren’t polished academics, we are indeed experts in poverty because we live it every day. We have some know-how and may also have some ideas that could make life better for every class if we work together.

All we ask is that you respectfully listen, not “troll.” Webster’s defines trolling as posting “deliberately inflammatory articles on an internet discussion board.” Is simply disagreeing with someone “deliberately posting something inflammatory”? No. But we all know the difference between disagreeing and being inflammatory, and we should pay attention to that line.

Cat Sullivan, board member of POWER

* * *

Greg,

I just read your article, “This Week in Poverty: Will Pennsylvania Rip Another Hole in the Safety Net?” and wanted to say thanks for bringing this issue to the forefront.

As one of America’s ‘long term unemployed’ and a single ‘Adult without Dependent Children’ (AwDC), I have been stunned and saddened by the lack of resources and/or compassion for people that fall into this category, and have been writing about this for quite some time. My most recent post was published just yesterday:

“Millions of the long term unemployed are classified as ‘Adults without Dependent Children’—which simply means that they do not qualify for any assistance other than food stamps once their unemployment benefits are exhausted….

“Along with skyrocketing gas prices, food prices have also soared, leaving many with the absolute inability to feed, clothe and house themselves and/or their families without some level of assistance. The plight for those ‘AwDCs’ continues to be grim, and will only get worse if the SNAP program is cut even further while, at the same time, millions remain without meaningful work they can rely on to sustain their own existence financially.”

This is a horrifying and unbelievably humiliating situation to be in. I never in my life thought I’d find myself in circumstances such as this. I continue to be amazed at the indifference of so many in our society—as well as lawmakers at all levels—regarding the plight of so many AwDCs who now find themselves among the ranks of the homeless and very poor as a result of long term (and potentially permanent) unemployment.

Kelly Wiedemer, Denver Unemployment Examiner

Articles

“Philadelphia School District Announces its Dissolution,” Daniel Denvir
“The Fight Over Inequality,” Thomas B. Edsall
“Local Families Struggle Under Welfare Rules,” Kate Giammarise
“Hundreds March in ACT UP, Occupy Rally,” Allison Kilkenny
“Family Resource Centers, Child Abuse Prevention, Facing Cuts” Lindsey Tugman
“Where Will Homeless Go in Wake of Yuba City Park Project?” Ashley Gebb
“Big Agriculture Lobbies for Child Labor,” Anna Pycior

Other Resources

“Tavis Smiley and Cornel West,” The Colbert Report
“Protecting the Safety Net in Tough Times,” National Center for Children in Poverty
“Wage Gap: Women of Color in Difficult Times,” National Women’s Law Center
“The False Choice of National Defense Versus Helping the Poor,” CBPP
“After Foster Care and Juvenile Justice,” MDRC
“Fair Pay for Women: Increase Minimum Wage and Tipped Minimum Wage,” NWLC
“2012 United States Peace Index,” Institute for Economics and Peace
“Cracking Down on Wage Theft,” Progressive States Network

Vital Statistics

US poverty (less than $22,314 for a family of four): 46 million people, 15.1 percent of population.

Children in poverty: 16.4 million, 22 percent of all children.

Number of poor children receiving cash aid: one in five.

Poverty rate for people in female-headed families: 42 percent.

Single mothers with incomes under $25,000: 50 percent.

Single mothers working: 67 percent.

Deep poverty (less than $11,157 for a family of four): 20.5 million people, 6.7 percent of population.

Increase in deep poverty, 1976–2010: doubled—3.3 percent of population to 6.7 percent.

Families receiving cash assistance, 1996: 68 of every 100 families with children living in poverty.

Families receiving cash assistance, 2010: 27 of every 100 families with children living in poverty.

Impact of public policy, 2010: without government assistance, poverty would have been twice as high—nearly 30 percent of population.

Quote of the Week

Submitted by “Bobbolink,” a homeless person who reads this blog regularly:

“In the research of Fisk and her colleagues, people were asked how different social groups are viewed by their society. When asked a series of questions about social warmth and the competency of different social and ethnic groups, the answers clustered around four emotional responses: pity, envy, pride, and disgust. For example, people routinely react to the homeless with disgust. This is puzzling enough. You might have thought people would pity the homeless, empathize with their position, and feel sorry for them. Not at all. And in a functional MRI study, when study participants were presented with pictures of members from each social and ethnic group, the medial prefrontal cortex—the site that registers the potential for an object’s social action—popped for all but one group: the homeless. The homeless maybe seen as human, but not fully so, not as social actors.”
                  —from The Empathy Gap by J.D. Trout

This Week in Poverty posts every Friday morning. Please comment below. You can also e-mail me at WeekInPoverty@me.com and follow me on Twitter.