Interview

ICYMI: TalkPoverty Editor Greg Kaufmann on the Melissa Harris-Perry Show

In case you missed it, Greg Kaufmann joined Melissa Harris-Perry to talk about TalkPoverty.org, which provides a platform for those reporting on, living in and fighting against poverty to share their stories. Watch the video:

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Analysis

Deconcentrating Poverty is Route to Quality Schools

As we mark the 60th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, we know how poor America’s public school students are.   We also know from the Census and a recent Southern Poverty Foundation report how dramatically poverty among public school students has grown in the past decade. Student poverty makes it incredibly hard to improve student and school performance, given its link to chronic absence, housing instability, difficulty attracting and retaining strong teachers, and insufficient school resources.

In addition to growing poverty, we can see how much ground we have lost since the 1960s and 1970s in desegregating our schools. They’re intensely racially segregated not only in former Jim Crow states like Mississippi, but in New York, which now has the most segregated schools in the entire country—as measured by students’ exposure to peers of other races.

This pattern of concentrating black and Hispanic children in our poorest schools poses major obstacles to the equal access to opportunity that our democracy demands.

What is most critical, however, is how racial and income segregation interact with one another. Indeed, William Julius Wilson’s seminal 1967 book, The Truly Disadvantaged, jumpstarted an entire body of research on this issue. Recently, Richard Rothstein and Patrick Sharkey discussed both neighborhood- and school-level links between segregation, poverty, and related factors that particularly harm black and brown families and children. Their work prompted the Economic Policy Institute and Broader Bolder Approach to Education to explore what that interaction looks like for kids who are starting school now; our new paper uses data from US children who entered kindergarten in the 2010-2011 school year.

Our findings affirm those of Wilson, Rothstein, and Sharkey: due to racial segregation, minority status conveys multiple disadvantages. Chief among them, black and Hispanic kindergartners are disproportionately in schools in which the majority of their peers are poor. (The definition of poverty in this paper is that used by many policymakers to establish eligibility for many government supports – 200% of the federal poverty line, or less than about $37,000 annually for a family of three.

If our kindergarten classrooms were not economically and racially segregated, we would expect most students to be in classes in which about a quarter of their peers were low-income; since overall, about 25 percent of all kindergartners are from low-income households. But in our segregated society classrooms don’t look like that at all: Three in five white students are in classrooms in which just over 10 percent of their classmates are poor. This means that they are likely to be in schools that do not face obstacles like classmates whose lack of preparation demand extra teacher attention, or peers whose hunger and toothaches prompt them to act out and disrupt class. They are less likely to suffer from shuttered school libraries, counselors that must each support 1000 students, or a lack of nurses to treat ordinary and emergency medical needs – things that are increasingly common in low-income and heavily minority schools.

For black and brown students, the story is flipped: Only 11 percent of Hispanic and 7 percent of black students make it into such low-poverty kindergarten classrooms; most are in classrooms in which at least 75 percent of their peers are minorities, and the majority of those peers are poor. More than 56 percent of black students, and more than 55 percent of Hispanic students, enter kindergarten classes in which half of the kids are poor. Moreover, one-third of their classmates do not speak English at home, and the percentage of their peers’ mothers who have at least a bachelor’s degree is in the single digits. Less than 5 percent of white kindergartners attend schools facing these multiple disadvantages.

This pattern of concentrating black and Hispanic children in our poorest schools poses major obstacles to attaining the integrated schools and equal access to opportunity that our democracy demands. Reducing child poverty must be our ultimate goal, but if today’s students are to reap the benefits of schools with a diverse mix of peers, we must immediately enact education policies focused on deconcentrating poverty.

Revamping “choice” to incentivize integration by promoting socioeconomically mixed schools – at the federal, state, and local levels – would be a good start. For example, laws that authorize and evaluate charter schools could make socioeconomic integration a key metric, and districts that encourage choice among schools should also establish integration as a criterion for students who want to move out of their neighborhoods. At least one example suggests it’s good policy all around: students in Chicago’s non-selective magnet schools – which tend to integrate rather than further segregate students – see larger test score gains than their charter school peers.  Finally, the obsessive focus on test scores as a measure not only of student, but of school success, has exacerbated segregation by unfairly weakening and stigmatizing schools. Dialing that pressure back in federal and state policies would also promote integration. Policies such as these would help ensure that all schools are well-resourced, attractive options for parents, and conducive spaces for children to learn.

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First Person

Not Poverty, Acute Financial Distress

I listened to TalkPoverty Live! and have some thoughts to share about how we should be addressing poverty in this country.

First of all, we should stop calling it “poverty”—in political campaigns or otherwise. It is people in “acute financial distress.” When we hear of people in distress we want to help them. When we hear that they are poor we ignore them because of all of the stigmas associated with being poor.  “Acute financial distress” is a more accurate term too—it connotes a temporary predicament shared by many in our “new economy.” Poverty, on the other hand, is misperceived as a permanent condition, even though people slip in and out of being poor.

Having experienced acute financial distress, including being homeless, I think this is the central issue and major roadblock to eliminating poverty—the stigma that goes along with “being poor.” Lately, I feel like a modern day James Brown telling people to shout, “I’m Poor & I’m Proud. Sing it loud, Y’all!

No joke. When you experience acute financial distress our society looks at you and says, aloud or not, “What did you do wrong?” and/or “What’s wrong with you?”

In my case, I became homeless because I refused to allow my mother, who was terminally ill with Alzheimer’s, to be placed in a nursing home. In the end, I was completely wiped out— physically, emotionally, spiritually and financially. There are many stories like mine.  But people prefer the stereotypes to the real stories—it makes it easier to maintain bad policies.

Bad policies like TANF which Peter Edelman wrote about in a TalkPoverty blog last month. I didn’t know who Edelman was at the time. But I’ve come to learn that he resigned from the Clinton Administration in 1996 after the President signed welfare reform legislation.  I researched why he did that and found out that Edelman was spot on. That legislation had two devastating effects: one, it dramatically reduced the amount of cash assistance that was available (for two years, believe it or not, I lived on a monthly general assistance stipend of $140.00); and secondly, it gave states nearly autonomous control of how and whether they provide cash assistance.

Now, this is where the stigma and these reforms intersect. Many of the people who administer social services (not the people working in the field who know better) also resent “poor people.”  That’s part of the reason why programs are designed in a way that makes it almost impossible for you to get your life back on track after a financial or personal trauma. And it works.  Most people give up and return to whatever situation got them into acute financial distress in the first place.

Case in point: I have been living on housing assistance in New Jersey the last four years or so. The state provides that assistance while a person applies for federally subsidized affordable housing. The understanding is that if you diligently apply for every affordable housing opportunity, they will help fund your housing until you are lucky enough to get one of the few federally-subsidized units.

When you experience acute financial distress our society looks at you and says, aloud or not, “What did you do wrong?” and/or “What's wrong with you?”

But when I went to see my case worker in April, I was told that all extensions for the Housing Assistance Program were being terminated June 30th. No explanation; no recourse.

I was fortunate, because four days after meeting with my case worker I got a letter telling me there was an affordable housing unit available for me. This was a coincidence. But I can tell you, honestly, during those three days when I didn’t know where I’d be living in another month—after being a long-term caregiver for my mother, and then losing her and becoming homeless—I  came seriously close to triggering the PTSD that I had worked so very hard for the last two years to deal with.  I know many others, not so fortunate, who right now are totally freaking out. For what? Why do this to people? The point is, without federal regulation and guidelines to oversee how states administer social services, they can pretty much do as they please.

Right now I have SSI, food stamps and subsidized housing. So I’m good, sort of.  My food stamp allowance comes to $6 a day. So I’ll be going to a Food Pantry later. I help them work it and they help me with food.

That’s the last thing I’ll say because I think most people don’t know it: there’s a lot of solidarity out here among people living in acute financial distress. That’s what’s working—in spite of social services that aren’t designed with those of us who are struggling in mind.

Though they were originally.  See Robert Beezat’s excellent article on the Forgotten Lesson of the War on Poverty.

 

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Analysis

Congress May Lock in Large Housing Voucher Losses For Years to Come

Congress may be close to finalizing 2015 funding for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which includes almost all federal rental assistance and affordable housing programs. Unfortunately, struggling working families, people with disabilities and others unable to afford today’s high rents will see little housing relief in Congress’ funding.

The House has passed its 2015 Transportation-HUD appropriations bill and the Senate may vote on its bill soon.  While the need for affordable housing continues to rise — the number of poor renter households who pay more than half their monthly income for housing costs has risen 28 percent since 2007 — and homelessness remains unacceptably high, the House bill cuts HUD funding compared to 2014, reducing the number of people receiving rental assistance.  The Senate allocated over $1 billion more to HUD than the House and its bill makes important investments in a few areas, but it fails to serve any additional very poor or homeless households.

These inadequate bills come as the Housing Choice Voucher program, the biggest federal rental assistance program, continues to suffer from losses due to sequestration in 2013, which imposed the steepest funding cut in the program’s 40-year history.  Over 70,000 fewer low-income families had vouchers at the end of 2013 than a year earlier.  Congress provided enough funding in 2014 to restore fewer than half of these lost vouchers, but the 2015 Senate and House bills won’t even renew all of the vouchers restored in 2014, locking in large voucher losses for years to come.

Other HUD programs fare no better.  The Senate provided just enough funding for Homeless Assistance Grants (which provide emergency shelter, permanent supportive housing, and other assistance to people experiencing homelessness) to help the same number of people next year as this year (the House bill would force cuts in the number of people helped), while rejecting the President’s proposal to create more than 30,000 new units of permanent supportive housing to help end chronic homelessness by 2016.

Similarly, both bills rejected the President’s proposal to modestly expand supportive housing for the elderly and people with disabilities, providing only enough funding to serve the current number of recipients.

The Senate did reverse the House bill’s deep cuts in a number of areas by:

  • raising the voucher program’s administrative funding by $205 million to help public housing agencies run the program effectively;
  • boosting the Public Housing Capital Fund by $125 million to help repair public housing units, a critical addition given the $26 billion backlog of needed capital repairs in public housing developments; and
  • expanding funding for the HOME Investment Partnerships program by $250 million to help develop and repair units that are affordable to homeowners and renters with incomes at about twice the poverty line.

These are important improvements over the House bill, and the Senate bill better maintains the current number of people receiving housing assistance, but it won’t enable more people to receive assistance next year.

Thus, neither chamber of Congress made the hard choices needed in this tough budgetary environment to prioritize HUD’s housing programs.  These programs serve 10 million people in about 5 million households, most of whom are elderly, disabled or working parents with incomes below the poverty line and would be homeless or lack stable housing without federal rental assistance.  Yet only 1 in 4 people eligible for rental assistance receives it due to limited funding, and the unmet need is enormous.

Over 1.1 million homeless children were enrolled in school during the 2011-2012 school year, for example, and more than 90,000 people are chronically homeless (meaning they have a disability and have been homeless for over a year or repeatedly over three years).  And more than 8 million low-income households receive no federal housing assistance yet pay more than half of their income for rent and utilities — well above what’s considered affordable.

Even maintaining the status quo, as the Senate bill largely does, won’t help homeless children, who fall farther behind in school the longer they lack a home; it won’t help homeless adults with disabilities obtain supportive housing; and it won’t help more low-income seniors age with dignity in their communities. These bills are not good enough for our most vulnerable neighbors, and they shouldn’t be good enough for Congress.

 

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Analysis

A Forgotten Lesson of the War on Poverty

Poor people organizing other poor people to take control of their future—that is what the original War on Poverty was about.  Some of its early history points to a possible way to combat poverty now and in the future.

One of the most significant successes of the first years of the War on Poverty was the strong emphasis on organizing and empowering people in poor communities to take control of many aspects of their lives (education, job opportunities and training, crime control, health care, and legal issues, to name a few).

The original intent of the War on Poverty was not only to create safety net programs.  It was to identify, train, and nurture the leaders and residents in low-income communities to mobilize and take control of their own destinies.

What this history suggests is that combatting poverty now and in the future should once again be built around poor people organizing to address the challenges that they see their families and communities up against every day.

That kind of work was undertaken by local Community Action Agencies (CAAs) and it was so effective that it threatened the existing power structures.

One of the most dramatic images of successful organizing was in the late 1960s in Chicago, where I lived and worked for the Office of Economic Opportunity helping to administer funds for War on Poverty programs.  At the time, garbage was picked up once per week by municipal crews.  But if the weather was bad—not an unusual occurrence during winters in Chicago—garbage in the poorer neighborhoods was often not collected at all.  Local community activists organized a protest, funded in part by War on Poverty community action agency grants.  People brought their garbage bags downtown and left them on the sidewalk outside of City Hall.  There were pictures in the papers and images on TV every day showing the growing piles of garbage outside of City Hall.  It didn’t take long for the City to change its operation and make sure that everyone got their garbage picked up every week.

Other successful community organizing efforts throughout the country included:

  • Rent strikes to demand sanitary, heated, and safe living conditions
  • Migrant workers striking for improved living and work conditions
  • Programs to enroll seniors in the newly established Medicare program, combat isolation, and promote access to regular meals
  • Community-based mental health and substance abuse programs
  • Job-readiness training programs
  • Head Start programs which brought together families and the broader community to give children a better chance at success

Importantly, most of the people who led the organizing for these efforts were poor themselves and lived in the communities that they were trying to improve. They had very strong leadership qualities and were well-respected by local residents.   The local CAAs hired them and they worked within the communities to identify barriers to economic opportunity and to empower local residents to overcome those barriers.

Unfortunately, the success of community organizing and empowerment was seen as a threat to both urban/liberal and rural/suburban/conservative elected officials at every level of government.  Congressional members, fearing these new leaders as well as activism in poor communities, gutted funding for this crucial element of the War on Poverty starting in 1969.

What this history suggests is that combatting poverty now and in the future should once again be built around poor people organizing to address the challenges that they see their families and communities up against every day.

While government is unlikely to fund these kinds of efforts, non-partisan, private foundations should indeed support this type of grassroots organizing. If it works as well now as it did 50 years ago, it would force all of our elected officials, Democrats and Republicans, to listen to all of the people, not just those who have the money and organizational power to influence legislation.

And the country as a whole would benefit.

 

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