Analysis

Of Stereotypes and Slack Reporting Standards: The Economist’s Claim that Native American Gaming Leads to “Sloth”

In his extensive research, Princeton political scientist Martin Gilens shows how “racial stereotypes have played a central role in generating opposition” to economic security programs in the United States. As Gilens notes, “In particular, the centuries-old stereotype of blacks as lazy remains credible for large numbers of white Americans.” Gilens concludes “racial distortions in the media’s coverage of poverty are largely responsible for public misperceptions of the poor.”

Gilens’ book was published in 1999. In our view, media coverage of poverty has improved since then. This is probably due to increased diversity in the new media and as well as a better understanding—as a result of the work of Gilens, Shanto Iyengar, and others—of how distorted media representations can negatively affect public perception of policy issues.

But an article in this week’s The Economist is a reminder that we haven’t put the bad old days of racially distorted coverage of poverty beyond us. The article claims “cash from casinos makes Native Americans poorer.” According to the author, a particular problem is that tribes distribute part of the revenues directly to members—typically known as “per capita payments”—which encourages “sloth.” The article is accompanied by a photograph of an American Indian man in front of a slot machine, a grin on his face and his arm pumped in the air.

We haven’t put the bad old days of racially distorted coverage of poverty beyond us.

Given research like Gilens’ and the long history of stereotyping American Indians as lazy, The Economist should have been particularly careful to ensure that it had solid evidence to back up its claim. In lieu of such evidence, The Economist relied on a few anecdotes and a single article by a private attorney published in a student-run law review.

We took a closer look at the law review article that The Economist relied on and were not impressed. It purportedly shows that poverty was more likely to increase in certain Pacific Northwest tribes that distributed part of their gambling revenues to members than in those that did not. But there were only seven tribes (out of a total of 17 that the article focused on) that did not distribute gaming revenues directly to members. The total reported decline in poverty among these seven tribes amounted to only 364 people. The study contained no controls for any of the many factors that affect poverty rates, nor did it take into account size differences in the tribes, differences in the size and structure of the per capita payments, or other relevant factors. In short, the study is absolutely useless in terms of providing meaningful evidence to support The Economist’s claim.

Even worse, The Economist failed to mention the existence of rigorous, peer-reviewed research contradicting the article’s thesis. Unlike the single paper cited in the article, this research uses methodologies designed to isolate the causal effects of per capita payments and generally finds that they have positive effects on poverty and other indicators of children’s well-being. For example, research by William Copeland and Elizabeth Costello, both professors at Duke University, uses longitudinal data that tracks both American Indian and non-American Indian children in western North Carolina. After the introduction of a per capita payment for American Indian families, they documented “an overall improvement in the outcomes of the American Indian children while those of the non-[American] Indian children … remained mostly stable.” Strikingly, educational outcomes for American Indian children “converged to that of the non-[American] Indians,” and the arrest rate of American Indian children fell below that of non-American Indians.

Similarly, in research using the same data set published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Costello and her colleagues found that poverty declined among American Indian families after the introduction of per capita payments and also led to improvements in children’s behavioral health.

In addition to research that examines per capita payments, there is a larger body of rigorous research looking at the overall effect of gaming on poverty, employment, and other indicators of well-being. On balance, this research finds positive effects. For example, University of Maryland economists William Evans and Julie Topoleski compared outcomes in tribes that opened casinos with those that did not.  Among tribes that opened casinos, Evans and Topoleski found increases in population and employment, declines in poverty, and some improvements in health. Similarly, Barbara Wolfe and her colleagues found that being a member of a gaming tribe “leads to higher income, fewer risky health behaviors, better physical health, and perhaps increased access to healthy care.”

This isn’t to say that Tribal members and their governing bodies shouldn’t continue to have thoughtful debates about the design of per capita payments or the best balance to strike between direct payments and investments in their social and economic infrastructures. As sovereign governments, they’re already doing that with the benefit of research and the wisdom of their members. Moreover, although you won’t learn it from The Economist, there is a structure in place, under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, that requires tribes to submit plans to Department of Interior before adopting per capita payments.

There is little question that American Indians—both those affiliated with gaming tribes and those who are not—face some of the most severe income, health, and education disparities in our country. If The Economist had wanted to take a serious look at how public policy impacts poverty rates on reservations they would have examined far more pressing topics like the potential benefit of Medicaid expansion for the Indian Health Service, proposals to strengthen the tribal education system, or efforts to address the disproportionately high suicide rate among Native youth. Instead, this story plays into discriminatory stereotypes about American Indians.

We urge The Economist to meet their own journalistic standards and to set the record straight by providing a historically informed discussion of the real issues faced by American Indians today.

Related

Announcement

BillMoyers.com & TalkPoverty: 12 Days, 12 Actions You Can Take to Fight Poverty

TalkPoverty.org is proud to collaborate with BillMoyers.com as it focuses exclusively on poverty coverage over the next two weeks.  Every day, visit BillMoyers.com to discover a new action you can take to help turn the tide in the fight against poverty.

With a new conservative-led Congress, most people devoted to helping individuals and families living on the brink aren’t feeling terribly optimistic about the prospects for positive action at the federal level.  (With the exception, perhaps, of action on criminal justice reform.) In fact, we will almost certainly need to redouble our efforts simply to defend programs that are currently working.  Remember, poverty would be approximately twice as high—nearly 30 percent—without the safety net.

But as my friend and colleague at the Center for American Progress, Melissa Boteach, constantly says when she talks about poverty with activists—we can’t simply play defense, we’ve got to stay on offense.

Melissa is right, and frankly, with more than 1 in 3 Americans living below twice the poverty line—on less than about $37,000 annually for a family of three—it’s going to take a visible, disruptive, and non-violent movement if we are to create an economy that is truly defined by opportunity as well as a robust safety net that is there for us when we need it.  To some extent whether it’s conservatives or progressives who are in the Majority, our task remains the same: we must build a dynamic movement.

In the two weeks ahead, BillMoyers.com will feature a post every day by an anti-poverty leader.  Every day, one of these contributors will offer an action you can take to advocate for people who are struggling and to help build the movement we so urgently need.

Beyond these two weeks, we hope you will keep reading BillMoyers.com, which has long demonstrated its commitment to poverty-related issues.  Sign-up, too, for TalkPoverty.org weekly emails, and we will continue to bring you the voices and ideas of people who are struggling in poverty as well as posts by other anti-poverty leaders.

There is nothing inevitable about poverty.  The only questions that remain are the same ones we have faced for so long: are we committed to dramatically reducing poverty?  And, if so, what are we willing to do to advance our goal?

Over the next 12 days, we hope the ideas offered by our contributors will provide valuable openings for your activism. BillMoyers.com will keep adding to the list each day here—bookmark the page to see all the big ideas. Please share this link and your thoughts below in the comments and via Twitter using #12Days.

The Media Must Tell the True Story of Struggle in America

by Deepak Bhargava

Last year, Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly did a segment on poverty where he asserted that “poverty will not change until personal behavior does,” explaining that anti-poverty work will never overcome “addictive behavior, laziness, [and] apathy.”

In many ways, the segment sums up a widely-held myth constructed by the right that people who struggle to make ends meet don’t want to work. But in reality, people are working harder and harder for less and less, and all we have to do is listen to the stories of everyday Americans to see the truth.

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Protect and Expand Workers’ Ability to Bargain

by Sarita Gupta

Greedy corporations have been on a decades-long bender to take advantage of working people – depressing wages, benefits and job standards, which has led to record inequality and poverty.

Fighting poverty requires expanding and protecting the ability of workers to bargain with their employers to demand higher wages, better working conditions and better living standards. As the nature of work changes, we look at collective bargaining through the union workplace campaign lens, but also through nontraditional forms, including legislative, policy, rulemaking and industry-wide interventions that put more money in workers’ pockets and improve standards and conditions for workers. Only through bargaining do workers have the power to directly confront the corporate actors behind poverty and inequality.

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Make Public Higher Education in the United States Completely Free

by Maxwell John Love

Fifty years ago, the US National Student Association (The United States Student Association’s predecessor) declared its support for “the establishment of free public higher education throughout the United States financed by the local, state and federal governments, with the purpose of furthering the freedom of the individual and the critical spirit which ensures a dynamic and democratic society.”

Last week in Tennessee and last night in his State of the Union address, the president said the words ‘free’ and ‘college’ in the same sentence. The administration’s proposal is a big deal. It would offer funding to states to completely eliminate tuition at community colleges (on average $3,800). The funding would also not be last-dollar, meaning students could receive additional aid to offset living expenses.

We welcome the president to the fight for free college, and we believe that all public higher education in the US should be free!

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We Need to Expand the Most Effective Anti-Poverty Program in America

by Alex Lawson

In order to fight poverty, one of the easiest and most effective things we can do is to expand our Social Security system. Social Security lifted 22 million Americans out of poverty in 2012, including one million children. Without Social Security, 44.1 percent of all Americans over the age of 65 would be living in poverty; with Social Security that rate is 8.9 percent.

Social Security isn’t just for seniors – it is also the primary disability and life insurance protection for most of America’s workers. Social Security provides around $580,000 in disability insurance protections and $550,000 in life insurance protections.

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Low Wages Are a Moral Crisis in Our Time

by Sister Simone Campbell

Having worked as a family law attorney for 18 years in Oakland, California, I know that the single greatest cause of the breakup of families is economic stressors. This is especially true for the working poor families of our country.

Working for poverty wages creates family conflict when you have to choose between paying for rent and food, phone or medicine. This stress causes friction, blame and break-ups.

But it isn’t just families who suffer because of low wages. All workers working for minimum wage today need more than one job to get by.

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Protect and Strengthen Medicare and Medicaid Programs for Another 50 Years

by Kevin Prindiville

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Medicare and Medicaid, two programs that play a key role in ensuring that elderly and disabled Americans have access to health care and are not bankrupted by its costs.

Before Medicare and Medicaid were created in 1965, 35 percent of Americans over 65 did not have health insurance, leaving a huge uninsured aging population with either insurmountable doctor and hospital bills, or more frequently, no health care at all.

While we celebrate the fact that millions of people are better off now than they were in 1965, we must be aware that access to health care is continually threatened by program cuts, and millions of beneficiaries have trouble accessing the care they are entitled to because the programs don’t always work as well as they could.

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Support Human Rights for Food Supply Chain Workers

by Coalition of Immokalee Workers

The CIW’s Fair Food Program and Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR) model have transformed Florida’s $650 million tomato industry. The program is the gold standard for human rights in the fields today, including: worker-to-worker education on rights, a 24-hour complaint line and an effective complaint investigation and resolution process — all backed by market consequences for employers who refuse to respect their workers’ rights.

Now in its fourth season, the Fair Food Program is poised to expand, and bring respect and dignity for workers to new crops and new states. As underscored by the phone call from the former strawberry worker — that expansion can’t come soon enough.

Read More

Slash Child Hunger

by Joel Berg

Even though the United States is the wealthiest and most agriculturally abundant country in world history, food insecurity now ravages 49 million Americans — including nearly 16 million American children. This often-overlooked mass epidemic harms health, hampers education, traps families in poverty, fuels obesity and eviscerates hope, while sapping the US economy of $167.5 billion annually, according to the Center for American Progress.

For our kids to be well read, they must first be well fed.

That’s why in order to achieve other vital national priorities — such as fixing public education, restoring the middle class, expanding opportunity, reducing crime and incarceration, making health care more affordable, protecting the nation from enemies, and slashing poverty — we must also end hunger in America, starting with child hunger.

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Stand with Native Youth and Support “Generation Indigenous”

by Erik Stegman

American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) youth face more barriers to success than almost any other group in the country. Thirty-seven percent of AIAN children under 18 live in poverty, significantly higher than the national child poverty rate of 22 percent (according to the American Community Survey).  The AIAN graduation rate is the lowest of any racial and ethnic group at 68 percent. Perhaps most stunning, suicide is the second leading cause of death for AIAN youth between ages 15 and 24 — they commit suicide at 2.5 times the national rate.

But these youth have a new partner in their movement for stronger economic and cultural opportunity: the president.

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We Can Reduce Child Poverty by 60 Percent Right Now

by

Marian Wright Edelman

Martin Luther King Jr. said, “America is going to hell if we don’t use her vast resources to end poverty and make it possible for all God’s children to have the basic necessities of life.”

Today, 150 years after the end of slavery, every other black baby in America is poor. Every third Hispanic baby is poor. Nearly every fourth rural child is poor. All told, there are 14.7 million poor children and 6.5 million extremely poor children in the United States of America. It is a national disgrace that such an unconscionably large number of children are homeless, hungry and living in poverty in a country with the world’s largest economy.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

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We Should Ensure Access to Safe and Affordable Rental Housing

by  Sarah Edelman and Julia Gordon

Since the foreclosure crisis in 2008, the nation has gained more than four million renting households, and demographers expect an additional four million households to become renters over the next decade. At the same time, the homeownership rate has declined from nearly 70 percent to 64 percent.

This influx of renters has put significant upward pressure on rents. According to the Consumer Price Index, as most other expenses have held steady in recent months, rent expenses continue a steep upward climb. Half of all renters spend more than 30 percent of their gross income on housing, while 27 percent spend more than 50 percent — both sharp increases over the last decade. When the rental market tightens, the lowest-income renters feel the pressure first.

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Stop Punishing People After They Have Been Released from Prison

by  Jeremy Haile

In America, we punish people for being poor. But we’re also one of the few democracies that punishes people for being punished.

Consider the felony drug ban, which imposes a lifetime restriction on welfare and food stamp benefits for anyone convicted of a state or federal drug felony. Passed in the “tough on crime” era of the mid-1990s, the ban denies basic assistance to people who may have sold a small amount of marijuana years or even decades ago and have been law-abiding citizens ever since.

The Sentencing Project found that the legislation subjects an estimated 180,000 women in the 12 most impacted states to a lifetime ban on welfare benefits.

Read More

Related

Announcement

TalkPoverty Readers on What Obama Should Say in #SOTU

This week, in anticipation of President Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday, TalkPoverty.org hosted a Twitter storm, asking participants to explain why the President should #TalkPoverty during the State of the Union (#SOTU) and what he should say about our economy and families living on the brink.

In a single hour, nearly 500 participants posted 1600 tweets. Those tweets reached 5 million unique Twitter streams. For all of you who participated, thank you!

Beyond the impressive numbers and reflections, the Twitter storm demonstrated two things.

First, the facts and figures tweeted by organizations and online activists reveal the intersection of race, age, and gender in poverty statistics: That one in seven women are poor and that a majority of minimum wage earners are women is society’s failing. That 50 percent of African-American babies and one-third of Latino babies are poor is society’s failing. That men of color, and their families and communities, suffer overwhelmingly from an excessively punitive criminal justice system is also society’s failing.

Second, there is a formidable and passionate community that cares deeply about poverty in America and is working hard for change. There is strength in our numbers, and part of how we will succeed in making our agenda a political priority is by continuing to #TalkPoverty, continuing to collectively make our case, and coming together to take action however and whenever we can.

We hope that the President will prioritize the dramatic reduction of poverty not just in his State of the Union address, but in the remainder of his presidency.  In doing so, we hope he will help inspire high-quality media coverage of poverty that has been lacking, and strong legislation at the local, state and even federal level.

Please join TalkPoverty and other online activists again on Tuesday, when we will be live tweeting during the State of the Union address. Offer your thoughts using #TalkPoverty and #SOTU, and ask your friends to join us.  Also, don’t miss our first episode of TalkPoverty Radio on SiriusXM Insight this Saturday at noon.  Witness to Hunger member Tianna Gaines-Turner will talk about the state of her community in Philadelphia, and will be joined by Senator Sherrod Brown, Melissa Harris-Perry, and other special guests.

Thanks for all you do. Here were some of our favorite tweets:

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Analysis

Social Security Disability Insurance: A Primer for Rand Paul (and Everyone Else)

Well, that was fast.

Congress hasn’t been back even two weeks, and the conservative attacks on Social Security are already in full swing. As ThinkProgress reported last week, House conservatives kicked off the 114th Congress—literally on Day One—with a midnight rule change that prohibits a routine rebalancing of the Social Security trust funds, effectively manufacturing a crisis and putting millions of Social Security beneficiaries at risk of needless benefit cuts.

The plot thickened further yesterday when Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) took aim at beneficiaries of Social Security Disability Insurance with a series of incredibly offensive remarks at a private meeting with legislative leaders in Manchester, NH. In a situation resembling Mitt Romney’s famous remarks about the “47 percent,” Senator Paul’s comments were caught on tape by American Bridge, a left-leaning PAC that conducts opposition research to aid progressive candidates:

If you look like me and you hop out of your truck, you shouldn’t be getting a disability check. Over half the people on disability are either anxious or their back hurts. Join the club. Who doesn’t get up a little anxious for work every day and their back hurts? Everyone over 40 has a back pain.

Senator Paul is just the latest conservative member of Congress to mock disabled workers for whom Social Security is a vital lifeline. But particularly coming on the heels of the dangerous rule change, the Senator’s remarks serve as a worrisome harbinger of what we can expect from conservatives in Congress in the coming weeks and months. So let’s get a few things straight. As Shawn Fremstad and I have written for the Center for American Progress, and in numerous outlets such as ThinkProgress, National Journal, and others:

The Social Security disability standard is among the strictest in the developed world—and most applications are denied. According to the OECD, the U.S. disability benefit system is the most restrictive and least generous of all member countries, except for Korea. Fewer than four in ten applicants are approved, even after all stages of appeal. Beneficiaries have severe impairments and illnesses like cancers, congestive heart failure, kidney failure, multiple sclerosis, emphysema, and severe mental illness. Many have multiple impairments. Medical evidence is the cornerstone of the disability determination process, and in most cases, medical evidence from multiple medical professionals is required to establish eligibility.

While the program’s benefits are modest, it keeps more than four million people out of poverty each year.

Social Security Disability Insurance is coverage that workers earn. To be insured for benefits, an individual must have worked and paid into the system. Both workers and employers pay for Social Security through payroll tax contributions. Workers currently pay 6.2 percent of the first $118,500 of their earnings each year, and employers pay the same amount up to the same cap. Of that 6.2 percent, 5.3 percent currently goes to the Old Age and Survivors Insurance, or OASI, trust fund, and 0.9 percent to the Disability Insurance trust fund.

Few beneficiaries are able to work. According to data from just before the onset of the recent economic downturn, some 16.9 percent of disability beneficiaries worked at some point during the year. Of those who worked, fewer than 3 percent earned more than $10,000 during the year – hardly enough to live on. This comes as no surprise given that many beneficiaries are very sick, or even terminally ill – one in five male and one in six female Disability Insurance beneficiaries die within five years of receiving benefits, and beneficiaries are three to five times more likely to die than other people their age. Further underscoring the strictness of the Social Security disability standard, even workers who have been denied Disability Insurance fare extremely poorly in the labor market. A recent study found that among people whose Disability Insurance applications were denied, the vast majority—70 percent to 80 percent—went on to earn less than $1,000 per month. But for those who are able or want to try to return to work, Social Security’s disability programs are designed to encourage work.

Disability benefits are incredibly modest, but vital. Disability Insurance benefits average $1,140 a month, just over the austere federal poverty level for a single person, or about $35 per day. Disability Insurance typically replaces less than half of an individual’s previous earnings. While the program’s benefits are modest, it keeps more than four million people with disabilities out of poverty each year. For 80 percent of beneficiaries, Disability Insurance is their main source of income. For one-third it is their only source of income.

Social Security Disability Insurance provides protection most of us could never afford on the private market. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, just one in three private sector workers have access to employer-provided long-term disability insurance, and plans are often less adequate than Social Security. Access is especially limited for low-wage workers—only 7 percent of workers making under $12 an hour have employer-provided plans. In contrast, Social Security Disability Insurance protects more than 9 out of 10 American workers and their families in the event of a life-changing disability or illness that prevents substantial work. A young worker starting a career today has a one-in-three chance of either dying or needing to turn to Disability Insurance before reaching his or her full Social Security retirement age of 67.

As progressives, we don’t let people get away with denying the facts about climate change. It’s long past time to send a message to conservatives that this kind of offensive, fact-free rhetoric about Social Security disability won’t fly either.

 

Related

Interview

In Our Backyard Interview: “Homelessness is Like Being Slowly Disassembled”

Alyssa Peterson: Can you explain Street Sense’s mission?

Brian Carome: We are a street newspaper, which is a model that exists in a lot of different places. Street newspapers are print newspapers that report on homelessness and poverty in the communities that they serve. They employ men and women, who themselves are homeless, to sell the paper and earn income from doing that. In our case, about half the content of the paper is also written by men and women who either are currently [homeless] or have experienced homelessness. We’ve been around since the fall of 2003.

We call ourselves a no-barrier employment opportunity. We offer orientations twice a week—every Tuesday and Thursday—throughout the year. You don’t need an appointment; you don’t need a referral; you don’t have to fill out any application; and you don’t even need to know the name of someone you’re coming to see. You don’t have to have any capital to buy any first set of newspapers. We provide you the first set of papers free.

Alyssa: What is the role of Street Sense in breaking down the stereotypes that people would think usually about homeless people?

Brian Carome: When we’re at our best, we help folks see the common ground between their lives and the lives of folks who are homeless. It takes away that sort of other, or sense of alien about folks who are homeless. And we learn that they are people just like us. They may have had different opportunities and different experiences. But they came into the world with the same hopes and dreams as everyone else.

We help folks see the common ground between their lives and the lives of folks who are homeless.

People experience Street Sense in a number of ways. It’s through the newspaper and now through the playwriting workshop. But it’s also through the one-on-one conversation that individuals have with their vendor as they’re purchasing the paper. We think those are very important conversations. And we think that they are conversations that wouldn’t happen were it not for our being here. The relationship goes both ways. It’s important for our vendors to also get to know the readers and their customers. It’s helpful for both people to find that common ground.

Alyssa: Vendors say that Street Sense is really empowering. How does Street Sense create this dynamic?

Brian Carome: I think employment really puts the finger on what we try to do. I spent a lot of my career working in shelters and housing programs. The dynamic between our vendors is so different than in a normal client-provider situation. Our vendors feel a genuine sense of ownership in the organization. They are our entire distribution network and they author half of the content of the publications. They participate in our other programs as well and demonstrate ownership.

There’s a sense of comradery. Most of the vendors who walk through the door seeking employment with us at this point are word of mouth referrals. They have been brought here by an existing vendor, folks who understand what the organization can offer to someone. They want to pass that along to someone else.

We believe in the transformational experience that our vendors have when they’re here. Again, it’s that ability to apply their talents; to use their personality to make money that really has a profound change on people and impact on people’s lives.

Video Credit: Saba Aregai (Portfolio)

Alyssa: What kind of programs are run to help foster this sense of community among the vendors and are you looking to expand this programming?

Brian Carome: We have a weekly writer’s group. That’s a tight-knit group of folks who come together every week and argue with each other and brainstorm with each other. [They] debate each other about their different perspectives on issues in the world. We also have an illustration workshop for folks who want to do illustrations for the paper. There’s also a videography workshop now and a playwriting workshop where we have a partnership with two playwrights at George Washington University Department of Theatre and Dance. Our vendors both write original works and also perform them together as a small troupe.

We’re looking for ways of capturing new audiences; ways of broadening the impact of this story of homelessness and how it’s afflicting the community. The other thing we hope for in the future is to expand our geographical footprint. We’d like to open up bureaus in some of the surrounding suburbs and begin providing that vendor, self-employment opportunity to those communities as well. And also to do more public education on the issue of homelessness as it affects Arlington or Montgomery County.

Alyssa: Why do you think people who are formerly homeless continue to be involved in the paper?

Brian Carome: One is the sense of community.  In my experience working in shelters, one of the things that characterizes being homeless is a sense of aloneness and separateness. [Street Sense] helps put the blocks together to reconnect yourself to the community. And I think especially, again, for folks who are writing for the newspaper… it’s nice to see your name in print, and it’s nice to talk to people who appreciate what you’re writing.

The folks who are selling our papers are entrepreneurs; they are self-employed men and women. We give them that chance to be their own boss. I think that continues to be an attraction for folks.

Alyssa: Why is it so important that low-income people are at the forefront of the anti-poverty movement and that their voices are heard?

Brian Carome: They are not heard elsewhere. We wouldn’t exist if the Washington Post or the Washington Times was writing about homelessness every single day. So, we really feel like we fill a gap.  We want the content of the paper to have an impact on those who read it and experience it. [In the paper], you can get a first person account of what homelessness is like; how it affects someone. We think that goes a long way to bringing this community to the point that we find homelessness unacceptable.

Alyssa: Advocates anticipated that there was going to be an increase in homelessness this winter. Do you think the city is equipped to handle this?

Brian Carome: Certainly, the family shelter system is woefully inadequate. I guess most importantly though, is that there are cities across the country that are understanding that it’s less expensive to house people than it is to respond to people once they’re homeless. And we’re not doing enough in this city to embrace that approach. There are way too many folks that live outside. There are way too many families entering the shelter system.

Alyssa: How could the city be doing more?

Brian Carome: D.C. is [among] the top two or three most expensive housing communities in the country. It certainly speaks to why we have such a homelessness problem. We are wasting [money] any time we are sheltering or allowing folks to live in the street rather than giving them a place to live, even if we have to pay 100% of the rent.

And, the longer you’re homeless, the longer you’re going to be homeless. The solution is really quite simple. It’s housing people. Whether that’s providing a small rental subsidy or a complete subsidy, it’s less expensive than the millions and millions of dollars we’re spending on the shelter system—especially for families. It’s just way too wasteful. And what it does to folks—especially to kids—is very devastating and long lasting. It would behoove the city to rethink the way we approach it—especially for family homelessness.

Related