You know the stats: Rochester has the third-highest poverty
level of any US city of comparable size – and the highest rate of extreme
poverty. More than half of the children in the city are poor, giving us the
second-highest child poverty rate in in the country.
The statistics, the extent, may be news, but it is not news
that Rochester has a poverty crisis. It is not news, either, that Rochester has
known about it for decades and hasn’t done the hard work required to alleviate
it.
And every so often, regular as clockwork, we get a new
report, and community leaders cry out in shock and announce their determination
to Do Something. And they form a committee.
And the poverty grows.
It’s not that nobody cares. It’s not that a great deal of
effort – and, yes, money – isn’t invested in worthy programs. But the result is
clear: We’re not fighting poverty effectively. We have a raft of programs that
serve people already in poverty, and those are important. But few of them will
reduce poverty. And those that could don’t serve more than a relative handful.
And so, as the new year was
dawning, we got another anti-poverty initiative: the Rochester Anti-Poverty
Task Force (named at its birth, curiously, the Anti-Poverty Strike Force).
To their credit, the folks who initiated this effort noted
right up front that what we’ve been doing isn’t working. A December 27 document
titled “Rochester-Monroe County Anti-Poverty Initiative Proposal” (signed by
New York Assembly Leader Joe Morelle, Mayor Lovely Warren, County Executive
Maggie Brooks, and United Way CEO Peter Carpino),
insists that we need “a “bold, innovative solution.”
But the proposal’s idea of boldness seems focused on
improving the very “system” that it says isn’t working. It talks about
“integrating” our existing services, about “flexible funding arrangements,”
“better targeting and coordinating resources.”
This community has already done important studies of its
poverty problem – its causes and the steps that could alleviate it. Those
studies show clearly that the causes include the concentration of the
community’s poverty in a few city neighborhoods. But this proposal seems to
assume that we can’t do much about that – that we can deal with this problem
while we keep it bottled up, where our anti-poverty efforts won’t disturb the
rest of us.
I’m being cynical. I know that this was a proposal, not a
plan. Representatives of various groups are going to get together and develop a
plan. Maybe they’ll come up with a bold one. But I’m not optimistic. We’ve
already been down this road, way too many times.
We know what caused our poverty crisis. And we know the big
steps we have to take to address it effectively. And bigger coordination among
social-service agencies ain’t on the list.
I’ll keep coming back to this issue, and the work of the new
task force, as things get going. But let me toss out a challenge: Agree that
“coordination” and “flexible funding” and that kind of thing are important. But
they’re housekeeping. They’re what taxpayers and charitable donors should
expect. They’re not bold.
And then start talking about the hard stuff. Agree, for
instance, that we can’t solve this community’s poverty crisis within the city
limits. Focus on things like the minimum wage, low-income housing in the
suburbs, school integration, education quality, parenting and early-childhood
education from birth forward, the criminal justice
system.
Improving local services for the poor is important. Done
right, they will make life easier for some poor people and may lift a few
people out of poverty. But they treat symptoms, not causes.
It’s treating the causes that is
hard. And expensive.And politically
controversial. But if we’re not willing to address the causes, all we’re
doing is tinkering – and to put it bluntly, making ourselves feel that we’re
Doing Something.
More on all that in the weeks to come.
This article appears in Feb 4-10, 2015.
There is poverty in the suburbs, too, it’s just hidden under the surface. Job losses, overspending, insufficient income; any number of causes. The Brighton Food Depot serves over 800 families every week; almost 1 in 10 families in the town. Then you have East Ave and Sandringham Drive, with million-dollar homes. In the same town. If there’s going to be an Anti-Poverty Task Force or Strike Force or whatever, perhaps they could try including someone who lives in poverty on the task force. Morelle has $120,000 income from his ‘job’ with the state, Warren is the highest-paid mayor of the poorest city in the state and Brooks is hardly suffering in her leafy lakeshore home. What do these people know about poverty?
You say “We know what caused our poverty crisis. And we know the big steps we have to take to address it effectively.”
Please share what caused our poverty crisis and please share what big steps have been taken to address it “effectively”. I’m one of the few that needs to be enlightened to what you imply as common knowledge.
Is it possible that Rochester’s poverty cannot be tackled? The multiple factors which maintain poverty can be found in every American metro area. Furthermore, poverty is almost always concentrated – have you heard of the metro area where poverty is spread evenly? It doesn’t exist. These other metros have “tackled” the problem (largely one of statistics) in one of two ways:
1. “Younger” regions redraw city boundaries to include inner ring suburbs. Not surprisingly, poverty statistics drop significantly. In Rochester’s case, including Greece, Irondequoit, Brighton, and Henrietta would drop the poverty rate under 20%.
2. “Older” regions have done a better job of attracting young professionals to their urban centers, thereby bringing up income averages and making their statistics look better.
Given that #1 is unlikely, I would say that maintaining a heavy focus on #2 would be the best use of tax dollars and quite possibly “solve” the poverty issue in the most expedient fashion.
So you’re going to ask somebody in poverty how to get out of poverty sean? What do you know about the people who live in those “million dollar homes”, or what the family history of Morelle or Mayor Warren is. For all you know they could have had a history of poverty within their own family and they pulled themselves out of it. I grew up myself in a dirt poor family and I’m far from living in poverty myself now. But I bet I know a thing or two about how to get out of poverty due to pulling myself up by my bootstraps.
I’d rather hear from business leaders and those who have the power to actually implement change then to go to the poorest neighborhoods and ask them “how” they can get out of poverty. The obvious answer they would give is “duh…food and jobs”. But do they have the power to create those jobs or know where to even start? Obviously not if the vast majority still live in poverty. We elect officials for a reason. And that’s because we do NOT live in a true Democracy. It’s a REPUBLIC. We elect officials to represent us. How about we actually let them try to and represent us instead of criticizing at every turn and asking that every Tom, Dick and Harry have a say in every single decision made.
Unfortunately for the publisher of this newspaper and like thinking people, “we” cannot solve the poverty problem as we know it. It is up to those that are in poverty to solve the problem themselves by first getting an education and then get a job, what ever that is and work hard and smart and most of all show up. “We” have “helped” too much, as sad and mean spirited as it sounds. Repeal the minimum wage laws is maybe one way we can help. Stop with the liberal “it’s not your fault” lies. I don’t for one minute believe that those on the left even want to solve the problem. It sure makes for great politics. If their “solutions” worked we would not have poverty anymore. As Milton Friedman said, capitalism is the only thing that works.
If the five areas to be tackled are jobs, education/middle-skills training, housing health/nutrition and safe neighborhoods . . . . perhaps there’s one more: youth leadership training. I have noticed that sixth graders especially are really motivated and full of potential. Might another component of addressing ‘poverty’ is to offer a county-wide “Sixth Grade Leadership Institute” at every school [public and private] in the whole county with a summer ‘project’ to be reported out at seventh grade. Almost every obstacle in my life I approached with ‘less fear’ because I had a lot of youth leadership training. I am forever grateful to those experiences. I would recommend ALL sixth graders be exposed and at differing levels, but the impetus, energy and enthusiasm be uniform. We need everyone involved. Everyone.