Part
of an occasional series on poverty in Rochester.
Following my column last week on the new Anti-Poverty Task
Force, a reader pushed back. “You say, ‘We know what caused our poverty
crisis,'” he wrote. Please share. “I’m one of the few that needs to be
enlightened to what you imply as common knowledge.”
Lots of studies – including two by the Rochester Community
Foundation and ACT Rochester (available here and here )
– have laid all this out, but let’s review the causes again:
First, there’s the change in the kinds of jobs people can
get. Once upon a time, even people with limited skills and education could get
a job in industry that paid good wages. That’s not the case now. And jobs in
areas like the service sector often pay poorly.
This has contributed to poverty everywhere, not just in
inner-city neighborhoods. But when many of the residents of an individual
neighborhood are poor, that neighborhood is likely to be burdened by crime,
unemployment, health problems, weak social networks.
Concentrating those problems in a single neighborhood compounds them. And it
breeds more poverty.
Young people growing up in impoverished, segregated
neighborhoods are less likely to have jobs available to them as teenagers. They
have fewer positive adult role models, less peer pressure to study, to show up
and do well in school.
And in a city like Rochester, where poverty is so extensive
that the majority of students in nearly every school are poor, teaching is an
entirely different challenge than in schools where most children have educated,
relatively affluent parents.
It’s easy to say that poor people can pick themselves up and
get a good job. And it’s easy to blame parents and teachers for children’s poor
performance. But the neighborhood itself – the concentration of its problems –
has an effect on its residents.
“Poverty anywhere and in any amount is a problem,” notes a December
study by City Observatory, “but concentrated poverty is often intractable and
self-reinforcing.”
That is exactly what has happened in Rochester, and the City
Observatory study provides the statistics. In 1970, 2,693 residents of the city
and close-in suburbs lived in census tracts with a high poverty level. In 2010,
that number had grown to 37,670.
In 1970, two Rochester census tracts had a high poverty
level. In 2010, there were 39.
The trend rarely reverses itself by itself. Nationally, the
City Observatory study found, not only did the number of high-poverty census
tracts triple between 1970 and 2010, but two-thirds of those that were
high-poverty areas in 1970 remained high-poverty areas in 2010.
A big contributor, of course, has been sprawl, with middle
and upper-income families moving out of the city, taking their taxes, their school-age
children, spending power, community involvement, and support for neighborhood
businesses, schools, and churches with them.
As I wrote last week, Rochester is embarking on yet another
big anti-poverty initiative, with great hope and enthusiasm. But we’ve been
down this road before. And things have gotten worse.
The reason: we haven’t addressed the causes – the
concentration of poverty, the low wages. We keep pretending that we can fix the
problem without addressing the causes. We can’t.
And if this new initiative, this new Rochester
Anti-Poverty Task Force, doesn’t address the causes? I wouldn’t bet on
its success.
David Carr
Many of us are mourning the loss of David Carr, a star in contemporary journalism who died Thursday
night from complications of lung cancer.
David was media columnist for the New York Times, but he was
much, much more. Times Publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. called him “one of
the most gifted journalists who has ever worked at The
New York Times.” He was an astonishingly strong reporter and writer – “an
irreplaceable talent,” Sulzberger said.
In person as well as in his writing, he was bright,
perceptive, and as Sulzberger wrote, “full of life and
energy, funny, loyal, and lovable.”
And he was tough, beating both a horrifying cocaine
addiction and Hodgkin’s lymphoma. But in photographs over the past year or so,
he was painfully thin and gaunt. Cancer wasn’t finished with him. And after
participating in a panel discussion Thursday, the Times report said, he
returned to the Times newsroom and collapsed near his desk.
Before hitting journalism’s Big Time, David had been a star
in the world of alternative journalism, serving as editor of Washington City
Paper, and he maintained his ties to our alt-media association, coming back to
our conferences as a speaker.
He was hard working, dedicated,
intensely ethical, fiercely devoted to the profession of journalism and in love
with it. In those gatherings of alt-news media people from around the country,
he chastised us, cajoled us, and inspired us, reminding us of what we’re
supposed to be about.
At one point last Friday, David’s death was the second-most
e-mailed story on the Times website, and the site has been flooded with
tributes to him, not only from journalists but also from average readers. Alt
weeklies and other media have run their own tributes. I’d like to think he’d be
pleased – not so much by the praise being heaped on him but that the tributes
showed how much readers respected the kind of
journalism he cared so much about.
“David was our champion,” Times film critic AO Scott said in
his own tribute, “the best we had and also the one who would go out into the
world every week to make the case for what we do.”
There’s a big hole in a lot of hearts right now.
This article appears in Feb 11-17, 2015.
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.
Perhaps I should not have been, but I was amazed that you failed to mention the one factor that is most closely linked with poverty and children; the incidence of out of wedlock births. Perhaps recognizing it makes you uncomfortable, as it does not fit with the narrative of others being solely responsible for poverty.
Since the Moynihan study, roughly the same time as you used as a base, the out of wedlock birth rates for blacks have tripled to 72% of all black births. And 37% of single parent households live in poverty versus just 7% of those in two parent homes. Blacks are much more likely to have an out of wedlock child than whites (~25%) or Asians (~17%), and blacks now make up a large majority of the RCSD. Whites and Asians make up only 15%, so there has been a large demographic shift towards groups that make very bad birth decisions.
So push for more, better paying jobs for the city, but if you fail to address the birth problem, you will fail to make a large dent in poverty.
Only 2,693 residents lived in poverty in 1970 and as many as 37, 670 lived in poverty, in 2010. I’m curious:
1- How many of the 37,670 impoverished people living here in 2010 were living here in Rochester in 1970?
2- How many are new to the area, that account for that increase over the 40 span?
3- Of the 34,977 increase in people living in poverty, does it mean that they were not living in poverty before 1970 or did they all become poorer over the 40 year span?
4- Over the 40 year span, how many of the 37, 670 people came to Rochester already in poverty from a different location? Is there info that?
Before the Indians decided to settle in the Genesee Valley, what was the poverty rate?
You left out the latter part of the poster who commented on your previous article. He said that you wrote “We know what caused our poverty crisis. And we know the big steps we have to take to address it effectively.” and then asked you to enlighten him as to the answers. You’ve addressed the first part of his question (what caused poverty) but not the second part (steps we need to take to address it). At least I didn’t see that in your article …
I’m curious to those who commented mentioning the influx of Indian families, people who were previously impoverished before relocating to Rochester in the last 40 years and single mothers as a main issue to the poverty rate in Rochester, what’s your point?
If you were aware of the intersectionality of race and poverty you would understand the institutionalized structures in place, in our country, that keep these aforementioned groups of people impoverished and out of power.
For example, in the past 40 years which were stressed, minority families have been restricted to where they could live and what resources they could have because of a practice called redlining. A term coined in the 60s, redlining has dictated where specific races (hint – not white people) could live and invest their money. And on the issue of single mothers and births out of wedlock, I would take a hard look at gender equality in the U.S. before anyone say that the “birth problem” among African American women is preventing Rochester from handling the poverty rate.
But you know what really won’t help the poverty rate in Rochester? IGNORANCE.
Luxembourg: Single women with children need good jobs. That will make a dent in poverty.
“In 1970, 2,693 residents of the city and close-in suburbs lived in census tracts with a high poverty level. In 2010, that number had grown to 37,670.”
This pretty much follows the “war on poverty” initiative.
Well written opinion filled with facts Mary Anna … and it tells all of us that we need to continue advocating for all people in Rochester Monroe County. Until all of us begin to regularly write letters to Cuomo, Gantt, Morelle, Funke, Robach, Warren, Brooks and Bronson not much will change.
We have to give concrete ideas for change that will work for the benefit of all !!!
With a $142 billion dollar budget proposed for NYS; a billion dollar budget for the County Of Monroe as well as a large budget in the City of Rochester… there has to be a better way to help make change in Rochester Monroe County. Our leaders are trying and it is no easy task unless we encourage, participate and actually take action by volunteering to get in there; roll up our sleeves and do some of the work with our representatives. Throwing more money is not the answer… but actual participation is the answer.
Since Brighton, Henrietta, Gates and Irondequoit directly surround the City of Rochester we need to begin to strategize together in legal finances and ideas to combat poverty. It is not just the City of Rochester’s problem… we are all responsible in my opinion.
“Young people growing up in impoverished, segregated neighborhoods are less likely to have jobs available to them as teenagers.”
Dr. Walter E Williams, who grew up in the projects of Philidelphia, reminds us that before the minimum wage laws there was higher unemployment amongst white teens than black, yet Mary Anna always advocates for a higher minimum wage.
Puzzling!!
I don’t have to do a thing to help my neighbors. Just by living here, the property values around me are increased. It is because I pay for food, rent, utilities, and car expenses from money I get from my job.
A few years back, I owned a house. When I stopped working, my neighbors worried that I would lose the house and a welfare family would move in. The next-door neighbors put forth a great effort to sell their house before I sold mine.
It’s important to get people who aren’t contributing to the problem of concentrated poverty to stay. Of course, I help my neighbors when I can; as long as it doesn’t involve giving them money.