For America’s Poor, Life on the Edge

Just days before Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, the U.S. Census Bureau released a report revealing that the nation’s poverty rate had increased for the fourth consecutive year. New York was the only city with more than a million residents to exhibit a significant rise in poverty last year. The city’s poverty rate went from 19 percent to 20.3 percent. That’s more than 1.6 million New Yorkers living in poverty.

Forty years ago, President Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty in America. And for most of those 40 years, we’ve been losing that war. At first poverty declined. But as each successive administration cut back on funding and commitment, optimism faded and poverty receded from the national consciousness. By the 1980’s, the concept of a war on poverty had become a joke in Washington.

A National Disgrace

It took Katrina to expose to the world the shocking condition of America’s poor. The poverty of New Orleans is replicated in all of our major cities, especially New York. Poverty permeates America, black and white, urban and rural. While 70 percent of New Orleans was poor and black, two-thirds of the poor nationally are white. Rural poverty may be less obvious to some, but it’s just as persistent. Poverty is a national disgrace.

In New York City, 65 percent of the poor have less than $100 in savings. This means a slight shift in the economic landscape or an unforeseen emergency — an illness in the family, the loss of a job — will completely devastate these households. And we’re not talking about millions of people on welfare. The latest annual CSS survey of New Yorkers, “The Unheard Third,” found that 75 percent of low-income adults were working.

Poor people in this country have known of their precarious situation all along. It is the rest of us who cannot imagine what it is like to live in poverty.

1.6 million New
Yorkers in poverty

Here are a few examples of life on the edge.

New York real estate values may be skyrocketing but poor families face staggering rent burdens: 65 percent of the poor pay more than half their household income for rent. As a result, these households have on average less than $30 a week per person to pay for all other basic needs such as food, clothing, and medicine.

The city has added thousands of jobs in the last year. But for low-income workers, job benefits – which most New Yorkers take for granted – are practically nonexistent. Of all low-income New Yorkers employed, only 22 percent get health benefits on the job; 16 percent have family health coverage; only 9 percent have prescription drug coverage; just 13 percent have a retirement plan; less than half get paid sick leave.

The state has instituted tougher Regents standards for graduating high school, but nearly half of all students entering the city’s public high schools drop out before graduation and less than 10 percent of black and Latino students graduate with a Regents diploma.

Our most common response to poverty has been to try to create more jobs. But relying on job growth alone will not alleviate poverty. Without proper training and adequate education, advancement to well-paying jobs is almost impossible for the working poor.

America has never been wealthier. We have more jobs there ever before. But 37 million poor Americans – many of them working poor – still cannot earn enough to pull themselves out of poverty. And as one government program after another failed to solve the problem of entrenched poverty, welfare reform replaced eradicating poverty as a political priority.

Role of Government

Perhaps Katrina will move us to confront the poverty in our midst that we’ve tried to ignore. If nothing else, the effects of Katrina have reminded us of the unique role of government as the only institution charged with the responsibility - and capable of commanding the resources - for the protection and economic security of its citizens.

Confronting poverty requires a new framework of opportunity for all Americans based on quality education, access to employment and health care, and safe and affordable housing. It requires us to practice what we preach. America’s proclivity to hold itself out as an example of democracy to the rest of the world rings hollow while a large proportion of our citizens live in third world conditions.

Income and class – often in conjunction with race – too often determine the fate of millions of Americans. For reasons of national security as well as morality, we cannot continue policies that undermine the strength and vitality of our country by acquiescing to a situation that condemns so many of our fellow citizens to a life of poverty.

From the New York Amsterdam News
October 6 - 12, 2005