Thank you David, and I’m glad you believe it is important to talk about poverty especially in most expensive city in the nation. (And yes, I do think it may be more difficult to be poor in rich city, and country, than being poor in a poor country…a question you posed early in the book). I also want to thank the Citigroup Foundation, especially Chip Raymond and WHEDCO Board member Ricki Helfer for hosting this discussion.
A few pages into reading The
Working Poor I realized David was truly a kindred spirit to me and WHEDCO-
the Women’s Housing & Economic Development Corp. David portrays the peculiar and insidious cause and effect of
poverty among the working poor exactly as I have experienced it during my
nearly 30 years working in this field. But what really struck me was David’s
matter-of –fact assessment of how to best deal with the situation: “If the problems are interlocking, then
so must the solutions be...Only where the full array of factors is attacked can
America fulfill its promise….holistic remedies are vital.” I read this over more than once, and
blinked, and I thought: “Did I write this”???
WHEDCO is a small but powerful
economic development organization based in the South Bronx, and it’s fair to
say we approach our work in exactly the way David describes the most effective
anti-poverty work he observed. We are
unique in our mission to build “human capital”—that is, to support low-income
adults and families in every aspect of their lives-- in order to bring
them into the economic mainstream. In three overarching areas—home, family, and
work--we help people develop and sustain some measure of financial
independence. {Although even as I say this some of the tools we employ to help
families stay afloat—housing subsidies, CDBG, food stamps and child care
assistance- are slated for massive cuts that will massively affect New York}.
That aside, today at least, we provide a full constellation of services in one location: job trainers and counselors who can match the right job seeker with the right job (and even provide clothes for interviews); job coaches who are on-call through the ups and downs of the first months and year of a new job; social workers who help with every conceivable urgent problem. We work with employers to customize training to meet their needs. We also help people start their own businesses.
WHEDCO operates the largest network of micro-entrepreneurs in New York City- women who care for children in their own homes. In keeping with our philosophy that one size does NOT fit all, we’ve learned that many folks who make lousy employees are terrific entrepreneurs. Our child care network collectively generated over $4.1 million in revenues this past year, all from the work of 129 businesswomen caring for more than 691 preschoolers so that 691 parents could go to work.
In our large commercial kitchen we incubate small businesses; we educate pre-schoolers in our Head Start Center, provide after school and summer programs to hundreds of school-age children; and offer on-site health and mental health services. And we build beautiful apartments- affordable to the poorest New Yorkers, all in the Bronx, which remains the poorest borough in New York. Why all this under one roof? Because, as David observes, working poverty is a “constellation of difficulties that magnify one another…” We aim to find, as David describes, a “perfect alignment of a participant’s strengths and the right assistance at the right moment.”
Smart anti-poverty organizations understand that poor people are people, who have whole lives; their problems do not define them. Things happen to poor working people just as they happen to folks in the middle class- a missed paycheck; too much credit card debt; falling behind in rent or mortgage payments. But for poor people there is one additional ingredient: having no one to fall back on. It’s that simple.
A book reviewer in the Times recently wrote about the plethora of good new books which offer historical accounts of how the poor got poor and chronicle stories of personal hardships. She added that we didn’t need more chroniclers, but rather, “big thinkers pontificating in the grand old style,” about how to make things better.
I disagree. What we need are more David’s who force us to look at poor people and see ourselves. It’s not big thinkers we need; it’s common sense, imagination, empathy-- and recognition that poverty today is an economic problem, not a social problem.
Economic problems do,
undeniably, create social problems. But when I look at the families WHEDCO
serves and the community where we work I can’t help think of my own suburban
neighborhood, which borders the Bronx.
And honestly, we middle class families have kids with many of the same
issues as kids in the Bronx- they act out in class, drink, do drugs or have sex
before they’re ready (or all of the above). The difference is that we also have
good public schools, clean streets, nice homes and terrific after school activities.
We have tutors and therapists, music lessons, competitive sports and when all
that fails, BOARDING SCHOOLS!
Our kids also have hope- and its absence in places like the Bronx is profound. Kids without hope do self-destructive things on a large scale. This past Saturday I took my 14 year old daughter to the Broadway production of Little Women. It was thrilling to hear hundreds of little women in that audience cheer Jo on- in her determination to be someone, all by herself (a writer, by the way) and to tell men and marriage to wait.
We
left the theater in a sea of flushed young faces and I imagined all the girls
in the Bronx hopping on the number 2 for a 20- minute ride to Broadway; and
emerging from that theater into a daylight of inner strength and belief in
themselves so strong that no one would need to tell them it was self-defeating
have a baby while still a teenager.
The Bronx and Broadway are light years apart, even though geographically next-door neighbors. The importance of David’s book in my mind is that it bridges the light years that separates us middle class working people from other working people who have less money than we do. Only when we look at folks who struggle to get by and see ourselves will we all become agents for change.
One final thought in the spirit of pontificating: in Sunday’s Times a tiny article buried in the back pages announced a new initiative of the University of North Carolina’s Law School- a Center on Poverty-to be directed (and funded) by Senator John Edwards. Said Edwards, in a speech he delivered in New Hampshire…“It may seem like an impossible goal, but if we can put a man on the moon, conquer polio and put libraries of information on a chip, then we can end poverty for those who want to work for a better life.”
And so, the floor is now open for questions for David.