Thursday, December 18, 2008

Poverty: Policies and Possibilities

Poverty: Policies and Possibilities
by Shannon Prince
This is Part 1 of a two-part series.

"Poor people can use themselves as weapons against poverty."

With the recession imperiling the nation's well-being, poverty is on everyone's mind regardless of their political orientation. Yet too often the poor are cast as ignorant and impotent pawns needing either a kick in the pants or a magical cocktail of resources and programs. The dialogue typically stalls around what "we" must do for or to "them" as though the poor lack ingenuity and agency.
In this commentary I identify four ideas that can be used to battle poverty: ending marriage penalties, deregulating selected
industries, creating tax-funded social programs run by the poor, and creating community gardens. These four ideas are based around two central beliefs. The first is that people should not be punished by having their fight to escape poverty retarded when they choose to marry or profit from their personal knowledge. The second principle is that creative projects such as tax-funded, poor people-led social programs and community gardens help the poor to martial their efforts to fight the penury in their environments. While these two principles and the policies I propose based upon them may seem disparate, they are united by one central idea - that the poor themselves are resources. The minds and spirits of the poor can be marshaled in the fight against the poverty. If their family structures aren't undermined, if their personal knowledge isn't penalized, and if their labor and ideas are supported and nurtured, poor people can use themselves as weapons against poverty. Part 1 of this commentary focuses on marriage penalties and deregulation.

"Uncle Sam has no more right to break up families than slave-owners did."

The first policy change we should make is to stop the government from dictating to the poor how to organize their homes. Uncle Sam has no more right to break up families than slave-owners did.

Currently, poor women receiving government aid face being further impoverished if they choose to marry because the additional income of their husbands often makes them ineligible for government aid. For example, as former Mayor Steve Goldsmith of Indianapolis pointed out, "In my state, a mother qualifies for welfare only if she does not marry her children's father, and a teen-age mother qualifies only if she leaves home." Furthermore, public policy consultant Wendell Cox gives the following example of how Temporary Assistance to Needy Families punishes women who choose to marry:

"For example: the typical single mother on Temporary Assistance to Needy Families receives a combined welfare package of various means-tested aid benefits worth about $14,000 per year. Suppose this typical single mother receives welfare benefits worth $14,000 per year while the father of her children has a low wage job paying $18,000 per year. If the mother and father remain unmarried, they will have a combined income of $32,000 ($14,000 from welfare and $18,000 from earnings.) However, if the couple marries, the father's earnings will be counted against the mother's welfare eligibility. Overall, welfare benefits will be nearly eliminated and the couple's combined income will fall substantially."

"It is unacceptable for the welfare system to tyrannically regulate women's lives."

According to the Center for Marriage and Families, "marriage penalties" can lower a family's income by twenty percent. The Center goes on to say that many poor parents either secretly cohabit or live near each other as they are unable to marry without punishment. It is unacceptable for the welfare system to tyrannically regulate women's lives by penalizing them for certain choices they make such as marrying their children's fathers. This system undermines impoverished families, which are disproportionately families of color, forcing men to sneak to see their children and treating would-be wives like slaves sold to a different plantation.
Cox also points out anti-marriage discrimination in public housing policy. He notes:

"In the case of subsidized housing, the typical single mother receives a subsidy worth about $5,000 per year; if she marries a male with earnings the value of the rent subsidy will be reduced. The more the male earnings the greater the loss of housing aid, and, if she marries a male with earnings around $18,000 per year (a typical sum for unmarried fathers), the housing subsidy will be completely eliminated. Thus, in general, low income couples can maximize their welfare income by remaining unmarried."

Cox suggests that this could be remedied by not lowering women's benefits if when one thousand dollars of her husband's income is ignored she is still eligible for public housing and by making exceptions for men with criminal records (who are normally excluded from subsidized housing) if they are married to and supporting the children of women who live in subsidized housing. I agree. In the Victorian era Dickens lamented how husbands and wives were separated from each other when they entered poor houses. Victorian aid was frequently contemptuous and based on the belief that the poor had no family bonds one need respect - they were like puppies who could be separated at the will of those more powerful. It's the twenty-first century now, and it's time to take a stand and affirm that marriage is a right, not a luxury.

"Several states have exempted hair braiders from needing to have cosmetology licenses."

In addition to not undermining the family structures of the poor, anti-poverty policy should not undermine the efforts of the poor to profit from their skills and talents either. The problem often isn't that the poor aren't pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, but rather when they do so they are told they don't have the appropriate credentials. The deregulation of some industries could help poor people to use self employment to become more financially stable. For example, many poor black women braid hair as a way of making money. However, as the National Center for Public Policy Research points out, many states have threatened these women with arrest because they don't have cosmetology licenses; licenses that often demand taking courses that cost around $10,000, and frequently don't even cover hair braiding in their curriculum. Several states have exempted hair braiders from needing to have cosmetology licenses after black women asserted that by using a traditional skill they were keeping themselves off welfare.

Furthermore, as noted in this September, 2006 AP article, the law punishes African immigrants who don't speak the English necessary to get a license and only possess the knowledge of hair braiding as a marketable skill. More and more black women are using individual and class law suits to change the laws of their states. State laws requiring the licensing of hair braiders must be revoked.

"Wall Street corporate leaders may need someone looking over their shoulders, but black women don't need supervision to braid."

One concern about industry deregulation, however, is quality control. I do not feel that all industries should be deregulated; however, I do think that we should, whenever possible, avoid regulating industries that have shown themselves capable of functioning ethically and monitoring their own quality levels independent of regulation. We know that since time immemorial black women have braided hair in open air and in kitchens and on front porches without licensing, to no societal ill effect. Wall Street corporate leaders may need someone looking over their shoulders, but black women don't need supervision to braid. In their case, I think it would be unjust and unnecessary to require government regulation of their industry. Furthermore, there is nothing to prevent those believing that quality control can only be managed by the regulation of industry from going to a hair braider with a cosmetology license. Deregulation may not make small scale entrepreneurs become the next Sheila Johnson, but it can fight poverty by opening up avenues for people to profit from skills they possess.

Next, Part 2 - Social programs run by the poor and community gardens.
Ms. Prince can be contacted at Shannon.J.Prince@Dartmouth.EDU This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=928&Itemid=1



Poverty: Policies and Possibilities, Part 2
by Shannon J. Prince
Part 1 of this article appeared in the December 10 issue of BAR.

Imagine a program that built a childcare center which gave teens construction work experience, used Department of Agriculture funds to pay poor women to cook for poor children, taught poor women to become day care teachers and run day cares, and helped poor women get their GED's. Imagine this program also provided mortgage counseling and founded a health center that provided forty local women with jobs. Now imagine the program was run almost entirely by black welfare mothers. Such a program did once exist. It was called Operation Life. It was at its peak during the 70's and 80's and is detailed in the book Storming Caesar's Palace by Annelise Orleck.

Operation Life was based on the principle that the poor themselves are the experts on poverty and many current successful programs make that adage their foundation. One such program is Jobs for a Future/Homeboy Industries. Homeboy Industries was founded in 1988 by the priest Father Greg Boyle and acts as both an employment agency and a force for economic development, meeting the needs of young people of both genders who have histories of gang involvement. It is funded by local and federal money. The organization helps one thousand people a month. It offers free counseling, tattoo removal, and help transitioning from prison. It provides community service opportunities to those with court mandates, creative writing workshops, and classes in business skills, running female headed households, dealing with domestic abuse, parenting, and general education with a focus on math and reading skills.

"Homeboy Industries was founded in 1988 as both an employment agency and a force for economic development."
The organization also teaches self employment principles, life skills such as budgeting, banking, financial skills, work skills, and business skills. "Homeboys" and "homegirls" range from as young as fourteen to as old as seventy with three fourths being between eighteen and thirty-five. Since many of the participants are seen as unemployable, Homeboy Industries develops relationships with businesses to find people willing to employ marginalized people, matches young people with jobs that meet their interests, and seeks out mentors in their fields for them. Homeboy Industries then pays the salaries of the workers when they first begin so that businesses have little to lose by employing them. Homeboy Industries owns several businesses that train and employ those they serve. There's a silk-screening business, a bakery, a café, and a landscape/maintenance business. By engaging the efforts and talents of poor people, Jobs For a Future/Homeboy Industries successfully lifts people out of poverty.

Another factor in reducing poverty is looking for creative solutions that solve multiple problems. For example, many poor neighborhoods have constructed community gardens in vacant lots. The gardens change spaces once used for prostitution and drug dealing into crime free areas. They also reduce crime by providing young people with a positive activity in which to engage. In Philadelphia, crime on some blocks dropped 90% after the creation of community gardens. After all, it's hard to mug or shoot somebody surrounded by fresh tomatoes and sunflowers. (See "New York's Community Gardens - A Resource at Risk," The Trust for Public Land.)

"The fifteen community gardens in New York grew 11,000 pounds of food in 1999."
The gardens decrease racial tension as people of different cultures come to work together in them. People who once thought each of each other as strange and menacing come together as they encourage new life to grow. Furthermore, community gardens provide access to nature to young children who often are without green spaces. The gardens provide young people with experience on everything from ecology, to marketing (as they sell crops at farmers markets), to government as young people elect each other to decide how to govern their gardens. The gardens also provide the poor with the kind of nutritious food and exercise they are often otherwise denied. This helps prevents poor nutrition from leading to further health problems such as diabetes or babies with low birth weights. The fifteen community gardens in New York grew 11,000 pounds of food in 1999.

More than meeting the needs of the community, surplus food is sold to raise money for the poor who grew the crops. Work in these gardens is used to rehabilitate criminals, and local business people are often willing to underwrite the start up costs of the gardens because community gardens raise property values. The creation of community gardens provides poor people with money, food, lower crime rates, higher property values, and better health, while increasing their autonomy and control of community solutions.

We all know there is no single policy that can be implemented to fight poverty - no wizard's spell or magic bullet. Several creative policies must be designed and employed. By creating policies based around two principles - the idea that the poor should not be punished by facing greater obstacles to escaping poverty when they choose to marry or profit from personal knowledge, and the idea that programs that creatively meet the needs of the poor and organize their efforts such as community gardens and tax-funded social programs can have a large impact in reducing destitution - we can help people to escape penury.

While no single policy can be considered a panacea, one major principle is crucial in aiding the poor - the idea that the poor themselves are a powerful resource in the struggle against poverty.

Ms. Prince can be contacted at Shannon.J.Prince@Dartmouth.EDU This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=941&Itemid=1


A vote for either John McCain or Barack Obama is—at best—an act of criminal negligence.
Mickey Z.

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