|
EDITORIAL New national goal: End poverty as we know it
In remarks during the recent
presentation of the Catholic Charities USA annual survey, Jesuit Fr. Fred
Kammer recalled that eight years ago Bill Clinton ran for president promising
to end welfare as we know it.
Four years later, the Republican-led Congress and President
Clinton did precisely that; they ended welfare as we have known it, said
Kammer, Catholic Charities president. Yet, poverty and inadequate incomes
continue their devastating impact on millions of American families, especially
their children; and their needs continue to call forth increasing care and
service from Catholic Charities and other voluntary organizations.
The mid-December report by Catholic Charities showed some
disturbing trends:
- The number of people receiving emergency services increased by
22 percent;
- The number of people receiving emergency food assistance from
soup kitchens, food banks and other food services surged 32 percent;
- Emergency cash assistance, which helps people pay for rent,
utilities, medicine, transportation and other essentials, rose by 29 percent to
$80.8 million;
- The number of people who received utility assistance from
Catholic Charities agencies increased 15 percent in 1999;
- Clothing assistance grew 9 percent;
- Temporary shelter rose by 4 percent.
This is the Other America we have written about in
recent months, that significant part of the culture that was left behind by all
the soaring economic indicators and all the talk of limitless prosperity.
Arthur Jones has done most of the reporting for us on the America
left behind. In April 1999 he began describing the socio-economic landscape in
language that was increasingly foreign to popular television and news reports.
(Jones next installment, on Newark, N.J., will appear soon.) While the
top 1 percent of America was becoming wildly wealthy, far more were losing
purchasing power.
According to the Childrens Defense Fund in 1998, Six
years of economic expansion with low inflation and a soaring stock market has
not filtered down to the 36.5 million poor people.
The Catholic Charities report dovetailed with a report issued by
the U.S. Conference of Mayors, A Status Report on Hunger and Homelessness
in Americas Cities. On the issue of hunger, the mayors found that
during the past year:
- Requests for emergency food assistance increased by an average
of 17 percent, with 83 percent of cities registering an increase, the highest
rate of increase since 1992. The year before the rate had been 18 percent,
equal to the 1992 rate;
- Requests for food assistance by families with children
increased by an average of 16 percent -- the highest rate of increase since
1991, with requests by elderly persons increasing by an average of 9
percent;
- Sixty-two percent of the people requesting emergency food
assistance were members of families -- children and their parents. Thirty-two
percent of adults requesting food assistance were employed.
Perhaps more ominous are the figures on homelessness:
- The average demand for emergency shelter increased by 15
percent, the highest one-year increase of the decade;
- On average, people remain homeless for five months. Fifty
percent of the cities said that the length of time people are homeless had
increased during the last year;
- On average, single men make up 44 percent of the homeless
population, families with children 36 percent, single women 13 percent and
unaccompanied minors 7 percent.
According to the report, 50 percent of the homeless are
African-American, 35 percent are white, 12 percent Hispanic, 2 percent
Native-American and one percent Asian.
The causes of homelessness are many, including substance abuse,
mental illness, domestic violence, poverty, low-paying jobs and changes in
public assistance. The primary cause cited, however, in nearly every city, was
lack of affordable housing.
Despite being in a period of unprecedented economic
expansion, said Burlington, Vt., Mayor Peter Clavelle, chair of the
conferences Task Force on Hunger and Homelessness, low income wage
workers and their families are finding it increasingly difficult to locate
decent, affordable housing; increasingly, they find themselves among a growing
population of homeless. Yet the affordable housing crisis received little
attention from the presidential candidates or the U.S. Congress.
Clavelle makes an essential point: Talk of homelessness and hunger
was almost entirely edited out of the most recent campaign season. That fact
itself goes far in explaining a cultural failure deeper than the flaws of this
or that federal program. In order to scrub concern for the poor from our
political discourse, we first had to scrub away the idea of common good, making
it almost un-American to think that government might have a stake in guarding
people from the ravages of poverty and the whims of the marketplace.
It was during the Reagan administration that the country was given
permission to think such thoughts -- that individualism in the extreme and
unfettered capitalism with its survival-of-the-fittest mentality were proper
foundations for civil society. The evidence shows, however, that such thinking
leads to a polarized culture where the divide between rich and poor continues
to grow.
We cannot be content with simply ending welfare as we know it. As
Kammer put it at that mid-December news conference: A new president and a
new Congress are now about to take office. It is time that we in the United
States resolve that a higher and better goal for all of us, a purpose which is
in keeping with the best instincts of this nation
is to end
poverty as we know it.
National Catholic Reporter, January 19,
2001
|
|