NYTimes.com Article: Op-Ed Contributor: Total Poverty Awareness

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I sent this to Katie Haycock in an attempt to dispel a simplistic notion about how poverty works.

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Op-Ed Contributor: Total Poverty Awareness

February 21, 2004
 By DAVID K. SHIPLER 



 

CHEVY CHASE, Md. - Thanks to the focus by John Edwards on
the "two Americas," the working poor have become a topic in
the Democratic presidential race. Let's hope they will
remain so as we move into the general election. Yet nearly
40 years after the national War on Poverty began, much of
the public conversation and official response remains
disconnected from the real lives of poor families. Instead
of approaching poverty as a whole made up of many parts, we
tend to address it bit by bit. It's like having all the
pieces of a puzzle before you, but letting them lie
scattered and unlinked. 

Some educators and other specialists speak of a "culture of
poverty" as if it were a collection of mores, values and
rituals. But poverty is not a culture. It's more like an
ecological system of relationships among individuals,
families and the environment of schools, neighborhoods,
jobs and government services. Professionals who aid the
poor witness the toxic interactions every day. Doctors see
patients affected by dangerous housing, erratic work
schedules, transportation difficulties and poor
child-rearing skills. Teachers see pupils undermined by
violence at home and malnutrition. 

About 35 million Americans live below the federal poverty
line. Their opportunities are defined by forces that may
look unrelated, but decades of research have mapped the web
of connections. A 1987 study of 215 children attributed
differences in I.Q. in part to "social risk factors" like
maternal anxiety and stress, which are common features of
impoverished households. Research in the 1990's
demonstrated how the paint and pipes of slum housing -
major sources of lead - damage the developing brains of
children. Youngsters with elevated lead levels have lower
I.Q.'s and attention deficits, and - according to a 1990
study published in The New England Journal of Medicine -
were seven times more likely to drop out of school. 

Take the case of an 8-year-old boy in Boston. He was
frequently missing school because of asthma attacks, and
his mother was missing work so often for doctors'
appointments that she was in danger of losing her low-wage
job. It was a case typical of poor neighborhoods, where
asthma runs rampant among children who live amid the mold,
dust mites, roaches and other triggers of the disease. 

Pediatricians at the Boston Medical Center did what they
could with inhalers and steroids, and then dispatched a
nurse to inspect the family's apartment. She found a leaky
pipe and a wall-to-wall carpet where mites could survive
the most vigorous vacuuming. The mother asked the landlord
to repair the pipe and remove the rug. Nothing happened.
The nurse wrote the landlord a letter. Nothing. 

So the pediatrics department turned to its staff of five
lawyers, hired for just this kind of situation. "After two
telephone conversations with our lawyer," said Dr. Barry
Zuckerman, the department's chairman, "the landlord took up
the carpeting and fixed the leaky pipe." Within weeks, the
boy was back in school regularly and his mother was able to
keep her job. 

This is a model of what needs to be done for low-income
families. Unfortunately, it is employed too rarely by
private and government agencies, which tend to tackle only
the problem the poor present to a particular office. The
assistance is often shallow and temporary and, as a result,
leaves people vulnerable to the next crisis. 

Most doctors, teachers and police officers have no way to
reach outside their jurisdictions. That is why Dr.
Zuckerman, using donations, has hired lawyers and social
workers to help patients press for safe housing, Medicaid
and other benefits. He estimates that about 25 clinics
around the country are doing the same. "As pediatricians,"
he says, "we see failed social policies on the faces and
bodies of children daily." 

Government is especially bad at connecting the dots. Health
is over here, housing over there; budgets are separate and
are protected by officials with entrenched interests.
Practically every program has its own eligibility
requirements and forms, and many working people simply
can't take time off the clock to trek from waiting room to
waiting room. One-third of those eligible don't get food
stamps, according to the Census Bureau, and about 30
percent of the poor who are entitled to Medicaid are not
enrolled. 

One remedy, tried by community action centers created by
the War on Poverty, put a variety of specialists under one
roof. Their effectiveness unsettled politicians. "Mayors
didn't like them because they were doing something that was
very good," recalls Frances Fox Piven, a professor of
political science and sociology at City University of New
York. "They were badgering municipal agencies to provide
services." The money for the centers eventually dried up. 

Decades later we are still testing this idea, now called
"one-stop shopping," as if it were some dubious
proposition. Since last July in five California school
districts, applications for subsidized lunches have been
used as applications for Medicaid as well. What has to be
proven for the rest of the state to follow? In Chicago,
schools get computerized lists of children who are enrolled
in the lunch program but not in Medicaid. Why not in all of
America's schools? Job placement is done at a few public
housing sites; why not at every one? 

We need more than patchwork projects. We need a sweeping
national program to create what could be called gateways.
At private and public institutions that are frequented
every day - clinics, schools, food banks, housing projects,
police precincts and the like - a person should be able to
find easy referrals to child-rearing instruction, drug
treatment and other assistance. 

What works is an intensive, holistic approach like the one
used by the Maya Angelou Charter School in Washington. The
school brings its 100 students in for breakfast and keeps
them until after dinner. They have small classes, homework
sessions with 75 volunteers and counseling from three
full-time social workers and a psychologist. Most students
arrive in 10th grade reading at sixth- or seventh-grade
levels; three years later 70 percent go to college. The
cost isn't low - it runs over $25,000 annually per student
- but it is a humane investment, one that is helped in part
by donations. With more money, the school could become a
platform for supporting whole families. 

The amalgam of charity and government can be effective, but
the full force of the nation's financial power can be
mobilized only by the federal government. Only then can we
alter the ecology of poverty. 

David K. Shipler, a former Times correspondent, won the
1987 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction. He is the author, most
recently, of "The Working Poor: Invisible in America." 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/21/opinion/21SHIP.html?ex=1078821099&ei=1&en=9d81d3fb1b4fc8c3


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