Today’s state of urban poverty largely reflects a “hypersegregated” city environment. Many of the poor, especially black Americans, are living in slums and very poor neighborhoods where the opportunities for jobs and a good education are much reduced. The readings of “Housing Discrimination” and “Urban Poverty” do not only highlight these problems but present some significant suggestions for improvement. I believe that the suggestions should be applied on a multi-generational level, so that both parents and children can be simultaneously rescued from the gloomy existence of urban poverty and housing discrimination.

First, we must work on desegregating these urban poor or slum communities. The HUD’s new fair-housing law is a step in the right direction. Government- sponsored housing should not just be in poor urban areas where educational opportunities are significantly less available. Housing for the poor should be situated in middle-class and upper class- neighborhoods as well, so that children of poor households can experience great schools, educational programs, and libraries that may serve as catalysts to enable poor students to get off the vicious cycle of poverty and be informed and trained for  the great world of opportunities that exist. The way of the future is by working on the children, so that they are given a chance to succeed.

The other approach towards ending the spiraling state of urban poverty and housing is to help the parents pay for their overwhelming expenses. In addition to giving them the opportunity to live in nicer environments, parents should be paid more for the hard work they do, have consistent jobs that enable stables lives, and be given extra rewards for extra time on the job. These conditions can be met by programs that are currently in the process of being revamped and improved. These programs will seek to increase the minimum wage, change the rules of and guarantee overtime to all workers, and necessitate that all employees guarantee scheduling of regular job hours.

The government should play a bigger role in helping to provide for these services. It should also work with private industry, by creating monetary or tax incentives for the private sector to help create changes for the impoverished in society. It is incumbent upon all of us to improve the lives of the urban poor by extricating them from poverty and providing them with better housing. In so doing, we will be giving them what all of us have rights to: “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”