Urban Poverty and housing discrimination has many correlations towards one another. Housing discrimination, post civil rights era mainly occurs in urban areas. For example; if a low income family is looking for section 8 housing, it is difficult for them to find that housing because of the  prices of the homes in the city, or land lords are refusing to house them due to their own personal reasons. Also, with the added affects of gentrification, many low income people would have to move outside of the city because it is hard for them to afford the price in crease of rent, when the neighborhood begins changing, and it value increases. That is one of the reasons why there are a lot more of low income people living in the suburbs than the city because of affordability.  That is also a reason why major cities like New York City have a difficult time fitting low income people into the new housing because even though many real estate developers build the apartments, and leave some apartments open for section 8 users, the price of the apartment, plus the money of the voucher still makes the apartment expensive to live in. Also, getting into project housing can take years, and it is already over crowded.

When reading the chapter about Urban poverty, I found it shocking that the poverty rate is still increasing. Granted a lot of the most recent information is from 2014, but with the changes that have been made to deal with poverty, I expected the numbers to be decreasing not increasing. What I did not find to be shocking is that the largest percentage of those who lived in poverty were African Americans. I do not find it to be shocking because there are many historical factors such as limited access to education, jobs, housing, and low mortgage rates from laws like the G.I Bill, has held African Americans back from elevating themselves. Also, with the stereotype that African Americans are the largest group on welfare (which is untrue), many of those who are in need are held back from need based welfare.

In the reading I saw an argument for raising minimum wage. On the yes side of raising minimum wage, they believe that raising the wage would reduce people living in poverty by the millions. They also points out that even though critics believe that people in poverty do not work, in contrary they do work and by increasing minimum wage, a family living in poverty can step out of the threshold. On the no side, the person argues that it will only help about 5% of the people living in poverty,and it would limit the amount of entry level jobs available that will accept people with limited skills. The biggest argument for the no side is that with the minimum wage increase, it may take them out of poverty on paper, but it will stop them from receiving aid that can help them relieve other financial stresses, especially if you live in a huge city where rent, and other expenses can be too much for a certain wage to afford. I actually agree with the no side because it is not enough to raise minimum wage, you also need to raise the poverty threshold so other expenses that live in comes families may have can be paid as well, which is difficult as each state has a different standard of living.