Category: Response Papers (May 1st) (Page 2 of 2)

While reading this chapter, I couldn’t help but think about the nationwide concepts addressed in their relation to New York City. The discussion of federal housing programs and topics like the intersection of rental assistance and residential segregation is astoundingly apparent in NYC and, as someone dwelling in the suburbs of Long Island, I know it to be true that historical factors like “restrictive covenants [barring] minorities from moving into white neighborhoods” are a contributing factor to concentrated poverty in urban centers. Those who can, like my grandparents who moved from Queens, leave neighborhoods where there is less economic potential, and invest in property and other means to ensure the economic well being of their children. While there can be a discussion here about redlining, or about gentrification, I think that a number of my classmates have addressed those topics in intelligent and respectful ways. My takeaway from the information about urban poverty is to question the reasons that action to combat what the chapter refers to as, “deep, concentrated, and seemingly intractable” persistence of it.

Part of me wants to be hopeful about the commitment of the government to resolving pressing situations serving to entrap the urban poor. Rulings such as that by the Supreme Court in the 2015 case regarding the 1968 Fair Housing Act make me hopeful. However, I fear that the limited progress in mitigating the continuation of concentrated poverty will be heightened enormously with the actions to be taken by the new administration. Thinking to the words of the President, who claims that cities like Detroit and Chicago, centers of urban poverty, are a “mess” or a “disaster,” I have little hope that meaningful progress will be made to aid those trapped in conditions outside of their own making. In a way, I think it is possible that the focus on inner-cities (and the inherently racial assumption that the term denotes), though certainly valid and important, has the effect of producing apathy on the part of politicians. Admittedly, I subscribe to the (cynical/realist) view that most people are looking out only for their own self-interest, and I believe no subset of the population more in line with this view than the political elite. If this is the case, we must then ask what could make politicians care about urban poverty—what would make it in their self-interest to care? The answer, I think, could lie partly in linking urban poverty to rural poverty, creating a coalition of economically disparaged individuals whose votes could swing (national) elections in ways that perhaps monolithic coalitions could not. I realize that is is an incredibly Marxist view (the underclass rising up to defeat elite, exploitative rulers). But, in the current political climate (especially considering the role that economic inequality played in the Presidential election), can we afford to ignore a potentially beneficial coalition any longer?

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.”

While reading this chapter, there was one thought that kept popping up in my head. Every time that the talk was shifted to minimum wage for lower level employees and training people how to do those jobs, I couldn’t help but feel that this is not the best way to address poverty. If anything, I think it might hurt in the long run.

The fact of the matter is that those lower level jobs that people want to try and help so much and becoming obsolete. The less ‘skill’ it takes to do a job, the easier it is to get some machine to do it. Eventually, technology will even take over jobs that require a lot of skill. That is just the direction that the world is heading in. So while you might be helping some of the people for the time being by raising they wages, it will do them no good in 5 years when a robot takes their job completely.

Since that is the case, I just felt like there should be more focus on alternative methods to reduce the enormous poverty level in this country; something that could have a lot more of a lasting impact then dealing with wages and training for jobs that might not exist soon. You could still focus on getting people in the workforce, because that is the best way to help get people out of poverty and out of trouble, but the focus should be geared in a different direction.

The main goal of this class is to solve social issues in New York City. One of the major issues in NYC is urban poverty. Since NYC is a metropolis with millions of people, there are always people that are not meeting the federal poverty line. According to CQ Researcher, “An estimated 45 million Americans have annual earnings below the federal poverty line- $24,250 for a family of four.” I am not personally surprise at this data. As a child from an immigrant family, this is the yearly earning for my family of three. But can you imagine going on budget from month to month and your parents do not dare to take a day off? This is the case or even worse for many more Americans. So what can we do to alleviate the urban poverty that is concentrated in many major cities?

The current minimum wage in NYC is $10.5 for a company under 11 employees and $11 for any company with more than 11 employees. Compare to the national minimum wage, NYC has much higher wage but the living expense is much higher. Housing expense in NYC usually takes more than one third of a family’s paycheck. This lead to hardship to afford necessities. Housing and Urban Development estimated that “… 12 million households pay more than 50 percent of their annual income for housing.” The other 50 percent must divide equally for food, clothing, transportation (please do not get me started with the rising fare with MTA) and medical care. It is hard to live a quality life with half of your paycheck going to a landlord or rental office. In order to help families, government should has more rent controlled or subsidized housing. NYC has great initiatives but they need to partner up with private sectors more. The supply cannot keep out with the demand. They wait line for subsidized is more than one year and there is income requirement. For families under the poverty line, they do not qualify for the nice subsidized housing. They can only live in housing project which are plagued with even worse poverty, gang violence, and drugs. The housing projects are not ideal for families with kids, but many can only live there because that’s all they can afford.

I strongly believe that urban poverty can be alleviate with the right employment training programs and support system. Incarcerated people are most prone to poverty because of their dirtied personal profiles. Especially for the colored people in the United States. From a study aimed for “prison-to-poverty” cycle, 37 percent of young African American men have gone to jail after drop out of the high school. This directly result in poverty increasing for colored people. Often time, these young men came from the housing projects. They live with their parents and bring more violence into the neighborhoods. The lack of job opportunities in the region without good transport systems around them. The young kids cannot see any good role models so they choose to join gangs to seek protection. The poverty cycle therefore continues. So to break this cycle, the government should lift the families out of the cycle with enhanced education opportunities. With better job training, parents can work in better job with better pay. With more income, they can move the family out of the housing projects into better neighborhoods with good public schools. This domino effect can bring the children to see positivity in this world and attain higher goals.