Beggars Can Be Choosers: An essay on dignity

I wrote this essay a couple of years ago, though I feel it remains valid. We must see the homeless, the poor, the refugee as human. We have to grant them their personal agency. We cannot, as we have for too long, imposed a hypocritical moral posture on them.

On a street corner, a homeless man is offered a sandwich. He turns it down. The offerer is shocked, even offended. “You don’t want a free sandwich?” he’s asks.

“I don’t eat ham,” the homeless man replies.

The exchange raises several questions: If I offer a sandwich to a homeless man, does he have a responsibility to accept it? Does he, by virtue of his circumstances, forfeit choice? And do I, thanks to my laudable generosity (born of luck, hard work and some level of privilege), have the right to be offended?

Read the full essay.

Poverty at record rates in NJ, report says

Cross-posted from Channel Surfing:

Legal Services of New Jersey issued its annual poverty report, which found that more people in the state had trouble making ends meet in 2011 than at any time since the late 1950s.

The report‘s top findings were:

1. Record Poverty.

In 2011, poverty in New Jersey reached a record high not seen for the past 50 years. Census data going back to 1959 show that the official poverty rate of 10.4 percent in 2011 has not been surpassed in the last fifty years.

2. Nearly One-Third Face Significant Deprivation.

Using the Real Cost of Living, the portion of the state struggling to meet basic needs is dire — 31.5% were below 250% FPL in 2011. More than 2.7 million residents, or about 31.5 percent of the total population, were living in true or actual poverty in 2011; they were grappling to meet basic necessities.

3. Record Child Poverty.

Record number of children were living in poverty in 2011. About 780,000, or 38.5 percent of all children, were below 250% of FPL in 2011. Of these, 31.2 percent were below 200% of FPL and 14.7% were below 100% of FPL, all record highs for the state.

4. Extreme Poverty In Certain Municipalities.

Municipal poverty was highest in Camden, where 64.5 percent of the total population lived in households with incomes below 200 percent of FPL, followed by Passaic with a poverty rate of 59.5 percent, Lakewood at 55.9 percent, Paterson at 53.3 percent, Trenton at 51.5 percent, and Newark at 50.4 percent.

5. Child Poverty In Extreme Poverty Municipalities.

Child poverty rates were highest in Camden — 79 percent of all children were below 200 percent of the FPL in 2011. In another six places – Passaic, Lakewood, Paterson, Trenton, Newark, and Union City — more than 60 percent of children were below 200 percent of the FPL.

6. Continued High Unemployment.

In July 2013, the unemployment rate in New Jersey was 8.6 percent, substantially higher than the 4.6 percent at the onset of the Great Recession, and even higher than the current national average of 7.4 percent. The most recent data for July 2013 shows that New Jersey had the seventh highest unemployment rate in the nation.

7. Record Food Insecurity.

Food insecurity reached another all-time high in 2011. A sizeable portion of New Jersey households did not have enough food for all their members in 2011. Data from a three-year period (2009-11) show that 12.3 percent of New Jersey households were food insecure at some point during that period, and 4.5 percent had very low food security, meaning that the food intake of one or more household member was reduced or their eating pattern disrupted due to lack of resources. This represents a record high for the fifth consecutive year.

8. High Level of Medically Uninsured.

Working-age population below 200% FPL had very high rates of uninsurance in 2011. Working adults with low incomes were much more likely than either children or the elderly to be without health insurance coverage. In 2011, a sizeable proportion of working adults with incomes below 200 percent of the FPL were without health insurance — 41.7 percent of working adults below 50% FPL, 38.2 percent between 50-99% FPL, and 42.4 percent with incomes between 100-200% FPL.

9.Poverty Correlates with School Districts Needing Improvement.

School districts failing to make adequate progress were more likely to be located in high poverty areas. During 2011-12, 19 category “A” school districts (poorest in the state) were identified as needing improvement. The “J” districts (considered the most affluent in the state) did not have any schools identified as needing improvement. In addition, the number of “A” district schools needing improvement has increased significantly in the past three years. During the 2009-10 school year, 13 failing districts fell under the “A” classification. By 2011-12 school year, the number rose to 19, a 46 percent increase. In all three years, no “J” district schools were identified as needing improvement.

Officials with Legal Services said about a quarter of the state’s residents were considered poor in 2011″nearly 1 percent
higher than the previous year and 3.8 percent more than pre-recession
levels,” according to NJ.com.

“This is not just a one-year or five-year or 10-year variation,” said Melville D. Miller Jr., the president of LSNJ, which gives free legal help to low-income residents in civil cases. “This is the worst that it’s been since the 1960 Census.”

The numbers could get worse, LSNJ said (according to NJ.com):

The report warned Census figures for 2012 to be released this month may be higher. Those numbers are expected to show some of the impact from Hurricane Sandy, which took a bite out of the state’s economy and destroyed a large amount of affordable housing.

New Jersey is not alone, Miller said.

In 2011, the federal poverty rate was the largest it had been in 18 years, according to the Congressional Research Service.

“The Great Recession was the worst major economic event since the early ’30s,” Miller said. “It’s taken longer for the U.S. to come out of it.”

Housing money for storm victims underscores lack of commitment to low-income housing

From The Tent City Project blog:

The state is providing 1,000 housing vouchers to low-income people displaced by Hurricane Sandy. According to a press release from the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, the Christie administration “will set aside 1,000 vouchers from the state-administered Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program to assist low-income households that were displaced by the storm in moving into permanent housing.” The program, funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, “will provide vouchers that will be used as ‘Special Admissions’ for households that cannot return to their homes. The vouchers, which average approximately $9,840 per year per household, will total $9.84 million.”

To read more go to The Tent City Project blog.

Housing must be a priority

As far as priorities go, housing is pretty far down on the federal government’s wish list, though wish list is probably not the correct way to describe it. Housing money doesn’t even make the list.

That’s the gist of today’s editorial in The New York Times, accurately titled “The Affordable Housing Crisis.” As the paper notes,

The precious few federal programs that provide rental assistance to the nation’s poorest and most vulnerable families are already underfinanced. These programs provide decent housing for about only a quarter of the low-income families who qualify for them. And with nearly nine million households teetering on the verge of homelessness, the country clearly needs more support for affordable housing, not less.

And yet, we are unlikely to see added federal support. As we know from our experience here in New Jersey, subsidized housing can be a non-starter when it is forced to battle for attention with the kinds of programs middle- and upper-class voters tend to appreciate.

The sad truth, however, is that the “number of families eligible” for housing is growing.

Last year, for example, 8.5 million very-low-income families without housing assistance paid more than half their incomes for housing — an increase of 43 percent from 2007.

These families skimp on food and medical care to make the rent and tend to move often, making it difficult for their children to be successful at school. They are also more prone to homelessness, which is traumatic for them and extremely costly for the municipalities that run shelters.

Yet even as the need for affordable housing has grown, such units have disappeared. Over the last two decades, for example, private landlords have removed more than 200,000 apartments from subsidy programs so that they could raise rents. And, faced with weak federal support and no money for repairs, the local housing authorities that manage federally supported developments have boarded up or torn down more than 150,000 units.

According to an analysis by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, it would take about $26 billion to repair the public housing developments that shelter more than two million of the nation’s most vulnerable people. The department is currently engaged in a pilot project under which a small subset of public housing authorities will be allowed to leverage private capital to make the needed repairs on their properties.

In New Jersey, an affordable housing program that had been among the most forward-looking in the country is now mired in a series of court challenges and under attack by a hostile governor who already has vetoed an attempt to convert abandoned, foreclosed homes into affordable housing. The legislation has the support not only of housing advocates and builders, but realtors and municipal officials. That makes it rare among affordable housing proposals, which tend to pit towns and housing advocates against each other.

So, while there is an obvious need for more money for housing and a bigger commitment rhetorically and politically, it is not likely to happen anytime soon — at least not without some push from the grassroots.