Report focuses on poverty across nation's cities

[question everything]

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Report focuses on poverty across nation's cities

By: WILLIAM FINN BENNETT - Staff Writer
North (San Diego) County Times

A report issued Tuesday by a Washington think-tank zeroed in on the high concentration of poverty in cities around the country.

The report came in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which put a spotlight on the high levels of poverty in New Orleans. More than 50,000 poor people in that city lived in neighborhoods where more than 40 percent of the population was below federal poverty levels.

In the study, the Washington-based Brookings Institution, one of the oldest think tanks in the country, concluded that many other cities in the United States have similar neighborhoods and face problems that are associated with concentrated poverty. Based on data from the 2000 U.S. Census, the report rated the 50 largest cities in the country on how many of their residents live in such neighborhoods. San Diego, with 16.4 percent of its poor concentrated in a few neighborhoods, ranked No. 20.


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To begin to reduce the concentration of poverty in the country and offer the poor better conditions for breaking away from the cycle of poverty, the report's authors make a series of recommendations, including:
-- Increased federal support for housing vouchers.
-- Consideration of a housing voucher initiative that would issue housing vouchers for homes in lower-poverty areas.
-- Adopting President Bush's proposed Single-Family Homeownership Tax Credit, a tax credit to builders for constructing affordable single-family homes.
-- Maintaining and expanding supports such as child care and subsidized health insurance.
-- Reforming state and local policies that contribute to unbalanced metropolitan growth.

Contact staff writer William Finn Bennett at [phone] or [e-mail].

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2005/10/12/news/top_stories/21_25_4110_11_05.txt

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. the trouble with housing vouchers

is that, sad to say, some people won't honor them, especially if the poor person is from a minority.

[enid602]

2. segregation

The Bronx has largest concentration of primarily Black poverty in the US. Chicago is still quite segregated, as is DC, Detroit, Cleveland, Philly, etc.

I come from LA, which is often ridiculed for its very violent racial history. Watts riots, South Central riots, etc. Nonetheless, these riots were in large measure responsible for an integration which otherwise might not have been possible. South Central was 45% black before the last riots; it is now 15% black. LA has not lost any of its black population overall, and most have moved to neighborhoods on the Westside and in the Valley, as well as in San Bernardino County suburbs.

I realize that the South Central riots were multi-cultural riots, as many groups were upset by LAPD, red-lining investments in poorer neighborhoods, housing discrimination and a city council more interested in image than developing neighborhoods and opportunities.

I think there is a tendency to look at the poverty exposed by Katrina as being peculiar to the Mississippi Delta or the South, where you have a rather large, poorer inner-city black population. These same conditions and needs exist in so many of our larger cities, but have not yet been made visible by a natural disaster.