WHY POVERTY IS AN ISSUE OF PUBLIC CONCERN

Hunger. Illness. Thirst. These problems are all a result of growing poverty in America, and the world. We have all seen the ads and campaigns dedicated to getting financial funding and support for starving, thirsty, and disease riddled villages and children in Africa, but severe material hardship and poverty are just as prevalent in the United States, but the lack of understanding of these issues is a problem. If you travel to India, the poverty is obvious. You see people who have no money and literally have no food to eat. It’s a little bit more complicated in America because even though the welfare system is not very good, we don’t actually have mass starvation. Poverty in America is more about a widespread lack of basic necessities and a lack of understanding for those in need. There is an absence of understanding the vast amount of people that need help because of the way poverty is measured and how those in “poverty” aren't the only people suffering here that require help from very imperfect government institutions or very overwhelmed private charities. While poverty itself isn’t permanent, the financial hardships causing it become much worse or even inescapable for generations to come. The lack of help for those suffering hardships both in and out of poverty has a major issue, and there needs to be major action and funding used to prevent it.

First off, while poverty itself is an issue, the outdated and overlooked way we determine and define what poverty is also needs to be addressed. The official measure , which was developed in 1960, is based solely on minimum income level needed to afford food and meet daily needs. Yet the measure doesn’t account for the rising costs of living expenses, the geographic variation in costs of living, or the full spectrum of income sources families use to meet daily needs. A definition of anything that has to deal with cost or living itself that goes based off the requirements from over 65 years ago would seem like it would get the necessary changes its needs right? Then why hasn't the definition of poverty? The main reason is that it isn’t viewed as an issue that we should work on or an issue that affects us in general, and that needs changing.
To illustrate the measure’s shortcomings, lets bring up an example of New Mexico and California. Using that measure, New Mexico has a poverty rate of 21.8%, while California has a rate of 14.9%. The measure uses the same earnings and support to classify poverty in the 2 states, but the cost of living in California is 20% higher. It does not take into account that the average monthly rent for a 2 bedroom apartment in Albuquerque, New Mexico, was $963, but a similar apartment rents for $2,904 in Los Angeles. Clearly these increased costs matter, even more so to the poor. We need to increase awareness surrounding poverty and the major issues it and its resulting problems presented to our society. One way we can take action to raise awareness of its impact is adapt how we measure it to our current times.

We can't just change the federal measure though; federal funding for housing needs to increase as well. A decrease of government funding for public housing has caused many of the gains we experienced in the 90’s concerning basic but needed improvements in housing quality to be lost. We don't just need to increase funding for helping those already in poverty though; we need to restore a source of emergency aid to keep people from starting or continuing a spiral into deep poverty.

Let's take a look back at housing. The National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) is one of the few groups “strongly committed to enacting legislation” to improve funding for alleviating poverty. The National Low Income Housing Coalition states that “families across the country would need to earn a “housing wage” of $15.37 an hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment according to the average fair market rent.” For most people already suffering from poverty or a shock, getting and maintaining a job that pays that much is unachievable. The “NLIHC works to preserve and increase resources for federal affordable housing programs serving extremely low-income families.” Despite a proven track record, these programs have been chronically underfunded. Today, just one in four families eligible for federal housing assistance get the help they need. To address the crisis upon us, the NLIHC says “Congress must significantly increase federal housing resources for people with the greatest needs through the annual budget and appropriations process and tax code.” According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the majority of the nation’s cost-burdened households are low-income, making them vulnerable to a wide variety of negative impacts caused by housing insecurity. The scale of the housing crisis for low-income households is growing, as average rental rates are increasing while the number of available low-cost rental units is shrinking. In 2010, the U.S. had 5.1 million more low-income renters than affordable units to house them - a shortfall greater than the entire Boston metro area population.

Over the course of a 3 year study, 46% all New Yorkers had experienced poverty for at least a year. Over half experienced a severe material hardship, such as having their utilities turned off, or not being able to pay for a doctors bill. While annual data tells us that the population experiencing poverty has barely changed, a closer look at the data reveals that from year to year, more people move in and out of poverty than remain persistently poor. We need to establish better federal funding to help those suffering from a shock and prevent that shock from becoming inescapable. More than eight in 10 (86%) New Yorkers suffering from persistent hardship throughout the three-year period suffered multiple financial shocks. By contrast, about four in ten (39%) of those reporting no hardship also suffered multiple financial shocks. With federal funding we can make it so that less people suffer from hardship and make those shocks more bearable, whether it's through creating more affordable housing opportunities, getting or improving health insurance for low income communities to make expensive hospital bills hurt less than what put them in the hospital, or through creating and improving a safety net for those who need financial assistance so they don't end up in an even worse place or start a cycle of going in and out of poverty.

Although annual snapshots show that slightly more than one in five New Yorkers lives in poverty, the Poverty Tracker reveals that only about one in 20 faced persistent poverty during the three-year survey period. The flip side of this, of course, is that larger fractions of New Yorkers experienced one or even repeated shocks during the three-year study period, which may help explain why some people remain locked in persistent poverty, hardship or poor health over time.