Poverty Awareness Month: Do the Poor Really Have it Easier?

I was flipping channels last weekend and came to the ‘Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.’ It was a scene between a housewife and her daughter while visiting her hometown of Medford, Oregon. The daughter expressed her disgust by the local people being overweight and commented that it was likely because there was a McDonalds on every corner.

Ironically, this was also on the same day that I had been reading the survey by the Pew Research Center for Poverty Awareness Month. They found that 54% of those with the greatest financial security believe that "poor people today have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything in return."

Only 36% of the wealthiest say "poor people have hard lives because government benefits don't go far enough to help them live decently." Those struggling the most financially believe that the poor need more help by more than a two-to-one margin.

Growing up as a product of the system as well as teaching financial literacy in the inner city, I experienced and witnessed many things that disturbed and angered me. The disparity between the poor and the wealthy is painfully obvious. Here in my hometown of Indianapolis, all you have to do is stand on the corner of any major intersection of the inner city and do a 360 degree turn to see the difference.

You will notice a consistency in the environment. The community will be flooded with predatory lenders and little access to healthy food options, education, healthcare and addiction rehabilitation programs. You will see pawn shops, rent to own furniture centers

, check cashing and payroll advance stores, rapid refund centers and buy-here, pay here lots all of which the interest rates far exceed 26% APR on low quality and used products or short term loans. Among the predatory lenders are fast food chains, liquor stores, cigarette and tobacco stores and abortion clinics. Rarely, will you see a grocery store that sells fresh produce and high quality meats, making it difficult to eat healthy. Even if they find access to a local farmers market, the cost for a basket of produce can cost three times as much for a cart of non-perishable items. Everything in the community serves to oppress the poor physically, socially, economically and psychologically. As a result, the community is overwhelmed with abandoned women, fatherless children, crime, generational poverty, addiction, domestic violence, and depression, thus the cycle repeating itself.

If you look down on the banks of White River, you will find tent cities of the local homeless assembled together where they often receive threats of eviction by the city. Travel five miles west, then you will find yourself in a two mile radius of mobile home parks that house thousands of impoverished families that live far below the poverty line. Travel ten miles east, you will see a once vibrant and thriving farm, in decay and in ruins. With Monsanto and GMO's growing, new legislature has made farming more complex and costly due to new licensing fees and laws. Farmers who have inherited their ancestor’s way of life, have lost their legacy and contribution to the world to foreclosure.

Lower income families have a much higher debt to income ratio which equates to lower credit scores which means higher interest rates. This creates even more of a limited cash flow of an income that is already stretched to the limit. The poor pay more for everything even though that have a much lower cash flow. The amount that is considered affordable for housing according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development is 30% of your gross monthly income. For a family that grosses $3,700 per month, that is $1,110 per month. For a family that only grosses only $1,500 per month, that is only $450 per month. At that amount, safe, decent and affordable housing is likely not an option so they often have to settle for living in substandard housing that does not meet the minimal requirements by the Board of Health Department. As a result, young children and the elderly often suffer from chronic lung illnesses due to mold and mildew exposure.

Over the past few years, multiple class action lawsuits have been filed and/or settled against a variety of banks, including Wells Fargo, Bank of America, M&T Bank and Wachovia. The lawsuits allege that banks charge excessive overdraft fees when customers' accounts go into overdraft and the largest demographic impacted was of course, the underserved.

For the foster care system, children are shuffled from home to home and school to school. As a product of the foster care system, we would move foster homes with our belongings in trash bags and the social workers reading our charts with us sitting in the room. This sent the message that we were both invisible and disposable. The animal control system and Humane Society have a more organized and better program than the foster care system.

Studies show that the public education system is years behind the private school system in academics. As a child from public schools, I was told that I had dyslexia and may be learning disabled. This made me feel that I would never be able to escape the environment that I was in due to my diagnosis by professionals. As I grew older and began to read and learn on my own, I learned that they were wrong. I was actually quite intelligent. I may have been under educated and underdeveloped but I was in no way learning disabled. It makes you wonder how many children are misdiagnosed when they just need attention, stability an equal opportunity.

Other studies show that today, many children are consuming most of their daily calories at school and for many children, food served at school may be the only food they eat regularly. During summer months, malnourishment and dehydration reports spike among poor children as they no longer have access to hot meals.

A few years ago, the same high school I attended announced that they had to eliminate the football program and the yearbook as part of budget cuts. Children that were already at a disadvantage had no way to channel their energy and creativity. When I attend my children’s sports events and activities at the five star school that they have been afforded, I am sometimes overwhelmed with sadness. I notice overcrowding in the stands with supportive parents and grandparents, standing ovations, quality uniforms, medals and trophies and multiple scholarships awarded. I can only imagine the difference in self-esteem in one group of children compared to other.

For the criminal justice systems, countless case studies show that the poor have longer sentences to serve due to the lack of funds for defense. When they are released, they have even a harder time obtaining gainful employment to turn their lives around due to their criminal record and lack of education so they often return to what has become familiar in order to survive.

There are often issues with those in power, abusing their power. The relationship between local law enforcement is always on shaky ground due to excessive police force and racial profiling. The poor are often accused abusing government programs, dealings drugs or theft but are often the ones that are stolen from due to budget cuts and a misappropriation of funds for government programs that are desperately needed. When the community exercise their rights to speak, they are accused of " playing the victim" and for minorities, " pulling the race card" so they are made a mockery of. Between predatory lending, local corruption and their voices being silenced, there is a breach of trust with local officials and the community.

Many men in women from poor communities find that the only way out is through the military. They enlist based on promises such as a paid education but often find that they have a hard time getting reimbursed for tuition. The divorce rate is high due long periods of time away from home. Studies have shown that many suffer

from post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic depression and some succumb to addiction. Some face foreclosure while deployed in another country only to come back to their home country to a vacant home. When they become disabled or retire, their fixed income is often too low to meet their basic needs so you can find them at your local homeless shelter or a nursing home cared for by for strangers.

The contrast between the advantaged and disadvantaged are astounding. If the nation’s wealthiest cannot grasp the difference is because they have either not experienced it or that have not gotten to know the people that live just a mile from them. They allow politics, mainstream media and their own comfort and convenience to blind them from empathizing with the most vulnerable in our nation. It is a sad thing when you are in such a state of contentment that you have no compassion for the poor.

Could programs be redeveloped to prevent abuse and long term use? Yes. But a massive percentage of our humanity should not be discarded over the actions of few.

Does this make success impossible for the underserved? No. There will be flowers that break through the concrete. But logic will also tell you that the higher the odds placed against a demographic, the higher the causalities in statistics. This leaves ample opportunity for the wealthy to stand in the gap and serve the poor instead of stoning the poor.

January is ‘Poverty Awareness Month.’ If you are a writer or blogger, please spread awareness by sharing visions, stories and ideas about how to address poverty in America and worldwide.

References: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/01/14/pew-poll-wealthy-think-poor-have-it-easy/21749567/

Photo credit: Huffington Post

Katrina Smith is a simple mid-western girl born and raised in the inner city of Indianapolis, Indiana. After teaching financial literacy, prison re-entry and community development in underserved communities for ten years, she now works a full time job in the IT Recruiting Industry of corporate America. She is a freelance writer and author of four books and workbooks and is working on her new book ‘Weed & Seed: A Comprehensive Guide to Escaping Dependency on the Government System' set to be released Spring 2015. For more information, visit www.wisdomisashe.com

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