The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Editorial Board has the answers to alleviate poverty in the city -- attract businesses and jobs to the inner city, and in the interim, look to the government to create public-service jobs to put the unemployed to work.
Bold steps needed to help city's poor
Crisis. There is no other word for it. New poverty figures show that Milwaukee is in the midst of it. But the numbers must spur the entire metropolitan area into action.
One of every four city residents is officially poor - the eighth-worst rate among the nation's big cities. Poverty is like a ball and chain, not just for poor people but also for the entire region. Extensive poverty at its center keeps the seven-county area from rising to its potential.
Two things must happen immediately.
• Public officials and business and civic leaders must come up with a coordinated plan for putting jobs back into the inner city, and then they must execute the plan. Mayor Tom Barrett should play the lead role in this effort, of course, but the Milwaukee 7 regional economic development group, of which Barrett is a leader, also must do more. Reducing poverty must be a leading priority for that group in the coming year.
• Government must stop the bleeding by directly putting unemployed people to work - in temporary public-service jobs that help them move up the job and income ladder. Why not start in a small area and test this idea? It can work.
And there need to be renewed efforts to connect people with the jobs that do exist - the region's biggest economic challenge at the moment.
Of course, jobs are needed to lift people out of poverty, but there's more to it than that.
People have to be committed to working for a living, rather than depending on government assistance.
Furthermore, if parents don't see to it that their children stay in school and out of trouble, with the goal of preparing them to enter the work force and become productive members of society, then the "bold, targeted action" that the JS Editorial Board calls for will flop.
And then there's the personal responsibility factor, something the Board completely ignores.
For instance, it's not a good idea to become a parent when one is still a child.
You don't start a family until you're capable of caring for one; and you don't have more children than you can support.
This article by Robert Rector is a must-read for the myopic JS Editorial Board.
Rector explains:
Nearly two thirds of poor children reside in single-parent homes; each year, an additional 1.5 million children are born out of wedlock. If poor mothers married the fathers of their children, nearly three quarters of the nation’s impoverished youth would immediately be lifted out of poverty.
...Another important factor boosting poverty in the U.S. is our broken immigration system which imports hundreds of thousands of additional poor people each year from abroad through both legal and illegal immigration channels. One quarter of all poor persons in the U.S. are now first generation immigrants or the minor children of those immigrants. Roughly one in ten of the persons counted among the poor by Census is either an illegal immigrant or the minor child of an illegal. Immigrants tend to be poor because they have very low education levels. A quarter of legal immigrants and fifty to sixty percent of illegals are high-school dropouts. By contrast, only nine percent of non-immigrant Americans lack a high school degree.
I agree that there's a poverty crisis in Milwaukee.
As an example, the editorial points to the case of Johnniemae Ashford, a patient-care worker who's trying to raise five grandchildren on a take-home pay of $187 every two weeks.
Johnniemae Ashford is a 41-year-old African-American woman caught in a poverty trap.
She is raising five grandchildren and takes home$187 every two weeks as a patient-care worker. She needs pots, pans, beds, groceries and cash for a first rent check so she can move her family out of her sister's house and into a new home.
"I need help," Ashford said. "It's just bad out here right now."
...Someone like Ashford can't ignore poverty. She lives with it every day, struggling far below the poverty threshold - around $20,444 in household income for a family of four with two children.
"I don't know anyone who has money," Ashford said.
With the help of the House of Peace community center in Milwaukee, Ashford hopes to scrape together enough food and money to survive another month and move into a new home.
"I try my best to get my grandchildren in a safe environment," Ashford said, holding her 2-year-old granddaughter Zamiliano.
Ashford does need help.
At only 41, she already has FIVE grandchildren to raise.
Where are her grandchildrens' parents?
They should be helping to support their children.
And where's the grandfather, Ashford's husband? What about the other grandparents? They should be helping as well.
I agree that the poverty numbers must spur the entire metropolitan area into action.
That includes the people living in poverty. They need to take action to help themselves and their families.
They need to stop having children out of wedlock.
They need to supervise their children and behave responsibly, like not keeping a loaded gun behind a stove.
They need to make sure their children stay in school and take advantage of the educational opportunities being provided to them by taxpayers.
They need to obey the law.
The Board writes:
One in four Milwaukee residents lives in poverty. That is utterly unacceptable, and the mayor and business leaders must take concrete steps — today — to fight this scourge.
It is utterly unacceptable.
Mayor Barrett, business leaders, community leaders, and the poor residents themselves all must take concrete steps to fight poverty.
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