On poverty

There are 150 people at this Americorps Vista orientation. There are maybe 24 people in the particular North East group that I’m in. Each has a personal experience with poverty. Some are more touching than others. Some have been closer, some have been homeless, some would never have defined themselves as living in poverty.

It reminds me of asking my grandmother about living through the Great Depression. She grew up in a small town in Western Massachusetts, surrounded by family and community. What others viewed as subsistence living was her every day, so any change in her life was negligible.

The facilitator of our group had a very similar experience growing up on reservation land, until the land was bought by the government so a highway could be put in. He was approximately 8-years-old when someone first referred to him as poor.

In the early 60s the government decided to establish a threshold for determining poverty based on food consumed by an average household.

This information comes from the Oregon Center for Public Policy.

In 1963-1964, Molly Orshansky of the Social Security Administration developed poverty thresholds. Orshansky based her poverty thresholds on the "thrifty food plan," which was the cheapest of four food plans developed by the Department of Agriculture. The food plan was "designed for temporary or emergency use when funds are low," according to the USDA. Based on the 1955 Household Food Consumption Survey from the USDA (the latest available survey at the time), Orshansky knew that families of three or more persons spent about one third of their after-tax income on food. She then multiplied the cost of the USDA economy food plan by three to arrive at the minimal yearly income a family would need. Using 1963 as a base year, she calculated that a family of four, two adults and two children would spend $1,033 for food per year. Using her formula based on the 1955 survey, she arrived at $3,100 a year ($1,033 x3) as the poverty threshold for a family of four in 1963.

(current thresholds adjusted for inflation).

Anyone who has ever created a personal budget or applied for any kind of government or financial assistance KNOWS the type of frustration that this formula creates. It discounts the other things people must pay for in order to survive in an acceptable manner.

It’s true, we’ve been discussing this all day. You’re getting some regurgitated information from me. And I hate a party line, even if it’s my party.

But this makes me uncomfortable. I explained it to a friend as facing a lie. I am forcing myself to look at something that I pass on the street every day and turn my head away from. It sends me into a panic when a barely coherent homeless person approaches me asking for money. While eating that fantastic sushi at the Reading Terminal Market I was approached by a man looking for $2. I gave him the .75 I had left as change from paying for my sushi. I saw him at least two more times while wandering around after.

There is a steady homeless population in the city where I live. Every winter certain faces disappear from the sidewalks, and every spring they show up again eventually. Some are constant.

While walking to the gym one morning one of those constant faces was sitting on a bench in the park I cut across. “Good morning!” He called out to me from across the park. A greeting. I didn’t want to ignore him, but I certainly didn’t know how to respond. I waved a little and hurried on my way. Months later while I was walking down the sidewalk along the park I noticed a “shelter” hidden in the trees up against the retaining wall that keeps the park from falling into the strip mall below.

Shelter is a very loose term. It’s a mattress with some plastic bags around it. You need to do a bit of looking for it when the summer trees are in bloom. I don’t know if the items move during the winter months, or if they will be abandoned to be removed by some do-gooder during a community clean up.

When the leaves fall off the trees in the winter you can stand on the bridge over the Merrimack and see where people have spent their summer.

I’m not sure I’ve seen people make eye contact with the servers here. These people who work long hours to be sure we have food in front of us, and could well be living with the poverty we are discussing.

Certain items are absent from meals. There was no meat available at breakfast. No chips available at lunch. And the people sitting at the tables complain about the missing elements. None seem to remember that when the question was asked at breakfast “why isn’t there any meat?” the answer was “Because there was no money for it.”

Because there was no money for it.

And this is the fear, the lie I’m facing. The lie that I can lift myself out of because I have a college education and a family I can rely on. The lie that so many people walk by every day on the street. A lie of signs “homeless, will work for food” right next to a help wanted sign. A lie of words “I don’t have any change”, or simply staring straight past the face.

It is impossible to carry a pocket full of change for everyone who might need it. It is overwhelming to try and help a line of individuals by giving temporary gifts that may give a moment respite, but dump them back on the same corner by morning.

So the question becomes, what is possible?

With any luck this next year will yield some sort of answer.