Poverty and Its Effects on Community

Whitney Webb

ENGL 125-H

Lisa Crumit-Hancock

April 26th, 2017

Poverty and Its Effects on Community

There are many elements within a community that weaken the connections between the members. One of these elements is poverty, which affects a little over fourteen percent of americans, according to the 2013 US Census Bureau study. This poverty grows within the minorities of the population. Within the Black community 25.8 percent have fallen into this poverty line. Poverty within a community can lead to unhealthy qualities including unhealthy living situations, bad health decisions, and limited education.

Every community has some sort of housing, the amount and quality of this housing is different among each community. Within the united states the housing in poverty stricken areas are normally made up of a large apartment style of housing, or a shelter for the homeless. These apartments are not typically well maintained because of the need to keep them cheap. The residents are forced to withstand the poor living conditions, because they do not have much choice in where they go. Within the shelters, the poverty stricken residents can sleep at night but have to leave in the morning. This provides temporary shelter, but not the stable environment someone might need. Unhealthy living situations, can lead right into unhealthy decisions. Some examples of these decisions can be food and drink intake, doctor visits, and medicine. Most of the poverty stricken community choose to make sure most of the funds they come up with goes into their shelter. This leaves little money for food. The cheaper food at the store is normally low on vitamins and minerals, and high in unhealthy fats and sugars. The intake of this food leads to obesity with many health related costs, rotting teeth, high cholesterol, diabetes, and much more. In order to help prevent these or keep them from getting worse, a doctor's visit will need to be scheduled. Most of these members cannot afford health insurance though, so they might not be able to afford this visit, and even if they scrape enough to go in, the cost of the prescribed medicine or new diet might be out of reach. In order for these members afford a healthier living situation, and better health decisions, they must have access to an education. While this might just be a high school diploma, career center, or higher education, each could help influence the opportunity to get a job, or to get a higher paying job.

While poverty has been around for many years and their has been some programs installed to help with this rising epidemic, there are still more things that can and should be done to keep the poverty rate down within the United States. One solution to help out these communities is installing a program to help qualifying members. One program that could help these communities is by initiating a program to help the members get a degree. According to Richard Sinatra and Melissa Kim Lanctot Article “Providing Homeless Adults With Advantage: A Sustainable University Degree Program,” in New York City a University partnered with the Department of homeless services to get these poverty stricken members an associate's degree. This program was very successful, with an average GPA of a 3.0 and a high graduation rate. The program helped the members to get jobs in manager positions and customer service opportunities, while giving them higher self-efficacy. This program could help decrease the poverty rate by helping members get higher paying jobs, getting them off the streets.This program only needs the support of local organizations to start up, but could also benefit from others donating or joining the cause.

While having programs to help benefit members may be a good option, another one could be to get the government involved with a housing program. The housing program takes families out of their low income neighborhoods and puts them into a more diverse range of economic status areas. These people have choices of where they go and use vouchers to get their. According to “Housing Assistance Programs and Adult Health in the United States,” this program has lead to many advantages for the families in the community. One of these being  better educational outcomes for children because of the stable and affordable housing. This helps the poverty cycle by giving the children hope, and providing them a better future.Another thing this program did for families was alleviate some of the stress they had, and gave them more time to worry about other important needs within the family. This could include health insurance and better food on the table.

Creating a housing program, can greatly benefit one of the poor community’s basic needs, but a food program can also be greatly beneficial to the community. While the food stamps program is in place, this program has its flaws. With this plan americans tend to buy more unhealthy food rather than healthy. If there was restrictions on what americans spent their food stamps on then this would help keep the risk of obesity down with poor americans. This would in turn limit the amount of medical help that would be needed for obesity, or lack of vitamins and minerals a balanced diet holds.

There are many beneficial programs to install into communities struggling with poverty. While providing homeless people with an education to help benefit them, it does not help the rest of the community. Within the housing program families can get better housing but must figure out their lives where they are placed. This included getting a job, placing the kids in a new school system, and starting over socially. Changing the food stamp policy would help poor communities everywhere, but only focuses on the nutritional aspect. Through comparing and contrasting these options, I have concluded that initiating a housing plan would be the most beneficial in a poverty stricken community. Having a home located in a better area will make it easier to meet the needs of the families. A house is a first step to getting everything in life figured out.

Works Cited

Alston, Julian “Likely effects on obesity from proposed changes to the US food stamp program." Food Policy. v. 24 p. 181-195. 1999. This scholarly article gave me insight on the food stamp process. It talked about the pros and cons of the food stamps and the changes that could be made to better America. It also explores the different effects this change could have on the market, but without any evidence to back it up.

Sinatra, Richard. “Providing Homeless Adults With Advantage: A Sustainable University Degree Program” Education and Urban Society Vol. 48, Iss. 8, November 2016, pp. 719-742. This Scholarly article focused on the benefits of providing the homeless with an education. I used evidence from a university and homeless shelter in New York that had first tried it. This article used the evidence to prove the advantages and disadvantages the program brings.

Taylor, Mary Elizabeth. "Combating Poverty within the Black Community: Conservative Policy Initiatives Hold Potential Solutions." Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy, Jan. 2014, pp. 5-10. EBSCOhost. This Scholarly Journal assesses poverty within the Black community. Graphs and statistics are heavily used to explain her point. The article addresses the effects poverty has on the youth and the adults of the community. Taylor then explains how the collaboration of the leaders of these communities and government collaboration can help solve these problems.