Poverty

The housing market's continuing struggles have upset the retirement plans of millions of Americans, keeping more of them in their current homes, waiting for diminished equity to reappear. Others plan to move, but they appear to be demanding something much different from what they wanted before the real estate boom turned to bust: smaller, less expensive retirement houses they can afford with their reduced means. At the start of the financial crisis in the fall of 2008, economists weren't anticipating that the long-term trend toward retirement living would be derailed.

IN TODAY'S AMERICA, the poor are apparently getting poorer. Then again, so is the middle class. And just like in the days leading up to the Great Depression, the rich are getting even richer. Figures released by the Census Bureau yesterday (full story on Page 31) show that poverty is the highest it's been since 1994 - and for working-age people 18 to 65 years old, it's the highest since 1965, when President Johnson declared a war on it (that ended in a stalemate). For millions of low- and middle-income Americans, the economic ladder has gone only down during the recession.

AS PRESIDENT Bush's approval ratings continue to slide, his allies have begun to grumble. The economy is improving. Why isn't the president getting the credit? Here's a clue: According to new Census Bureau figures, the number of Americans who slipped into poverty is now 37 million, an increase of 1.1 million from 2003. In the Philadelphia, the number increased so dramatically, that the city jumped from 11th- to ninth-poorest in the nation. The White House says it's not surprised by the numbers.

Jack Kemp, chosen to head the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in the Bush administration, proposes to launch a new War on Poverty. Will he succeed any better than Lyndon Johnson, who officially began the last one in 1964? What lessons should he learn? According to many current assessments, during the years from 1964 until 1972-73, when federal social benefits in real dollars peaked, Washington threw massive amounts of money into a futile attempt to eliminate poverty.

LONG before the onset of the current economic slide, some Washington insiders called on government to set a goal of reducing poverty. While recognizing the good intentions, we must acknowledge what the recent election proves: Changes in our nation in the years since citizens heard a similar plea - more than 40 years ago - require a new vision for the economy. Any effort to revive a policy and political focus targeted specifically on the poor will demand significant energy and resources and, unfortunately, can't yield the desired policy results.

Notwithstanding the tortured and intrigue-filled path by which we have arrived here, Philadelphia's voters now have a choice of mayoral candidates that is well above average. Joe Egan and Ed Rendell are bright and serious people who are actually talking about bold ideas and policy choices needed to govern a city that has teetered on the brink of financial collapse. The fact is, however, that if Philadelphia is to stem its decline, far more is required than to solve the budget crisis.

IAPPLAUD Mark Hughes for focusing on the compelling challenges we face in Philadelphia. I only wish he'd made the acquaintance of Dr. Ala Stanford Frey at Temple University before declaring in his Oct. 15 op-ed that poverty in Philadelphia is not fixable. Dr. Frey was born to a teenage single mom in North Philadelphia. She applied herself and went on to medical school after participating in the Fattah Higher Education Conference, which has affected more than 10,000 disadvantaged young people.

AT THE press conference that launched Safe and Sound's Children's Report Card, Pat de Carlo of the Norris Square Civic Association said, "Make no mistake: This is about poverty. Until we solve the problem of poverty, none of the issues that are being addressed here will disappear. " She is right, and, in fact, the Report Card shows a huge increase in poverty. While I agree with the Daily News that we need to look carefully at all programs that serve the city's children, all the scrutiny in the world won't create jobs for the parents, or build houses for the families, or provide the mental-health services so crucial to solving the issues of abuse and neglect.

America seems to be locked in an unwinnable debate over who or what is responsible for poverty. Conservatives blame the welfare programs of the Great Society. Liberals blame the Reagan-Bush years which they believe have gutted programs that were working. Is there a third way? Can't we all "get along," in the words of Rodney King? It should be stipulated that there are some people who are, and will forever remain, poor. These are the impoverished in spirit. Their list of addictions, whatever else it includes, is topped by a lack of initiative.

TRENTON — When the electric company shut off Barbara Offredo's service last spring, she used flashlights to cheer up her 11-year-old son, Joseph, who missed lights, cooked meals, and hot showers. "Pretend we are camping," she told him, knowing it would be eight days before she could pay some of what she owed. Offredo, 51, of Hamilton, choked up telling the story Monday. A full-time hospice nurse and single mother of two, Offredo said she is on the brink of homelessness because rent for her two-bedroom apartment eats up half of her monthly salary.

An alarming new study shows more New Jersey residents than ever are struggling to provide for their families. A record 885,000 people in the state lived below the poverty line in 2010, according to the study released Sunday by the Legal Services of New Jersey Poverty Research Institute. The poverty rate increased from 9.4 percent in 2009 to 10.3 percent in 2010, based on the latest census figures available. Among the poor were 300,000 children, the state's most vulnerable and neediest residents.

More New Jersey residents lived in poverty in 2010 than ever before, according to a report released Sunday. A record 885,0000 people in the state, nearly 300,000 of them children, lived below the poverty line, say authors of an analysis by the Legal Services of New Jersey Poverty Research Institute in Edison, which is based on the most recent numbers available. Overall, the poverty rate increased from 8.7 percent in 2008 to 9.4 percent in 2009, and finally to 10.3 percent in 2010.

L.P. Hill Elementary in Strawberry Mansion has gone through five principals in nine years. Parent Dawn Hawkins says that has led to real turmoil at Hill, where virtually all students live below the poverty line and stable leadership is crucial. "Changing principal to principal to principal - you can't get anything established like that," said Hawkins, whose son, Khyrie Brown, is a sixth grader at Hill. "We deserve a stable school so we can get to real learning, not starting over every few months.

PHILADELPHIA is literally in "poor health. " In a study released Tuesday, the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation ranked Philly as the least-healthy county in Pennsylvania for the third consecutive year. But it's not entirely city residents' fault. "Much of what this is about is poverty and socioeconomic factors that go beyond individual action," said Donald Schwarz, the city's health commissioner and deputy mayor for health and opportunity.

IN HIS new book, "Coming Apart," sociologist Charles Murray does for working-class whites what he did for poor blacks in his 1984 book, "Losing Ground. " He blames them for their own troubles. And this time it's personal. To make his argument, Murray creates a fictional, white working- class area that he names Fishtown after the real Philadelphia neighborhood. Once the home of hard-working men and the families they supported, the current Fishtown is inhabited by male slackers who no longer want to work hard.

When Sen. Robert Kennedy campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968, the father of 10 (an 11th child was born months after his assassination) provoked howls of laughter among reporters when he made it clear that he would neither welcome nor support a government birth control program. Had the promising leader not been shot down in his prime, RFK would have been surprised when the Republican who won the presidency in that tumultuous year, Richard Nixon, became the federal social engineer committed to widely promoting and dispensing free contraception.

SLAVERY IS alive and well. Not the old-time slavery - that is rare, although it exists in a few backwaters of the world. I'm talking about neo-slavery, which goes by the name of "human trafficking," and its reach is global. A lot of people throw the term around, but many don't understand it. Under federal law, at least one of three elements must exist to be considered "human trafficking": force, fraud, coercion. Without at least one of those, it may be exploitation or cruelty, but it is not "human trafficking" under U.S. law. These and other points were put on the table Saturday at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute during a film screening/panel hosted by state Sen. Daylin Leach, a Democrat representing parts of Montgomery and Delaware counties who is best known for having a sense of humor and a reliably liberal voting record.

Though Americans have grown used to seeing homeless people on city streets, a much larger group of so-called invisible homeless goes mostly undetected. And their numbers are growing. During the depth of the recession, from 2007 through 2009, the number of Americans moving in with relatives to stave off poverty increased more than 10 percent, from 46.5 million to 51.4 million, according to a new report. That's the largest spike in the number of Americans living in households with two or more adult generations in modern history, according to the Pew Research Center in Washington, which prepared the report.

With more poor families struggling to put food on the table, this isn't the time for the government to falter in combating poverty. So it's good to see that federal agencies are employing a new method of calculating who is poor. Until now, a 1964 formula was used to determine elgibility for federal assistance, which was based on how much a family was expected to spend for food. The new formula also considers a family's other expenses, including housing and medical care. Using the new formula, the Census Bureau calculates that 49.1 million, or about 16 percent of Americans, are poor, compared with 15 percent using the older calculation method.