Post #8

Urban poverty, according to lecture notes, is a cause of multiple factors including an increase in single mothers, welfare, and concentrated poverty, increase in the amount of crime or concern of crime, especially for children and elderly, middle class and affluence moving out of urban areas, and poor schools and diminished aspects for learning.

This sort of environment is extremely negative for raising children. With more and more fathers in these urban areas being incarcerated, children are left in homes headed by single mothers who are struggling to make ends meet.

Chaudry talks about the life of Traci, a working mother of two, and how she struggles to raise her children in such an environment. The father of her children has been in and out of jail due to drugs, and Traci and her children have lived off drug money from time to time because they did not have enough money to survive.

Traci grapples with the problems of childcare and living on welfare, much like Julia, who was mentioned in a previous post. Welfare was an unreliable system for Traci, not paying her childcare providers on time with money from her childcare subsidies.

Traci found work, but because of the $10/hour wage she received, she did not qualify to receive subsidies from welfare for better childcare and had to result in placing her children in substandard centers. Just as I said in Post #6, the Applied Research Center found that the number of uncertified childcare facilities has risen and surpassed the number of certified facilities in major urban areas which means low-income children put into these facilities are at risk health-wise and safety-wise.

Also as a result of her new job and longer hours, Traci had the burden of finding childcare within her apartment building and the money to pay for it, so that her children could be supervised. She also missed multiple days at work because she couldn’t pay for extra childcare. This is not a unique phenomenon, just as DeNice, in Professor Bravo’s slideshow points to- “If the kids are sick and sent home from school, there’s no place for them to go. The school called and said I had to get my 5-year-old daughter. I was fired.” Half the workforce, and ¾ of low-wage workers, have no paid sick days and many who do have them can’t use them to care for sick family members. This means that low-income workers cannot leave work if a child is sick. If they leave, the are threatened by job termination. Low-wage working women are caught in the catch 22 of “work can’t pay if it doesn’t last, but work can’t last if it jeopardizes kids.”

The problems Traci faces are not unique to a working mother living in urban poverty. Chaudry feels as though there is no way out of living in urban poverty. Even though some families are able to find better job opportunities and make their way out of the urban landscape, what is left for those who cannot get out is not a pretty picture. Urban poverty is a life full of crime and violence, and children are not able to safely play outside.

In the “7 Days at the Minimum Wage” videos, one of the women interviewed, Jessica, talks about how she is fearful of her neighborhood and forces her children to stay indoors when they want to play. She lives in a dangerous neighborhood and although she could move to another housing development that is cheaper, it is less safe than where she is living now. Jessica also pushes her children to do well in school so that hopefully they can succeed enough to find their way out of poverty. According to Professor Romero’s slideshow on poverty, “Research demonstrates a direct link between education level and earning potential, and one’s ability to get out of poverty.”