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Island is no place for poor and needy
By Christopher Frederickson
Contributor
Published November 7, 2009
Why are we recruiting poor people to come live in subsidized housing in Galveston? It’s a terrible thing to do.
Poverty and dependence upon public assistance need not be permanent. Anyone who falls into poverty should be helped and encouraged in every way possible into a productive, successful life. This is doubly true for anyone with children, because being in poverty and having only one parent are the two worst things that can blight a child’s future.
What we should do for poor people is maximize their opportunity to get out of poverty.
What do they need?
First, they need jobs. Galveston’s unemployment rate is about 40 percent higher higher than the rest of Texas, and there are simply not many entry-level jobs on the island. This is a bad place to bring people who are out of work and ask them to find a job.
They need public transportation. We have at best a primitive public transportation system. This makes it even harder for the poor to get to interviews for the few available job openings. In fact, it is impossible to get off the island by public transportation.
They need schools. The poor can’t afford private schools, we have no voucher system and most Galveston public schools rate very low in the Texas educational system. So we condemn the children of the poor to be poorly educated, or to drop out — thus perpetuating the pattern of poverty.
They need safety. Natural disasters hit the poor and infirm hardest. The poor who survive lose all their uninsured belongings. They are wiped out by the floods that only inconvenience others.
They need housing. The best place for a poor person to live would be in a neighborhood near a great school, shops and industries where parents could walk to a decent job. While The Oaks and Cornerstone offer some of those features, essentially no place else available in Galveston offers anything like that.
A small home in the Woodlands or Clear Lake, near a retail/business center and good school, would be the best opportunity for breaking the poverty cycle.
So why would anyone want to condemn the poor to live in a city where essentially the deck is stacked against their ability to conquer their poverty and regain a productive and contributory status?
It’s irresponsible, at best, to put people in such a virtual prison, surrounded, immobile, by people no better off than they, and who cannot help them in their quest for self-improvement.
What could motivate anyone to argue in favor of a strategy that traps people in their poverty and dependence? We must help the poor to find places to live that will promote, stimulate and nurture their will and their chances to break out of poverty. That place is not Galveston.
Christopher Frederickson is a resident of Galveston.
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