Headed in the Right Direction

Guest Blog By: Debra O'Neal
2011 Cleveland Foundation Intern

To most people the word “public housing” is synonymous with crime, violence, and poverty.  People envision single mothers with multiple children, no jobs and living off of welfare. However while some of those claims may have truth to them, most people fail to see how public housing can also play a positive role in the lives of the children who live there. As a child who grew up in public housing, I can definitely say that the lessons and experiences I took from there played a major part in shaping my character and helping me to achieve the many accomplishments that I have.

Though I lived in low income housing all my life, I didn’t realize that I was “poor” until I was in high school.  I never felt "poor” or felt that I was lacking in any area. My parents always had jobs, and even though I did not receive EVERYTHING I wanted, neither my siblings nor I ever went without the things we needed. We never had the latest gadgets or the newest fads, but we were content with what we did have, and compared to some of our friends we were very well off. Though we may have been financially poor, the love of my parents, family, and friends made us spiritually and emotionally rich. I am blessed to have such a good family, and despite others’ beliefs, I feel blessed to had been raised in public housing. From an outsider’s perspective, it may have seemed that the neighborhoods in which I was raised in were terrible, but it was because of those neighborhoods that I am who I am today.

My neighborhood that I grew up in consisted of eight six-bedroom low income apartments. These apartments were exclusively meant for parents who had more that six children under their care. So even though there were only a few families there, more than seventy people lived in this area alone. There were always a lot of kids around for every age group, so our summers were always filled with a lot of fun and excitement. Though some of us went to summer camps or daycare, we still found ways to create new games or activities to fill our time when we were at home. One summer, after the housing authority built a basketball court in our back yard, we started a summer league in which we even convinced a local church to donate to us some pennies. Another time, we decided to throw our mothers a surprise Mother’s Day program complete with snacks, dance routines, and music.  One year, we even started a step team in which we competed against other teams and almost won. These are the memories I hold of public housing, not those negative generalizations that people are so quick to assume.

Why we certainly had our share of fights and pain, we also had an abundance of good memories and positive experiences. It is because of growing up in public housing that I learned to value the importance of family, hard work, and perseverance, and most of all, community. I found out at an early age that nobody expected us to be successful or respected us. Therefore in order to achieve anything, I needed to work twice as hard in school, at work, and especially in staying out of trouble in our neighborhoods.  I understood early to make the best of what I had and that no matter how bad something may seem at the time, it never lasts forever. Living in public housing taught me a lot of things, but the biggest lesson it showed me was that since I already started at the bottom, the only direction that I could go was up.

Fighing Poverty or Bribing Parents?

I was intrigued by a recent report I heard on NPR about a program in Mexico called Opportunidades. In an effort to fight poverty in the country, the Mexican government, backed by loans from the World Bank, spends $5 billion a year on a program that pays mothers cash for meeting certain guidelines in the care of their children. They are paid for taking their kids to regular medical check-ups and keeping them in school. Amounts range from $29/month for an elementary student all the way up to $185/month for keeping a high school student from dropping out. Payments are higher for girls, since it is not uncommon for families to pull their daughters out of school to help support mothers around the house.  Nearly one-third of Mexico's population participates in the program.

Where the programs have been implemented in rural areas, the results are quite impressive. In Monterrey, for example, the case of malnutrition among children has been cut in half. Comparable programs in Brazil have yielded similar results. Not only do these programs improve the health of children, but they also seem to help break the cycle of poverty. Uneducated parents are now seeing their kids graduate college and work in professional fields; dramatically increasing their earning potential.

The results are more mixed in urban settings. While there appear to have been some gains in a pilot program in New York City and larger urban areas in Mexico, they have not been as dramatic as those seen in the rural programs.  The reasons are unclear and, in my opinion, warrant further study, given the rising population of the poor in the world's urban communities.

These programs are certainly not without their critics who say parents are just being bribed to do what they already should be doing. Others say the only way to break the cycle of poverty and ensure children in very poor communities are properly educated is to provide additional resources to mothers, thereby reducing obstacles that may interfere with their children's success.

This program got me thinking about what we could do for our poor, inner-city youth that face many of the same obstacles; hunger, lack of preventative health care, and uneducated parents. Does paying parents to properly care for their children and keep them in school amount to bribery; or is it simply "doing whatever it takes," as Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem Children's Zone says?

Canada has faced similar criticism for his programs that pay parents to attend parenting classes and stay involved in their children's education. The results his programs have yielded are equally as impressive as those of Opportunidades. With the numbers of his students passing standardized tests or performing at grade level in the 90% or higher range, and with 100% of his high school seniors graduating, it is hard not to recognize the value of his "cradle to college" approach. And it is not just the youth that are benefiting from his programs. The communities where his kids live have been rejuvenated with block associations becoming active once again and families remaining intact.

I believe what these programs show is that the success of our most vulnerable children is a complicated challenge that cannot be boiled down to education alone. Anyone who has worked with the poor know that many times it is the other complications in life that get in the way. How can we expect children to focus on reading when they are hungry? How can we expect them to envision a future when they are battling illness or dodging bullets in the streets? Of course, the problem of taking a much more comprehensive approach to fighting poverty is that it is expensive. But given the successes seen in the 30+ countries that are experimenting with programs like Opportunidades, I think it is worth it to see how we can make it work in the poorest communities here in America.