NEW INITIATIVE ON POVERTY

A new initiative to fight poverty, called Fighting Poverty with Faith: A Week of Action was launched on September 9, 2008 with a national conference call. The week’s activities ended with a Prayer Vigil on Capitol Hill. Representatives of various faith groups participated in these activities. Fighting Poverty with Faith is a coalition of over 20 national faith-based groups working together to raise attention about poverty and economic insecurity in the country. By speaking with one voice, participants seek to spark a national conversation, and create a mandate for the officials elected this year to aggressively pursue a poverty-reduction agenda.

Jewish groups participating in this initiative include: Association of Jewish Family and Children’s Agencies, Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Jewish Reconstructionist Federation, National Council of Jewish Women, MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, Union for Reform Judaism, United Jewish Communities and Women of Reform Judaism.

Facts and Figures  

A seven year economic expansion that ended late last year left many working families behind. The national poverty rate grew over that time, from 11.3% in 2000 to 12.5% in 2007. There are 36 million Americans who live at or below the poverty level, and 46 million without health insurance. In New York, 2.75 million residents lived in households with income below the poverty level in 2007, which represents 14.3% of the state’s population. And, there are at least 2.5 million New Yorkers without health insurance.

Figures for the City of Albany are much worse: 24.4% of all individuals and 35.8% of children in the City of Albany were living in poverty in 2007. Poverty rates in other upstate cities are even higher: 31% for Syracuse, 29.1% for Rochester and 28.8% for Buffalo, while NYC’s rate was 18.5%.

The U.S. Census defines poverty for a family of four as living on less than $21,730 a year in 2007. The Economic Policy Institute, however, found that a family of four, two parents and two children, living in the Albany-Schenectady-Troy metropolitan area would have needed $57,457 in 2007 to cover basic housing, food, child care, transportation, health care and other expenses.   

Deuteronomy commands “there shall be no needy among you” and yet there are. With all that we and our partner organizations do to help the needy it has not been enough to solve the problem. Poverty is a moral issue. If we are serious about addressing poverty we need all our elected officials to be committed to setting poverty reduction goals. Then, we must show them that we are both mobilized to hold them accountable to those goals and committed to helping them achieve them.