510 W. Belmont. Photo by Jason Geil, courtesy Skyline Newpaper.

When I was a kid, the year 2010 brought on images of space suits and hovercraft. If you had asked me at 8 years old what I’d be doing in 2010, I was sure to have described something like an episode of the Jetsons.

That’s what they thought back in 1968 when the built 510 W. Belmont, a high-rise building in Lakeview. The owner got a below market-rate interest mortgage, meaning that even though interest on the mortgage would be probably around 7 percent, he only paid 1%. The government made up the difference, with the agreement that the building would be “affordable housing” – below market rate rent for 40 years.

40 years sounded like a long time when they made the agreement. And it is a long time, except that now it is 2010, and not only do we not have space suits and hovercrafts, we haven’t created a blissful utopia where everyone lives in a safe neighborhood, regardless of their income.

The contract that kept 510 W. Belmont affordable expired last Thursday (read my entire story in this week’s edition of Skyline). And because the program that made it so was obscure, short-lived and never fully replaced, it expired for good. Now, the 277 families that live in the building have an uncertain future. Rent increases?  Condo conversion? They’re hearing rumors, and none of them are good.

Forty years seemed like a good idea at the time. But now it seems We the People have invested millions of dollars in a building that may very well be turned into luxury units with granite countertops and whirlpool tubs for yuppies that already dominate the neighborhood. It won’t happen tomorrow – the market’s too poor for that. But we can’t guarantee the future either.

Now, we may be headed down that path again. Although it’s been shelved for now, the Department of Housing and Urban Development moved to privatize public housing earlier this spring. The plan would have given private businesses the contract to run public housing, taking it off the government’s hands, for 30 years. What happens after 30 years? Well, who knows… But 2040 is light  years away, right?

If we’re going to make a big public investment – like building thousands of apartments or paying the interest on a multi-million dollar mortgage – those investments should last. Our public policy has become that of a skeezy car dealership – pay hundreds to lease a car for a couple of years and in the end, all you get is diddly-squat.

Citizens of Chicago, we’ve been burned with privatization before. Lets make this our motto: public investments should be controlled by the public interest, not by a profit-hungry corporation. Let’s stop leasing our city car and realize that decent housing for all isn’t a need that’s going to go away, in 2040 or beyond.

Photo by Kevin Collins

The American social safety net is an all-or-nothing kind of deal. It’s not a safety net designed to help you move up. It’s one that’s nearly guaranteed to keep you dependent.

One reason? The social safety net encourages asset poverty. Asset poverty is different from income poverty – not having enough coming in. Asset poverty is when families can’t get access to wealth when their income gets cut off – assets like investments, savings accounts, 401ks, home equity, insurance policies, etc.

When you’re asset poor, it just takes one or two wrong turns to end up income poor. Getting injured at work, getting laid off, a huge car repair or medical expense.

But if you’re income poor, the social safety net we have – welfare, medicaid, wic – requires you to be asset poor. If you have too much in the bank, you’re not qualified, even if you don’t have a financial stream coming in.

Now, that makes sense on the surface. After all, we don’t want millionaires with lots of cash in the bank in the welfare line, right?

The problem is, we create a system where people can’t be their own safety net. Maybe they need food stamps or welfare for a few months, but they can only get it if they spend down their savings to the point where, if they are cut off for any reason, they’ll flounder. It makes families dependent on state aid and unable to move forward.

We’re beginning to see the paradox, though. There’s a few new tools being used to fight poverty, and they’re the old fashioned kind: saving and budgeting.

WBEZ’s Natalie Moore chronicled the efforts of mothers in Lawndale trying to get a handle on their finances. They’re taking a financial literacy course at the Lawndale League of Extraordinary Women, learning about budgeting, saving and the importance of creating your own safety net.

“When you actually sit down and write down what you’re spending every week, it will blow your mind because it blew my mind,” said Lynn Morton, a peer trainer for the LLEW.

She emphasized that every little bit counts – even a quarter given to a child to run to the corner store is worth documenting.

Another tool for fighting poverty is also emerging, and that’s a special savings account called an Individual Development Account.

The concept of an IDA is simple – a person sets goals and saves to achieve them. Maybe it’s buying a home or starting a business, going back to college or getting a promotion. They get special help working toward those goals – help filling out financial aid forms or figuring out a budget. Then, most importantly, every dollar they save goes into a special account that’s matched or sometimes even doubled or tripled by the organization. A single mom hoping to buy a house puts in $25 at the end of the month, and her IDA puts in $75.

At the end of the program, people reach their goals and climb out of poverty. They don’t just have money – they have skills, and the confidence that they can reach their goals.

The LA Times chronicled the journey of Dametria Williams, a single mom and health care worker who made $14,000 a year. She wanted to start her own business, but that seemed impossible.

“I used to walk through the world thinking there is never enough,” Williams said. “There is not enough money, there is not enough food, there is not enough time.

“When you are in the mind-set of thinking there is not enough, you aren’t even looking for help. But when you realize that there is enough — that money is a manageable tool — you start to see what help is available to you.”

Williams got an IDA and was able to save enough for her daughter to go to a tutoring program and eventually start her own business.

Individual Development Accounts are available in every state, but they’re hard to find, hidden behind more traditional forms of assistance. The Chicago Housing Authority offers a program like an IDA for public housing residents, called the Family Self Sufficiency Program.

Everyday, I hear complaints that the poor are dependent on the system, lazy and unmotivated. Many families are dependent, but not because they want to be. If we want to end poverty, we’ve got to start championing and supporting policies that work, not just keep people slaves to the system.

Photo by D Sharon Pruitt

Maybe you didn’t need research to tell you this fact about America: if you’re born poor, you’re likely to stay that way.

New research out of the Urban Institute confirms it. But what it also reveals is a very different future path for white children that are born poor, compared with black children.

The data comes from Caroline Ratcliffe and Signe-Mary McKernan, who used a longitudinal study that documented kids from 1968 to 2005, taking note of family income levels throughout childhood and into adulthood.What they found illustrates the huge gulf between being born white and being born black in this country.

If you’re born poor and white, there’s a 31 percent chance you will be poor as an adult. Not great, for sure. A third of all poor white children end up being poor white adults, while the other two thirds seem to escape.

And for black children? It’s the reverse. Over two-thirds of black children – 69 percent – are born poor and end up being poor adults.

Black children, the study shows, are 2.5 times more likely than white children to ever be poor. They’re seven times more likely to spend more than half of their childhood years in poverty. And the longer a kid spends in poverty, the worse their adult lives are going to be. High school drop out rates, adult poverty rates, unsteady employment, and teen nonmarital births go up with the number of years a kid spends in poverty. That means a new generation of black children, born into the same circumstances their parents could not escape.

The difference between being born black and being born white in America could not be more stark. And, yet, I feel most of us have stopped caring. We’ve created justifications for why this is so, and those justifications let us off the hook.

I can’t help but think of John Rawls’s  idea of the veil of ignorance - the idea that society’s roles were completely redistributed, and you had no idea which side you would end up on. You have no idea whether you or your child will be born white or black, able to escape the grip of poverty or consistently pulled down by it. As Rawls said, “no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status; nor does he know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence and strength, and the like.”

That’s the only way to consider the morality of an issue, says Rawls. Until you consider that something had an equally likely chance of happening to you as to someone else, we can’t really fairly consider how we’ve set things up.

Our justifications don’t work under the veil of ignorance because any of the arguments we’ve set up for ourselves – that groups in society are lazy, uneducated, unintelligent, or just don’t want to succeed – are moot. You’re talking about yourself now, so you better hold your tongue.

Imagine your child was growing up in a society today where they had only a one-third chance of making it.

Now, let’s change the way we think, talk and what we’re doing about child poverty.

Image via Wikipedia

You may think you’ve seen it all, but you really haven’t until you’ve seen this horrid “investigative” report by Chicago’s Fox affiliate, covering the all-important question of the day: Do we need libraries?

The “report” swerves between overwhelmingly terrible and hilarious. At one point, they use an “undercover” camera to spy on local people at Chicago’s Harold Washington Library. A local anti-tax spokeperson says we have the internet and paperbacks, so why do we need libraries?

Because not everyone has the internet, you fools, or even a computer. Those things cost money, and not everyone has it these days. Why are library attendance and borrowing rates on the rise? Because people need those things and they don’t have the cash to get them.

Forty percent of Chicagoans have little or no access to the internet, and 25 percent have no access at all. For these people, libraries are one of the only places that they can use the internet for free. As more and more services move online, the internet is becoming a vital resource. Want to get an apartment? These days, craigslist is the only place to look. Paying a bill or checking your bank account? Searching for a job? Need to apply for food stamps? You need the internet.

In addition, community libraries are a safe place where kids and families can go, something that’s not easy to find in many communities. Altgeld Gardens, a low-income public housing development on the far South Side, is still struggling without a library.

With the city, state and the federal government strapped for cash, I suppose everything’s on the table when it comes to cutting funding. But libraries? Really, Fox news? Those of us who have regular internet access forget that many, many people don’t and libraries are their only lifeline in an increasingly digital world.

The Reader’s Whet Moser said it best:

Did you know that they cost money that could be used for other things? Did you know there’s the Internet? And paperbacks?

Did you know that if you were at the Harold Washington Library the other day that someone at Fox News may have been filming you with a hidden camera to figure out if people are USING THE LIBRARY?

Did you know we’re doomed?

Photo courtesy of National People's Action

It’s no secret that foreclosure is a problem in Chicago. Most every street is dotted with at least one or two boarded up homes or buildings, victims of a housing crisis that’s hit every corner of the city.

But who owns those foreclosed homes? National People’s Action set out to find out and just released a report with the results. Bank of America, they say, owns one of every five new foreclosure filings in the city.

Not surprising, really, since they’re also the largest bank in the United States. But with the millions of foreclosed homes they now own, they might just be America’s largest landlord. Some might even say America’s largest slumlord, considering the damage foreclosures inflict on their surrounding communities.

NPA alleges that Bank of America isn’t doing enough to mitigate the foreclosure crisis. The group says over 1 million of the foreclosures that Bank of America owns could be modified through the government’s much maligned Home Affordable Modification Program, but only 5.8 percent of those homeowners have been offered a loan modification.

HAMP may have failed because there wasn’t any accountability for banks (which is almost laughable, considering that’s the root of most of our problems these days) and the new federal program is supposed to be better.

But it’s clear – this foreclosure crisis isn’t going to go away anytime soon. We need banks, community members, city officials, and those affected on their feet, ready to stabilize communities and hold each other accountable.

Until then, we’ll be seeing more boarded up windows, or as NPA put it, “Another Foreclosure Brought to You By Bank of America.”