Buffalo News Special-Children of Poverty

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Fight against poverty focuses on the youngest
Literacy experts believe joint initiative will more effectively lift kids out of poverty
By Charity Vogel and Peter Simon
NEWS STAFF REPORTERS

The seven children are riveted. Sitting on brightly colored mats inside a Wyoming Avenue day care center, they watch with absorption as a woman holds up a picture book.

In unison, the children repeat the author’s name. They buzz loudly to show the noise bees make and moo like cows. Then, they try a few more difficult concepts.

“What’s this?” asks Cynthia M. Russell, director of Cyn’s Heavenly Angels. She is holding up the book, pointing to a punctuation mark.

“An exclamation point!” shouts Marcel Huggins, 3, bouncing up to his knees.

“That’s right!” says Russell. “Exclamation point!”

The day care scene is a microcosm of what’s happening in some places in the City of Buffalo, as educators and community leaders search for new and effective ways to fight child poverty here.

Right now, these efforts focus on education — specifically, on literacy skills.

And increasingly, they focus on pupils in the earliest grades or — better yet — on youngsters not yet in school.

Because poor children often have little exposure to books or literacy- rich environments — because their parents might have had little education themselves — many are already far below grade level when they arrive at school and are unlikely to ever catch up.

“You have to begin no later than age 3,” said Claity Massey, director of Buffalo’s King Center Charter School. “Early intervention is basically essential. Otherwise they come to school not ready.”

The stakes are high.

The ABCs of success

Children who know the alphabet entering kindergarten are three times more likely to read by the end of first grade than youngsters who don’t know their ABCs, said Betty Evans, Buffalo’s director of early childhood education.

And children who can’t read by the end of first grade, she said, have just a one-in-eight chance of ever working at grade level.

Several high-profile initiatives in Buffalo are built around that sense of urgency:

• The King Center Charter School, which begins formal instruction in kindergarten, works with younger children in their homes in an “early admissions” program so they are prepared for school when they turn 5.

• A promising “Read to Succeed” initiative, which captured a $4.1 million federal grant last year, includes literacy efforts that work with children as young as 6 months old.








• Initial improvements in the Buffalo Public Schools have focused on the early grades, where many youngsters have smaller classes and more instructional time than ever before, and more children are in full-day prekindergarten.

Those efforts and others show clear signs of success.

But they are just the beginning steps in a city where nearly 43 percent of children live in poverty and the four-year high school graduation rate is just 46 percent.

“I’d say we’re at the 50-yard line and it’s first down,” said Robert M. Bennett, chancellor of the state Board of Regents. “Five years ago we were only on the 20. But we’re not where we need to be.”

What’s new is the growing realization among Buffalo’s educators, community leaders and activists that fresh approaches to the problem are needed.

That’s why members of organizations all over the city — Good Schools for All, the Buffalo Public Schools, literacy groups, the public library system and more — decided to work together to develop a single, comprehensive literacy initiative.

“When we started this campaign, we said: ‘We don’t want to do 10 times more of the same thing, which isn’t working,’ ” said Helene H. Kramer, executive director of Good Schools for All, which is spearheading the “Read to Succeed” effort. “We said: ‘We’re going to create new, collaborative models. And we’re going to create new centers of excellence.’ ”

Collaboration is rewarded

That approach was rewarded with a $4.1 million grant from the U. S. Department of Education, a $400,000 grant over three years from the Peter and Elizabeth C. Tower Foundation and a $133,000 three-year grant from the Josephine Goodyear Foundation.

Initial results of the early literacy program have been very good.

• Children enrolled at five participating Head Start programs showed marked increases in letter identification, vocabulary skills, and understanding and repeating spoken language.

• At a pilot program in seven day care centers, 85 percent of the children achieved acceptable scores in three key areas of language skills after one year. Just 45 percent achieved those levels before entering the program.

• Parents of children taking part in the programs reported that they are becoming more involved in building their literacy skills: 73 percent said they are reading with their children more; 86 percent said they were talking with their kids more.

“She plays with her books,” said Katy Knopper, mother of Leah, a 15- month-old girl. “I didn’t expect that. And I have the alphabet hanging above her changing table now — and I sing it to her while I’m changing her diapers.”

Bennett applauds those efforts but said early childhood programs will need more comprehensive, independent evaluations of their results to compete effectively for public and private funds in a troubled economy.

“By 2012, [the question will be] did it make it difference?” he said. “We don’t have good enough data to prove our case.”

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Empowering parents

Active parent involvement is also required when the King Center Charter School sends “home visitors” to work with preschool children and their families on literacy skills, even before the youngsters are formally enrolled in school.

“We’re empowering parents to be their children’s first teacher and their advocates in the schools,” said Lisa Alexander, coordinator of the home schooling effort.

It appears to be taking hold.

Last year, 75 percent of the King Center’s third-and fourth-graders who had received preschool instruction at home were proficient in English, compared with 52 percent of those who hadn’t taken part. And 100 percent of the youngsters who had participated were proficient in math, compared with 73 percent of the third-and fourth-graders who had not been in the early admission program.

In the Buffalo Public Schools, Superintendent James A. Williams’ reform efforts started largely in the early grades. A longer school day and school year were established at 16 elementary schools, and class sizes were reduced.

An estimated 85 percent of Buffalo’s 4-year-olds take part in full-day prekindergarten classes, and city school officials are trying to boost that figure to 100 percent.

“Prekindergarten is the most important grade level for any school district,” said Evans, the director of early childhood education. “It sets the foundation for each and every child to become a lifelong learner.”

The literacy effort is branching out beyond schools.

Circulation skyrocketing

At the East Delavan Library, a partner organization in the “Read to Succeed” initiative, circulation of books and computer use have both skyrocketed over the past year.

Month-over-month increases in circulated books from 2007 to 2008 range from 10 percent to 39 percent, said Jamie D. Smith, branch manager.

“That’s amazing. It really is,” said Smith. “It’s because we’re getting so many bodies in here — in unconventional ways, yes, but then once we have them in here we get them to pick up a book.”

Moreover, Buffalo’s efforts to change poverty by boosting literacy are now attracting national attention.

Recently, CBS news crews came to Buffalo to tape the “Early Reading First” program in action for an upcom - ing segment of a Katie Couric news broadcast, said Kramer, head of Good Schools for All.

And, she said, the national literacy conference known as “Literacy Powerline” will bring its 2009 assembly to Buffalo next June to get a closer view of what the city is doing.

“Buffalo is ahead of the curve on this,” Kramer said. “All the early indications are, it’s working — and it’s working very well.”

vogel@buffnews.com and psimon@buffnews.com


http://www.buffalonews.com/341/story/489283.html

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An unhealthy situation: Being poor and young
By Mark Sommer
News Staff Reporter

Mae Bynum of University Heights chose treating her grandson’s wounded leg over healing his troubled mind. She couldn’t afford insurance co-pays for both.

Samantha Martinez, on Buffalo’s West Side, had to go to Rochester to get medical care for her daughter so she could be fitted with a prosthetic eye. Specialists who could have treated her in Buffalo wouldn’t accept Medicaid.

Over on the East Side, Terrence Gaiter’s 4-month-old baby girl died the day after a brief examination by a resident in a hospital emergency room. She was diagnosed as being dehydrated, given an IV and sent home.

Laini died the next day from endocarditis, an infection that attacked her heart; Gaither said his pediatrician told him she might have responded to treatment with an antibiotic if administered early enough.

Stories like these illustrate “a two-tier system” of health care, says Dr. Raul Vazquez, in which children of poverty and those near the poverty line are often treated unfavorably.

Unequal access to medical care strongly affects Buffalo, the nation’s second poorest big city, where nearly 43 percent of children — mostly black and Hispanic — are poor.

But it’s also a problem for all of Western New York, where 24,800 kids are uninsured, 92,585 receive Medicaid and 23,304 get state-subsidized Child Health Plus, according to the state Department of Health.

The problem of access is increasingly affecting the middle class, especially those whose incomes leave them underinsured. But it lands particularly hard on poor children, medical professionals say, because of their susceptibility to such chronic health maladies as asthma, diabetes, obesity, poor dental health, trauma, behavioral disorders, sexually transmitted diseases and exposure to lead paint.

“Health care for children in Buffalo is horrible, and it’s getting worse,” said Vazquez, a family doctor.

“The system is so overwhelmed. There are so many kids in a terrible situation,” said Heather Gennuso, director of St. Francis Cottage, a residential treatment facility for teenage girls administered by Baker Victory Services in Lackawanna.

The girls she sees have been traumatized by physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, exposure to violence, removal from their homes and failed adoptions.

“Every time I think I’ve seen the worst of the worst, something else comes along,” Gennuso said.

Gaining access to quality health care for the poor may be challenging, but some people say it’s there for those who seek it.

Conchetta Rigoli, a mother of two in South Buffalo, hasn’t had difficulty getting medical services through Medicaid for 4-year-old Evan, who has severe congestion and acid reflux problems.

“My son has been to the doctor at least 100 times since he was born and seen about four specialists, and I’ve never been billed,” Rigoli said.

Some doctors refuse to accept Medicaid, or Medicaid managed care, because those reimbursement rates are substantially lower than what private insurance companies pay.

“Given the current structure of Medicaid reimbursement, it is virtually impossible for someone with Medicaid to be seen by a private physician,” said Dr. Peter Winkelstein, chief of general pediatrics at Women and Children’s Hospital.

It’s even harder for someone without medical insurance.

Denied personal physicians, families often wind up in hospital emergency rooms for routine care. A 2007 survey found Western New York children used costly emergency room services at more than double the statewide rate.

Medical professionals say there are other barriers the poor face in getting medical care.

There is a lack of understanding about the importance of preventive care, such as regular doctor and dentist visits. Reasons include lack of education, cultural differences and language barriers.

Public transportation and work schedules often don’t coincide with doctor’s office hours, and more than 30 percent of Buffalo residents are without a car.

Transiency is another factor. Fifty percent of Buffalo residents have moved in the past five years. And neglect also can be a factor, because some parents do not make medical care for their children a priority.

Bad home environment

The state Department of Health doesn’t track chronic illnesses by income, but several studies identify glaring health issues afflicting poor children in Western New York.

A January 2007 report by the Harvard School of Public Health singled out Buffalo and Niagara Falls as being among the dozen worst home environments for black and Latino children.

The report found:

• Many babies begin life with low birth weight and preterm.

• They grow up in largely segregated neighborhoods, accompanied by poverty and a concentration of social ills. The 2000 U. S. Census placed Buffalo eighth on the list of most residentially segregated cities in the nation.

• The disparities in opportunities, including medical care, have “devastating consequences.”

A February 2008 report prepared for the Community Health Foundation of Western & Central New York highlighted several chronic diseases among children in poverty rising “at an alarming rate.”

“Asthma, diabetes and obesity are taking their toll, not only physically, but on the child’s capacity to learn and participate in important developmental activities,” the report said.

It found the number of local health providers willing and able to serve low-income populations, without regard to insurance status, was “limited and in some parts of the region, non-existent . . . People continue to seek routine and acute care through emergency rooms at record numbers.”

“The health care system, designed for the middle class, makes little accommodation for families from low-income or ethnic communities,” the report said.

Now there is yet another reason to be worried about poverty and its effects on children — brain damage.

The latest research on the subject was introduced in February at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It suggests that experiencing poverty at an early age can produce unhealthy levels of stress in children, leading to impaired language development and memory.

The stress children in poverty live with contributes to behavioral problems, said Nathan Hare, who heads the Community Action Organization of Erie County.

“If the child is in an environment where a lot of disorder or disruptive behavior is going on, he or she learns how to process new information through a false lens,” Hare said. “It’s as if you had dark yellow glasses on all the time.

“After a while, you would think that is normal, especially if it is happening at the earliest time of your life.”

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Blame put on parents

Last year, the State Legislature expanded state-subsidized Child Health Plus, allowing eligibility for 400,000 children not previously covered. It also simplified Medicaid enrollment, making it easier for those eligible to sign up.

Some people with limited financial means say they are satisfied with the medical services available to them.

“I’m at the poverty level, but there are enough services that there shouldn’t be any children in the inner city going without health care,” said Chanyl White, a mother of two who works full time. “The health care and resources are there.”

White puts the blame on the behavior of some parents.

“I have come upon people who do not keep their children’s regular appointments. It’s just neglect. In the inner city, [some people’s] focus isn’t even on the children,” said White, who lives on the East Side.

“I see kids in the early morning going to the corner store and getting their food for the day. Or kids who are outside until late on school nights.”

Women and Children’s Hospital last year served nearly 10,000 people on Medicaid, many of them poor children, at its hospital and two outpatient clinics.

The health centers fill a huge need for people with limited access to private doctors, said Winkelstein, the chief of general pediatrics.

Yet the federally supported Community Health Center of Buffalo, on the campus of Erie County Medical Center, is underused despite being located in a poor community. Set up to help the poor, it offers numerous services under one roof, from family doctors and pediatricians to psychologists and social workers.

“The frustration is that we have to do more outreach and educate the community about what primary care really is,” said LaVonne Ansari, the executive director. “Understanding the importance of health, and how to get the services you need is not as prevalent as people might think.”

Dr. Okoje Osehotua of the Community Health Center is also frustrated.

“Asthma prevalence in this region is very high, but we’re not seeing as many asthmatic kids. Why? Are a lot of them sitting in emergency rooms unnecessarily?”

‘Blindsided’ by bill

Allison Duwe realized how expensive a hospital stay can be after giving birth to Elijah.

Duwe, whose insurance through work covers only herself, was led to believe her only hospital expense would be a $500 co-pay. She felt “blind-sided” after being hit with a $1,200 hospital bill and $230 pediatrician charge.

“We are still trying to figure out how to pay those bills while trying to get coverage for the baby,” Duwe said. “My husband and I are struggling to navigate the system, and both of us consider ourselves to be pretty well-educated individuals.”

Duwe, executive director of the Coalition for Economic Justice, figured her work on health care issues gave her an advantage working around the health care system.

“Instead, I fell into the same difficulties and frustrations that confront so many of us these days,” Duwe said.

People like Mae Bynum, who works a full-time job earning minimum wage while raising grandson Jazz, 16, along with her son.

Jazz was shot in the leg last year, and Medicaid has covered most of his medical care. But Bynum has trouble paying the minimum $40 copay, which forced her to put a halt to nurse home visits to change the dressing on his wound.

She also, reluctantly, had to forego counseling for the teen, despite believing he needed it to learn “how to cope with society.”

“I prioritize about what’s most important, and that is the physical therapy. I don’t want him to be disabled. It’s impossible for me to pay these co-pays, and pay my bills,” Bynum said.

A state Department of Health study earlier this decade found Buffalo and Niagara Falls had the highest concentrations of elevated levels of lead outside New York City due to old houses.

Veronica Pruitt has painfully dealt with lead poisoning — her two children, Be’Shawn Evans, 16, and Amorette Pruitt-Sanders, 12, both were poisoned, she said, while living in an East Side house with exposed lead paint.

Be’Shawn “stays above water” in school, suggesting he doesn’t show obvious signs of lead poisoning, Pruitt said. He also suffers from bad bouts of asthma and migraine headaches.

Amorette “learns a little slower than other kids,” Pruitt said.

Samantha Martinez, a single mother of four, is frustrated by the limitations Medicaid places on medical care.

There was that trip to Rochester so her daughter, Gabriel Malbonado, 13, with severe cerebral palsy, could get a prosthetic eye after specialists in Buffalo would not take Medicaid.

There’s the prescription coverage that forces Gabriel to take a drug other than the one that has been effective in halting her chronic runny nose.

Martinez also tried for years to get insurance to pay for an expensive, adjustable bed with guard rails to protect Gabriel, who also has scoliosis.

“I get mad, but what can I do?”

msommer@buffnews.com


http://www.buffalonews.com/341/story/338458.html

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A person wanting supervision
By Mark Sommer / NEWS STAFF REPORTER

When Janelly Alvarado was 15, she stopped going to school. She stayed out late. Sometimes, she didn’t come home at all. A year later, Janelly is taking advanced algebra at Grover Cleveland High School. She’s home each day at a reasonable hour. And she is eager to start working and begin saving for college.

Janelly credits her turnaround to the support she received from the Family Court-ordered PINS (Persons in Need of Supervision) program, administered through Hispanics United of Buffalo’s Youth Court Advocacy Program.

She is one of 94 teens who, through Oct. 1, have been helped this year. All 94 – every single one, including Janelly – live in singleparent homes.

The absence of fathers leaves many low-income children in Buffalo without male role models.

“A lot [of fathers] are in prison, a lot are just jumping from woman to woman.” said Pedro Velez-Lopez, a Youth Court advocate with Hispanics United. “The women become pregnant, and they leave them and move on to the next one.

“When I see Janelly, I give her a high-five, tell her congratulations, maybe give her a hug. I know the mother cares about her, but I don’t think she gets that from a male father figure.

“I’ll tell these kids, ‘I’m proud of you for doing that’ – and they’ll say, ‘I’ve never been told that.’ ”

Janelly says the caring and encouragement have given her more confidence.

“I was always thinking negative, and they got me to think positive. All I was thinking was, ‘I can’t do it, even if I try I won’t be able to do it.’ And they started putting it in my head [that] whenever you really want something, you could really do it.”

Other kids she knows suffer from poor self-images.

“They’re always thinking negative about themselves. Some have problems at home, some at school, some in the streets,” Janelly said.

Velez-Lopez sees those problems manifest themselves in his program.

“Unfortunately, I have more who [return to their old ways] than those who are successful,” Velez-Lopez said. “Some kids really want help, but they just don’t know any better, because they were never taught any better.”

Janelly also struggled. She moved to the Lower West Side from her native Puerto Rico five years ago not knowing English. She lives with her mother, who still can’t speak English, an older sister and a younger brother.

Her father returned to Puerto Rico three years ago. With the family on welfare until recently, money was in short supply. Arguing between Janelly and her mother intensified, and her behavior worsened.

It’s hard, she said, not having both parents.

“It’s difficult for the mom and for the kids,” Janelly said.

She struggled at Hutchinson- Central Technical High School, which doesn’t offer bilingual classes. Her problems continued at Grover Cleveland.

Playing hookey eventually put Janelly in a juvenile detention center for four days. Then, after counseling and other programs, she was brought into the PINS program.

“First I was thinking I was going to go for one day, and that would be it,” she said.

But to her surprise, Janelly liked it from the start, especially the encouragement she received and the job-seeking skills she learned from the job-readiness program.

“This is a great place to be,” she said.

An older sister, Daisy Alvarado, has noticed a difference in Janelly.

“She will be [home] on time, early, like 8 or 9 o’clock. Her attitude is much better. Sometimes she stays home with my mom. They talk more now,” Alvarado said.

Velez-Lopez has nothing but praise for Janelly.

“It’s kids like her that make all the difference in what we do here. She’s shown the most improvement in the shortest amount of time. “We’re very, very proud of her.”

msommer@buffnews.com


http://www.buffalonews.com/341/story/194685.html

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Program offers the gift of literacy for Buffalo’s babies
Free copies of ‘Goodnight Moon’ give at-risk infants an early start on learning
By Charity Vogel
NEWS STAFF REPORTER

For some families, it’s a rite of childhood as familiar as the comb, brush and bowl full of mush it so lovingly describes.

For other families, it’s foreign — and slightly intimidating — territory.

Margaret Wise Brown’s 1947 children’s classic “Goodnight Moon” can be all of those things to different people.

Now, a fledgling program in Western New York aims to put “ Goodnight Moon” into the hands of every new mom who gives birth to a baby in area hospitals — and plenty of dads, too.

Along with the free book, new parents get simple lessons in a casual workshop setting on how to read to their babies starting from the very earliest ages — and information as to why they should make the effort.

“Your child will love books,” instructor Mary Beth Cunningham said to a roomful of new moms and dads in Women and Children’s Hospital last week. “Your child will have a bigger vocabulary — several thousand words, versus several hundred for a baby that’s not read to.

“It’s a big job for moms and dads.”

In nearly three years, the program has given away 4,372 copies of the famous little green, blue and orange book with the simple illustrations and the mesmerizing rhyme scheme: “Goodnight stars, goodnight air, goodnight noises everywhere.”

The “Goodnight Moon” initiative is part of “Ready, Set, Parent!,” a collaborative program founded by EPIC, the National Center for Parenting & Character Education, and Baker Victory Services.

The program began at Women and Children’s Hospital and now takes place in all four area childbirth hospitals, including Sisters, Mercy and Millard Fillmore Suburban.

In Western New York, the newborn literacy component fits into what has become a broad-based, communitywide effort to boost literacy in Buffalo- area children in the earliest stages of life, as a way to combat high poverty rates among city children.

In Buffalo today, one in three adults live in poverty, along with nearly 43 percent of the city’s children.

Other programs in the region right now focus on children in the prekindergarten age range, ages 3 to 5, and some pilot programs have begun working in day care settings among children as young as 6 months old.

The goal of EPIC and Baker Victory was to get to children even earlier on the growth curve — before they even leave the hospital as newborns.

“When we first started this, we saw it as a way to close the gap,” said Vito J. Borrello, president of EPIC. “But the side benefit is, every family needs this.”

In one of the training sessions, held in Children’s last week, Cunningham, the instructor, cheerily worked to drum up interest among the nearly 20 new parents packed into a small meeting room in a childbirth wing.

“Do you guys know “Goodnight Moon’?” she asked the moms and dads, many of whom cradled sleeping infants to their chests.

A hand or two went up. Some parents shook their heads. Others smiled or shrugged.

“Babies love this book,” said Cunningham, plunging ahead. “There’s a mouse that moves around. Babies love to find the mouse.”

At Good Schools for All, the group spearheading Buffalo’s “Read to Succeed” effort — which is showing promising early results in boosting literacy levels among poor city children — leaders applauded the infant-literacy program.

“This program certainly reaches them as early as you can possibly reach them,” said Helene H. Kramer, executive director of Good Schools for All. “The earlier parents know that reading is something you can start early in life, the better. You don’t have to wait for school. This starts when they’re born — or even before. A baby knows when they’re being held and cuddled. It begins to equate reading to pleasure. That’s enormous.”

The “Ready, Set, Parent!” program costs $500,000 each year to run, money that comes in the form of grants and insurance reimbursements, said Borrello, the EPIC president.

He said he considers that money well spent, given the number of new parents it allows the program to reach.

“If you were to reach out to these thousands of families in the community, you’d spend exponentially more than that,” Borrello said. “This is the one time when literacy, early learning and wellness converge. We have the ability to impact all of those things.”

In the Buffalo-area hospitals, parents are given a “special edition” of Brown’s classic hardback. The book comes in a customized dust jacket — designed by Melissa Leopard, a graduate student, a few years ago — which contains literacy facts, resource guides and an application for a library card through the Buffalo & Erie County system.

“Why not give them a piece of good literature?” asked Cunningham, who has a master’s degree in education and who drew up the initial curriculum for the literacy training several years ago.

“A lot of our parents can’t read themselves,” she said. “But I tell them, you don’t have to be able to read well. Just talk about the pictures.”

In the class in the hospital, Cunningham talks to parents about where they can get books for their children at little or no cost: through the library or in other inexpensive places.

“You need books? I’ve found a good way to get them is at Goodwill and the Salvation Army,” she told the moms and dads during a recent class. “They’re like a dime. Garage sales, people will give you a box for a buck.”

One new mother, Megan, a 19-year-old who lives off Clinton Street on the East Side and had just given birth to a girl named Kaela, came up to Cunningham after the class to tell her that she planned to take the lessons to heart. She said she had never heard of “Goodnight Moon” but would read the book to her infant.

“I’ve been talking to her,” she said of her baby. “I used to let her listen to music when I was pregnant. She’s made me turn my whole life around, already.”

The “Goodnight Moon” books are given out in 2,500 class sessions each year, to all parents who attend, EPIC organizers said.

In addition, specialists — Cunningham at Children’s, plus others at the three other hospitals — make a total of 7,000 in-room visits with new parents each year, to stress the same lessons.

Soon, EPIC organizers said, the “Ready, Set, Parent!” program will be extended into Niagara County.

The program is designed to link to, and lead into, a series of eight workshops that EPIC and Baker Victory Services offer new parents once they are out in the community.

“As far as we know, there is no other place in the country that offers this just the way EPIC does . . . where it’s comprehensive, from the classes to the community care, the whole package,” said Liese Ness, program director for EPIC.

cvogel@buffnews.com


http://www.buffalonews.com/341/story/516744.html

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Belle Center perseveres despite neighborhood turmoil
Overcoming adversity, programs help youth to seek high goals
By Aaron Besecker
News Staff Reporter

Jaleel Younger, a freshman at Hutchinson-Central Technical High School, goes to the Father Belle Community Center on a daily basis.

The 14-year-old started doing that nearly three years ago, volunteering to help teach 9-and 10-year-olds at a summer camp.

He liked it so much, and saw himself as being able to work well with children, that he began helping with an after-school program.

“It’s cool to be around positive influences,” Younger said.

For Younger, and many other young people, the Belle Center at Maryland Street and Busti Avenue is helping them set their sights high.

Younger feels safe here, close to his home on the near West Side, despite what some of those looking in from the outside may think.

For the Belle Center, a fatal September shooting a stone’s throw from its doors wasn’t the first time — or the last — it faced adversity.

Three days after 19-year-old Omar Fraticelli-Lugo was killed Sept. 15, Carlos Minguela, a 19-year-old from the Town of Tonawanda, was shot in the foot and hand by a group of youths on bicycles right in front of the center.

There also was the time about a year ago when vandals broke into vans parked outside the building overnight. The thieves stole the vehicles’ inspection stickers.

In April, vandals hit the center, breaking windows and toys, as well as scribbling graffiti on the building.

But Nestor Hernandez, the center’s executive director, has experience in dealing with tough times.

Hernandez, 35, enlisted in the Army Reserve in 2000. His service took him to Iraq from December 2002 to February 2004 as a member of the 402nd Civil Affairs Battalion working with the British military helping to rebuild infrastructure and provide humanitarian aid.

Hernandez said he came back from the war zone with perspective.

“There’s a lot of work that needs to be done in our own backyard,” he said.

One of the main components of the Belle Center is the AmeriCorps program, which started its second year here at the beginning of October.

The results of the AmeriCorps volunteers’ work can be found not just in the blocks surrounding the Belle Center, but also on streets across the city.

The program coordinates with the city’s quality-of-life complaint hotline. That means volunteers will clean out abandoned lots, take down graffiti and perform other community service tasks.

In the winter, their activities include shoveling snow from the driveways and sidewalks of senior citizens.

That’s all in addition to the after-school tutoring they offer, as well as the summer camp the AmeriCorps members help run for 150 young people.

“These young adults can make a positive difference, ” Hernandez said.

There are 44 volunteers in the program, known as Buffalo LeaderShape AmeriCorps. They’re all between ages 17 and 24.

Mike Barnes, an AmeriCorps volunteer who lives on the East Side, performs a lot of the small maintenance and repair work at the Belle Center.

Barnes, 21, brings a can-do attitude with him to the center.

“A lot of people say they help,” he said. “This actually is a go-to, get-it-done place.”

AmeriCorps volunteers do more than the cleanups, fix-its and manual tasks.

Just ask 23-year-old Bruce Smith of Buffalo, who is designing and painting the Holy Cross Youth Center across the street from the Belle Center.

Smith is turning the youth center’s walls into a collage of smiling faces, a sprawling family tree and a crisp blue sky coated with puffy white clouds.

In addition to AmeriCorps, the Belle Center is home to several other programs aimed at giving city youth a chance to succeed.

Lenny M. Dowell is the director of the Youth Empowerment Program, which is run at the Belle Center with pupils from School 3.

The program, known as YEP, has been working with 35 young people since they were in fifth and sixth grades, providing guidance in academics, health and wellness, career planning and cultural diversity.

Funded through a $249,000 federal grant received by D’Youville College from the Office of Mental Health in 2006, the program is in its last year.

Program officials have stayed each year with the same set of pupils, who are now in seventh and eighth grades, Dowell said.

Daliana Rosado, a YEP prevention specialist in the first year of a master’s in education program at D’Youville, said many of the children in the program are labeled “at risk,” but most just have behavior problems and are overloaded with responsibility at home.

“They feel comfortable and safe here, and they know it makes a difference for them,” said Rosado, who graduated from Grover Cleveland High School.

And despite the difficulties they face growing up, these young people want the help given at the Belle Center.

“If you commit to them,” Rosado said, “they’ll be here.”

In addition to AmeriCorps and YEP, the Belle Center has a senior program, and adult education run by Buffalo city schools.

Evelyn Pizarro, former principal at School 3, coordinates a program for sixth-through 12th-graders aimed at teaching them practical life skills.

Funded by a $250,000, five-year 21st Century Learning Center grant, the program is broken up into eight-week units offering instruction ranging from computer skills through basic home repairs to cooking classes and handling basic home finances.

The program, which began teaching 150 students from Grover Cleveland and School 3 on Oct. 20, works thanks to a partnership with the city school district, Pizarro said.

Despite the pieces already in place, Belle Center officials say they’re still not finished adding programs.

The center has been trying to establish a day care center since the YWCA of Western New York shut down its day care last year.

While the search for funding continues, the faces of the young people working to make a difference in the city keep Belle Center officials going.

Michael A. Rivera, who’s been president of the center’s board of directors for more than 20 years, called the Belle Center “the best kept secret in the City of Buffalo.”

abesecker@buffnews.com


http://www.buffalonews.com/341/story/504197.html

[samanthajane13]

Charity Vogel: Poverty shrinks life’s choices
Charity Vogel

Rose Cannon goes to the supermarket on her $14. But she doesn’t get far.

“I get a gallon of milk, a loaf of bread and some eggs,” she said. “That’s it. Nothing. You get nothing for $14.”

If you’ve looked at a grocery shelf lately, you know that’s true. Prices seem to increase weekly, even on basics like bread and milk. The cart full of stuff that used to cost $100 now costs — well, maybe it’s better not to dwell on that.

That’s the impact you’re feeling.

Now imagine for a minute what it’s like to deal with those prices when you’re poor.

Cannon knows all too well. She’s 54, hampered by poor health, and past her working days due to a stroke she suffered in 1991 and a back injury that led to painful arthritis.

Now, Cannon finds herself dwelling in a strange country called poverty.

In Buffalo, that makes her one of multitudes. Nearly one in three adults in the city is poor; almost 43 percent of children live in poor homes. It’s one of our most debilitating problems, and the most intractable.

Cannon knows all that, but it doesn’t make her daily life any easier.

Take her food stamps: $14 worth.

That’s her monthly allotment from the county. The reason she gets so little is because she owns a few things the government deems not mandatory for someone in her situation. Like a dog and cat, cable TV and the older Chevy Impala she drives.

Cannon, a longtime community volunteer who ran for Common Council in 1999, receives $660 a month in disability income. That, combined with the money her learning-disabled daughter, Rose, gets, goes to cover the mortgage on their Lovejoy home, utilities, debt payments, gas, the car and insurance, food and incidentals.

But Cannon pays a price for her choices.

When she petitioned for more food assistance, a state hearing determined that the amount she gets is fair. Her choices on voluntary spending, the state ruled, shouldn’t factor in.

So it came down to this: The cat or the frozen chicken dinners. The TV or the yogurt. The car or the coffee.

These are the kinds of tough choices people living in poverty in our city grapple with every day. It’s not something that would enter the minds of most of us who aren’t poor — that by holding onto your car keys, you can’t eat roast beef this month.

The poor of our city are real people. They’re not symbols, and they’re not statistics. They live and breathe and manage their own checkbooks and schedules. They lead complicated lives, just like the rest of us; and they have both fine points and flaws.

Like it or not, they are individuals, making individual decisions.

Cannon’s made hers. As she enters the later phase of a life pocked by hardship, she doesn’t want to lose the few remaining things that make it livable. The pets she dotes on. The car she sees as a necessity, since she can’t walk far or fast.

“You have to survive,” said Cannon, her green eyes softening, “no matter what.”

I don’t know whether Cannon should get more than $14 in food stamps, although it seems a pitifully small sum.

But I do know that if we want to understand — and maybe solve — the problem of poverty in our city, we need to see clearly how the system works for those who live in it.

And so: Which would you choose? The cable or the cottage cheese?

Poverty strips a lot away from those who endure it. It’s hard to blame someone who wants to hang onto the final few shreds of what makes her a little bit like the rest of us, still.

cvogel@buffnews.com


http://www.buffalonews.com/341/story/489324.html

[samanthajane13]

Poverty line numbers don’t add up in 2008
By Charity Vogel
NEWS STAFF REPORTER

If a family of four in Buffalo has an income of less than $21,027 a year, that’s considered living below the poverty line.

Anything above that is considered getting by — even if barely.

But city officials — and experts at a national center on children and poverty — say such a number is much too low.

“It’s old. It’s antiquated,” said Deputy Mayor Donna M. Brown, the city’s anti-poverty leader. “I think poverty here might be a lot starker than we think.”

At the National Center for Children in Poverty at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, poverty experts have put together a “basic needs budget” that they say more accurately reflects what it costs to get by in Buffalo and in other U. S. cities in 2008.

For a family of four (two parents and two children) in Western New York, that “basic needs” number is $49,314 — more than double the current federal standard.

For a single-parent home with two kids, the center’s “basic needs” figure is $45,109.

The federal poverty line for that same family is just $16,705.

“The [federal] numbers are just too low,” said Dr. Nancy K. Cauthen, deputy director of the center, who testified before Congress in July 2007 about the issue.

Cauthen realizes a family living in Buffalo could get by on less than $49,000 — and that many do — but said that such a standard of living brings with it tough choices.

“A ‘basic needs budget’ says, this is what you need to get by in modern American society,” she said.

Here’s how the federal standard came to be:

In the 1960s, during the War on Poverty, federal officials divided a family’s income into various categories — food, for example, which made up approximately one-third of a household budget at that time — to formulate a federal poverty line.

According to research by the child poverty center, the 1960s federal poverty standard put poor families at about 50 percent of the nation’s median income.

Today, it equals a living standard at 29 percent of median income.

“If you are poor now, by the official standard, you are actually worse off related to the rest of Americans than if you were considered poor under the standard when it was created,” Cauthen said.

In 2008, a typical family budget looks much different than it did 40 years ago, she said.

For instance: Child care costs take up more room in a typical family budget, as do health care costs.

“When this measure was put together, in the ’60s, there were many families with stay-at-home moms,” said Cauthen.

The “basic needs budget” for Buffalo as tabulated by the center includes nine categories: rent and utilities, food, child care, health insurance, out-of-pocket medical, transportation, other day-to-day necessities, debt, payroll taxes and income taxes, including credits.

You can view the calculator online at the NCCP Web site: www.nccp.org/tools/frs/budget. php.

cvogel@buffnews.com


http://www.buffalonews.com/341/story/489287.html

[samanthajane13]

Looking for a blueprint to fight poverty in Buffalo
By Mark Sommer and Jonathan D. Epstein
News Staff Reporters

In Boston, affordable housing replaced blight after a neighborhood gained control of 30 acres to redevelop.

In Richmond, Va., after government money was directed at six poverty-stricken neighborhoods, crime went down 19 percent and home values increased 10 percent more than the city average.

In Dayton, Ohio, six public schools in distressed neighborhoods were transformed into community centers that now provide after-school recreation plus medical and social services.

These are examples of how some cities are experimenting with ways to stabilize poor neighborhoods and reverse decline.

Buffalo may have some success stories, but not many.

The fight against poverty in Buffalo — where nearly 30 percent of the population is officially classified as “poor” — is on hold, waiting for a comprehensive blueprint and sustained commitment to lift people, and the neighborhoods in which they live, into self-sufficiency.

Today, most local anti-poverty initiatives — those of the city and Erie County, of nonprofits and businesses — deal with the conditions of being poor: of not having enough food, not having a place to live, not being able to take care of one’s children.

L. Nathan Hare, executive director of the Community Action Organization, put it bluntly:

“We’re really just doing a holding pattern, keeping people from starving to death,” he said. “If we’re going to work on these issues that tend to breed and sustain poverty, we have to have a more cohesive process.”

A big-picture anti-poverty blueprint would take on the factors that lead to, exacerbate, and perpetuate poverty: insufficient or inadequate jobs, poor education, crime and lack of personal savings.

“The city needs to start saying, ‘This is what the city could look like, and this is why we would be better off if the least among us were pulled up,’ ” said Allison Duwe of the Partnership for the Public Good, a coalition of 40 organizations.

A blueprint to fight poverty also would provide a way for the community— particularly the business sector— to focus its resources for optimum benefit by tracking and measuring results, and seeing what works and what doesn’t.

“There are plenty of companies in the City of Buffalo that would love to help if they knew where and how to help,” said Harvey Garrett, a housing activist and executive director of the West Side Community Collaborative. “But without a master plan, you could be throwing money out.”

Here are the main issues anti-poverty experts say Buffalo must address:

Education and literacy

“Every child under the age of 5 must have access to quality early childhood education with high-quality programs and well-trained teachers,” said Clotilde Perez-Bode Dedecker, president of the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo.

Once the children get a good education, she said, “you have the strongest lever to pull to eradicate poverty.”

Marlies Wesolowski, executive director of the Lt. Col. Matt Urban Center and a former Buffalo School Board president, also advocates starting early.

Public schools should provide quality prekindergarten and enhanced after- school programs, she said, along with longer school days and longer school years. Music, art and language should be taught in primary grades, along with giving children hands-on experiences in science and math.

She also says the district needs to work harder to attract good teachers and to remove those that underperform. And she urges school unions to get on board or risk seeing more parents turn to charter schools or other alternatives.

Job training

At the federally funded Buffalo Employment and Training Center, clients learn computer skills, prepare to take GED tests and receive job training. But its budget was slashed 20 percent last year, continuing a downward trend.

On the other hand, the center ran a summer jobs program for youth ages 14 to 16. Director Colleen Cummings said 375 students received training in carpentry, culinary skills or media work.

“It’s the first time I recall the city really allocating a significant amount of money to summer jobs for youth,” she said.

With the right skills, Cummings said, well-paying jobs can be found in Buffalo in new industries like life sciences or advanced manufacturing, or in older, changing fields that require new skills.

Buffalo is positioned to be a leader in creating green jobs through a major expansion of weatherization programs, said Aaron Bartley, executive director of People United for Sustainable Housing.

“You can cut the amount of money poor and working-class people are paying for utilities by half, and train hundreds of post-high school youth and unemployed adults to be doing that work,” Bartley said.

He also is a proponent of Buffalo’s Living Wage, which pays public employees $9.90 an hour with health benefits, or $11.11 without.

“Having a job that pays enough to live on remains the No. 1 one anti-poverty program that any society can have,” Bartley said.

Other factors to consider, for those ready to work:

• Parents need access to affordable child care. Otherwise, they may have to drop out of the workforce.

• Public transportation needs to find more efficient ways to connect

poor workers — many of whom don’t own cars — to jobs outside the city.


Continued...

[samanthajane13]

Attacking blight

One of Buffalo’s most daunting challenges is its glut of vacant, derelict housing.

Mayor Byron W. Brown has a five-year plan to demolish 5,000 structures and recently accepted People United for Sustainable Housing’s initiative to rehabilitate 500 homes in the same time period.

Another program, Blueprint Buffalo, proposes turning blighted areas into a “living laboratory,” in which local governments, universities and businesses would experiment with community- driven redevelopment approaches.

Michael Clarke, program director of Local Initiatives Support Corp., a not-for-profit that works with local governments to revitalize neighborhoods, says the lab would be a bold stroke for Buffalo.

“The living laboratory is intended to encourage a whole different way of looking at the city. There would be competitions to bring experts from around the country, and even internationally, to see if we can get some innovative redevelopment ideas,” Clarke said.

Also:

• To strengthen neighborhoods and create jobs, the Partnership for the Public Good calls for supporting small businesses with training and start-up funds and for cultivating immigrant businesses.

• Local advocates say Buffalo should target federal Community Development Block Grants more effectively. Millions of dollars have been squandered through the years on projects that are not directly fighting poverty or blight as intended.

Off the drawing board

The question now is whether such a campaign will ever start.

Brown this year designated one of his deputy mayors, Donna Brown, as the point person to develop a comprehensive anti-poverty plan. But she was reassigned for several months to run another city agency and has yet to present a poverty plan to either the mayor or the public. She says a plan is in development.

That’s not to say the city and its nonprofit sector haven’t already made efforts in this area. From welfare payments and food stamps to thrift stores, food pantries and homeless shelters, the poor can find relief on the most critical issues of food, clothing and housing.

Head Start and other reading programs serve at-risk children, while the city’s Afterschool Work Experience and summer jobs program provide work for older youths, at least for a few months.

There are also groups and agencies that provide free legal help, free tax preparation and free counseling on accessing government relief programs. There’s even a low-interest loan program to help people buy cars specifically so they can get to work. Some of the city’s biggest philanthropic foundations have targeted financial aid to anti-poverty initiatives.

Together, the city and county give out tens of millions of dollars to attack poverty, but even those who run some of these programs question their long-term value.

“It’s not that things aren’t working. You’ll see positive outcomes, but they’re all small programs that only touch a very few people,” said Brenda McDuffie, president and CEO of the Buffalo Urban League.

And all too often those programs operate in a vacuum, without regard for or referral to what else is out there that might be overlapping or complementary.

“As the area gets poorer, as people move out, we have more and more nonprofit organizations, and I’m not sure that’s in anybody’s best interests,” said Robert G. Wilmers, M&T Bank Corp.’s CEO and a vocal advocate for change in the city and county. “There are too many people involved, too much competition doing the same thing.”

Hence the calls for a master plan.

“If we put more money into the pot, it needs to be done in a very strategic, very well-thought-out manner,” Wesolowski said. “Just throwing money at the problem doesn’t make the problem go away.”

What’s really needed to eradicate poverty is a broader focus on better living and working conditions: a school system that works, neighborhoods that are safe, homes that are affordable, and especially jobs that pay a living wage. Then people won’t need government aid.

“If you can get someone a stable job and a career and an education, it’s the foundation for a life that is not in poverty,” said Arlene F. Kaukus, president of United Way of Buffalo and Erie County.

Down to business

Critics say public money aimed at the private business sector also has been mismanaged. They say economic development agencies wrongly dole out tax breaks to businesses that don’t create quality jobs, revive blighted neighborhoods or help people move out of poverty.

“We’ve seen instead the perpetuation of low-wage jobs and the movement of businesses out of our urban core,” said Duwe of Coalition for Economic Justice. “So work is needed to improve the quality of the jobs that are being created.”

Other observers say that the government should focus on helping small businesses locally that will stay here, rather than cultivating the next big employer that can move at the drop of a hat.

“We’re always working on that big silver bullet that’s going to bring in a big company,” Garrett said. But “there’s almost no funding at all coming from the city, county or state for entrepreneurship.”

It is also suggested that the private sector can do better on its own, by ensuring that business practices and employment policies support its workers in tough times. That means paying fair wages and benefits, and providing access to health insurance.

“Employers have a responsibility to watch over their own house and make sure they’re doing whatever they can,” said Kaukus, the United Way director.

Ultimately, advocates say, the public, private and business communities need to come together to address the broader issues behind the poverty that is such a drag on our area. They want Mayor Brown and County Executive Chris Collins to bring together various local coalitions and leaders to develop solutions and move in the same direction.

As Kaukus says, “We didn’t get here overnight, and we’re not going to get out of this overnight. It’s going to take a sustained communitywide effort over a period of time to begin to see the kinds of change that all of us would want.”

And if we don’t realize that, as McDuffie said, “We’re kidding ourselves.”

msommer@buffnews.com and jepstein@buffnews.com


http://www.buffalonews.com/341/story/488434.html

[samanthajane13]

Campaign offers little on how to aid the poor
Obama, McCain don’t talk of urgency, advocates say
By Dan Herbeck
NEWS STAFF REPORTER

Barack Obama grew up in a middle-class household. Abandoned by his father as a boy, he was raised by his grandparents and a single mother who sometimes needed food stamps to feed her children.

John McCain grew up in a military family. His father and grandfather were both distinguished four-star admirals in the Navy.

Sens. Obama, a Democrat, and McCain, a Republican, both promise that if they are elected president, they will make the fight against poverty in Buffalo and other cities a high priority.

But they rarely talk about the poor in debates, interviews or public appearances as they stump for votes throughout the country.

Obama’s campaign staff said he plans to expand many federal anti-poverty programs, such as the Head Start early education program, and give more tax breaks to millions of poor families.

McCain’s organization said he vows to cut government costs and improve conditions for economic growth, an approach that McCain believes would create new jobs and help all Americans, including the poor.

In Buffalo, statistically the third-poorest city in the nation, Sister Sharon Goodremote, Marlies A. Wesolowski and Lookesha Tyler are closely watching the campaign for signs that the candidates will step forward and lead a national effort to do something significant to alleviate poverty.

“I’d like to see the next president put forward a Marshall Plan to eradicate poverty,” said Wesolowski, executive director of the Lt. Col. Matt Urban Human Services Center on Broadway. “That’s what it’s going to take — an all-out effort led by the president and the federal government.”

Wesolowski and Goodremote, public policy coordinator for Catholic Charities, work in agencies that help Buffalo’s poor. Tyler is a working single mother, raising three children and barely scraping by financially.

All three are upset that poverty — affecting more than one in 10 Americans — is rarely spoken about on the presidential campaign trail.

Poverty never came up during any of the three televised debates between Obama and McCain or in the Oct. 2 debate between vice presidential nominees Joe Biden and Sarah Palin.

“They talked about the economy and the middle class, but not one question, not one answer, dealt with the issue of poor people,” Goodremote said. “The government says 37 million people live below the poverty level. That is a huge section of our population that doesn’t even seem to be part of the discussion in this campaign.”

Similar observations came from Allison K. Duwe, executive director of the Buffalo Coalition for Economic Justice.

“The candidates know who votes, and they know who writes the checks to political campaigns,” Duwe said. “That’s why we’ve been out registering voters in the low-income neighborhoods.”

According to the most recent census data, released in August, Detroit is the nation’s poorest city, followed by Cleveland and Buffalo. The data shows that 28.7 percent of Buffalo residents live below the poverty level, and that includes nearly 43 percent of the city’s children.

“In our view, poverty is the biggest single problem facing Buffalo,” said Duwe, whose organization is made up of labor, church and community groups seeking better opportunities for the working poor. “It’s troublesome that we don’t hear more discussion about it.”

Wesolowski said the news media share responsibility for the fact that tens of millions of poor people are largely being ignored in the presidential race.

The ONE organization, co-founded by Bono, lead singer of the rock band U2, said that it sent an Internet petition signed by 122,000 people to moderator Tom Brokaw of NBC, asking him to pose one question about poverty during the Oct. 7 debate. Brokaw did not raise any questions about poverty.

Other anti-poverty groups, including Every Child Matters, made similar unsuccessful efforts with moderators of the other debates.

“It was very disheartening to watch the town hall debate and not hear one person from the audience, or even the moderator, even bring up this issue,” Wesolowski said. “It’s sickening to me.”

While local efforts to address poverty are important, experts say the president sets the tone on issues of vital interest to the poor, including education and health care funding.

According to the Children’s Defense Fund, a Washington-based organization seeking improvements in programs for poor children, Bill Clinton, as president, helped the poor in many ways, including a huge increase in the Earned Income Tax Credit.

President Bush and his father, the first President George Bush, did not make it a priority to help the poor, the group said.

“Under President Clinton, the number of poor children in the U. S. hit its lowest number since 1980,” said Catherine Crato, a Buffalo native who works as an economist for the defense fund. “Under George W. Bush, the numbers of poor rose back up again, even during a six-year period of economic expansion for most Americans. The Bush administration clearly has not made a priority of helping poor children and families.”

Distrustful of politicians

Tyler, 31, and Candida Davis, 27, are two of the thousands of Buffalo residents who view the presidential campaign from below the poverty line.

They are single working mothers whose children are enrolled in the Holy Innocents Child Care Center, which is run by Catholic Charities.

The women struggle from paycheck to paycheck. Both are registered voters — Democrats — and both intend to vote in the presidential election.

Tyler makes $8 an hour as a city school bus aide. She raises three children in a house on Sherman Street.

“We hear gunfire at least once a week,” she laments.

She also suffers from multiple sclerosis, which causes severe pain in her legs in cold weather and makes her job more difficult.

“When I hear middle-class people complain about their problems, I think, ‘Believe me, it’s even worse for the people below you,’ ” Tyler said. “Everything goes up but my paycheck. When it comes time to pay my bills, I always have to put one aside, leave it for the next month.”

Tyler said it disturbs her that the candidates seem to be saying so little about their plans to help the poor.

“It seems like we’re being totally ignored,” she said.

In Tyler’s view, McCain and Bush seem to show no interest in the plight of poor people. She is excited that Obama has said he will seek an increase in the minimum wage, but she isn’t completely sold on the Democrat, either.

“Obama is saying some good things, but I’ve seen so many other politicians make promises and not deliver on the promises,” she said. “I’m worried that he won’t, either.”

Davis, who has a 3-year-old daughter, works part time for an insurance company and is also a full-time student at Erie Community College.

She hopes to become a psychologist one day and is an unabashed supporter of Obama. Davis follows the presidential race closely.

“I think Obama addresses the needs of people who are low-income more than McCain does,” Davis said. “I feel like Obama does care. He came from a single-parent household, from humble beginnings. I relate better to him than a man who owns seven houses.”

Rosa A. Gibson, executive director of the Community Action Information Center, has worked for decades to help poor people in Buffalo. She talks every day with poor families who come to the food pantry that her group runs on Wohlers Avenue.

The outspoken 77-year-old Gibson has her own take on the election. She doesn’t trust either candidate to help the poor.

“I’ve been dealing with politicians for so long. I have been let down so many times, I don’t believe anything any of them tell me,” Gibson said. “Don’t just tell me what you’re going to do. Show me.”


Continued...

[samanthajane13]

Different perspectives

Any campaign discussion of poverty has been greatly overshadowed by the debate over the Wall Street meltdown and its effect on middle-class families, but each of the major candidates says he has a game plan that would help poor families.

The Buffalo News sent a list of 12 questions on issues affecting the poor to both the Obama and McCain campaigns.

The News also asked if the candidates for president and vice president would give even a brief interview on the topic of poverty. Both the Republicans and Democrats turned down that request.

In response to The News’ questions, Obama’s campaign outlined a poverty plan that would increase benefits under the Earned Income Tax Credit for 9 million poor Americans, quadruple the number of children eligible for the Early Head Start program and guarantee health coverage for every child.

The Illinois senator pledged to increase the federal minimum wage, which is currently $6.55 an hour, to $9.50 by 2011. He also wants to create a Green Jobs Corps that would provide “disengaged youth” training and jobs in the field of clean energy technology.

Obama has been talking on the campaign trail about the issues that are important to people living in poverty, said Blake Zeff, a spokesman for the Obama campaign.

“Obama’s health care, education and job-training investments will provide new hope and opportunities to neglected communities,” Zeff said. “Tackling chronic poverty in this country requires us to strengthen economic opportunities for low-income families and invest in programs that work, while developing new ideas to reduce poverty.”

How would Obama find the money to pay for such initiatives?

His staff estimates that the initiatives would cost $6 billion a year and would be funded through a plan to cut $200 billion a year in “wasteful and inefficient” government spending. They said money also would be saved when Obama would begin drawing down the number of U. S. troops in Iraq.

In response to the same set of questions, McCain’s staff offered no plans to boost spending on any government anti-poverty programs but noted that the Arizona senator has promised to make the fight against poverty a “high priority.”

McCain’s goal is to work with businesses to create new jobs, financial stability and economic growth, all of which will improve opportunities for poor Americans, said Russell C. Gugino, Western New York coordinator of the McCain campaign.

“Obama believes in the classic liberal redistribution-of-income model,” Gugino said. “Look at the myriad of social programs that we’re spending billions on to cure poverty. . . . It’s not working.”

Gugino said McCain advocates creating “enterprise zones” to encourage business development in struggling neighborhoods in Buffalo and other cities.

Professor Edgar K. Browning of Texas A&M University is an economist and author who supports McCain. He contends that Obama’s policies would amount to throwing billions of dollars at a problem that cannot be solved with money.

According to Browning, federal, state and local governments already spend a combined $1 trillion a year on programs to help the poor, and still, the number of people in poverty increases.

Browning said the federal government’s war on poverty — and not the Iraq War — is America’s most costly failure.

In an interview, Browning said he believes that both candidates are sincere about wanting to help the poor but that the two have radically different approaches.

“If you’re happy with making [the poor] more dependent on government, that’s what Obama will do,” Browning said. “McCain has few, if any, proposals that would directly affect poverty . . . In the long run, I think McCain’s policies will be more conducive to economic growth than Obama’s.”

The Rev. Richard Allen Stenhouse, pastor of Buffalo’s oldest black church, disagrees. He said he plans to vote for Obama because he thinks Obama will improve the economy for all, including the poor.

“After eight years with the Republicans, it’s time for a change in philosophy about using our financial resources,” said Stenhouse, of Bethel AME Church on Michigan Avenue. “The Iraq War is draining money away from the humanitarian programs that help students and help the poor in this country.”

‘Disappointed with both’

Democrats argue that they have a record of making strides in the fight against poverty over the last two decades, while Republicans do not.

From 1988 to 1992, during the Republican administration of the first President George Bush, census figures show the number of Americans in poverty rose by 6.3 million.

During the eight-year administration of Clinton, a Democrat, that followed, the number of Americans in poverty decreased by 6.4 million.

But after George W. Bush became president almost eight years ago and the Republicans returned to power, the number of people in poverty rose once again, this time by 5.7 million, said Crato of the Children’s Defense Fund.

The not-for-profit group does not make presidential endorsements, but it applauds Obama’s proposals to increase the Earned Income Tax Credit and expand Head Start.

The group also compiles an annual “report card” in which it grades all senators and House members based on their voting record on issues of concern to children and the poor.

Obama received a high rating from the group — 87 percent — for his votes since he became a senator in 2005. The group gave McCain a much lower ranking of 28 percent for the years 1983 to the present.

Although the group says that it is nonpartisan, it does have ties to a very prominent Democrat. Before she became the nation’s first lady and before she was elected as a senator from New York, Hillary Rodham Clinton was chairwoman of the Children’s Defense Fund’s board for six years.

But the group points out that the poverty statistics it cites are taken from the government’s own census data.

“I am a Democrat and a liberal. I think that, historically, Democrats have given more attention to the needs of the poor,” Wesolowski said. “But in this campaign, I’ve been very disappointed with both candidates. Neither one seems to want to talk about this issue.”

dherbeck@buffnews.com


http://www.buffalonews.com/341/story/475273.html

[samanthajane13]

Day in, day out: trying to fill the emptiness
By Charity Vogel
News Staff Reporter

For kids growing up today in Buffalo, poverty means hunger. Hunger for a parent at the front door after school.

Hunger to know a father. Hunger for attention from teachers and other adults who care - for good examples to balance out all the bad ones.

Hand in hand with these emotional hungers comes another one: The raw, physical kind.

Standing on the brink of futures that, for many of them, will be as devoid of possibility as the present, these children crave the sensation of being filled up with two things: Food, and hope.With that, in three scenes, a picture of children living in poverty - and hunger - in Buffalo today.


Scene One: The Eisensmith family


Slight and bird-like, Ashley Eisensmith doesn't yet look her 13 years. Bent over a book in her sixth-grade classroom in Hillery Park Elementary School in South Buffalo, her chin tucked down in quiet determination, she seems far more a delicate child than a young woman-to-be.

And yet, this is a pivotal age for girls like Ashley.

"I call it the turning point," said Hillery Park Principal Margaret M. Boorady.

That's because sixth grade is the year little girls become adolescents. And when you're poor, growing into a teenager is harder than ever.

"She's getting up in age, and she wants name brands now," Ashley's mom, Rosie, said. "I try to tell her it's real hard right now."

In her classroom, Ashley whispers to her seatmate in the back row, where she sits with other students who are considered learning disabled. This is Ashley's second year in sixth grade.

After school is out, Ashley will go home and see her mom, same as always. Rosie will fix dinner for her in the tidy kitchen of their Spaulding Street apartment, as well as for Richie, 67, a brother with mental impairments. Rosie has taken care of him for 22 years. They'll eat in the dining room, on a table covered by a pastel plastic tablecloth, under a portrait of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

And, like always, the Eisensmiths will make do with what they have - which means less than $50 a week in food stamps, plus tuna, spaghetti sauce, noodles and canned vegetables from the South Buffalo Food Pantry.

"I try to make real meals for her, mashed potatoes and corn, pork chops, or chicken - mostly chicken, 'cause it's cheap," said Rosie, 50, a widow who used to waitress and clean for a living before a car accident in 2005 hurt her back and put her on limited disability income.

Tough as it is to stretch bags of charity food far enough to feed a family of three, sometimes hunger seems like the easiest of the Eisensmiths' problems.

The family lost their car last Thanksgiving, then their house to foreclosure a few weeks later. At Christmas, Rosie and Ashley had to push frozen shopping carts filled with bags of their belongings through snowbanks and down the icy street to a rented apartment.

"My mommy needed my help," said Ashley, whose tiny bedroom contains a closet fashioned from a sheet hung over a cubbyhole, a crucifix on the wall, and two stuffed bears named Jacob and Amanda. "I felt upset because my mom was having a hard time. She told me to go to school, but I wanted to help her here."

Ashley missed a lot of school last winter, when her family was having problems. Rosie admits she should have forced Ashley to go to school but says she didn't have the heart for anything right then. Since winter, though, Ashley's attendance has rebounded, school support workers said, and her academic work is improving.

But the things that bother a teenage girl still matter.

Soon Ashley won't have her own bedroom anymore. A few more relatives are moving in to the apartment; her bedroom will go to an older sister. And there will be even more mouths to feed.


Continued...

[samanthajane13]

Scene Two: The Militello family


It's 5 p.m. on a weeknight, and Mattie Morrison is making himself dinner.

He arranges a hot dog and a small scoop of mac-and-cheese - both leftovers he found in the fridge - on a plate. He microwaves it, and eats standing up in the kitchen of his mom's apartment on Hertel Avenue near Shoshone Park.

His older brother, Jeremy, might eat something later, after he's done playing "Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas" in his bedroom on his PlayStation II.

"It's my favorite game," said Jeremy, who is considered a shy kid at school.

This is a typical school night for the brothers. Mattie is 10, Jeremy 13.

Their mom, Doris Militello, said she tries to do what she can to feed them at night, but because of chronic ill health - she said she takes 10 Xanax a day for anxiety and depression, plus five other pills for a sleep problem - late afternoons often find Doris on the couch, in physical or mental pain, unable to budge.

"I do cook them dinner, just not as often as I should," said Doris, 36, a petite blonde who has lived in this neighborhood her whole life. "Mattie can make Ramen for himself; he likes that a lot. Or Spaghettio's. I have a hard time fixing dinner for them, but I know they can get something if they're hungry."

Doris does not work. Some days, she said, it's a challenge for her to even get out of bed, or out of the house. She stopped working 13 years ago, when she was pregnant for the first time by a man she was in a long-term relationship with and planned to marry in August 1997. But she called that wedding off; she said it was one of the best decisions she ever made.

"My social worker said, "I wouldn't do that if I were you.' Because I would lose my Medicaid," Doris said. "I knew [my boyfriend] wasn't responsible enough. I told him, "We're not getting married.' Through Medicaid, I knew steady money would be coming in. The rent would be paid. Through him - I couldn't rely on that money." Nowadays, the boys' father pays between $28 and $50 a month in child support; the boys do not see him. And so Doris, who dropped out of Bennett High School after freshman year and went to work fulltime in a dart store on Hertel at 16, cares for her family on a budget of welfare money, Medicaid coverage, temporary disability money from Social Security and food stamps. Her $400 rent payment is covered fully by government programs. For food, she makes supplemental trips to a church pantry.

Her extra money goes toward nice things for her growing boys: video games, computer equipment, Internet access, a good TV and DVD player, a cell phone for Jeremy's 13th birthday.

"I make sure I have everything for my kids," said Doris, who takes pride in keeping up her landlady's house by cutting the grass and painting the porch. "We have every cable channel. They have a lot - too much."

Doris, who finished her GED not long ago, said she treats her sons this way because she feels her illnesses mean she can't take them places and do things with them a healthier mom could.

"I'm always tired. I never have energy. I never have money, I can never take the kids anywhere," she said. "I feel like I've really gotten a bad deal in life."


Scene Three: The Dulski kids


Carrie Fischer, 9, likes the barbecue chicken best.

Of all the dinners she eats at the T.J. Dulski Community Center on Buffalo's East Side - and that's every night of the week, usually - the chicken is her favorite. But even better than the meals are the friends she eats with, and the nice grownups - like Linda Hansen, the director - who take the time to talk to her about her day.

"It's really fun," said Carrie, a student at Waterfront Elementary, who said her parents don't work. "There's a lot of activities you can do. I come here to hang out with my friends, and I eat dinner here. It's better here."

Kids like Carrie are fed two ways at the bustling, lively Lewis Street center: with hot food, and with a sense of family.

One recent weekday, the center filled up starting at 3:30 p.m., as poor children from nearby homes streamed in after school. Hansen moved among them, talking and laughing, asking them about their schoolwork. Another staffer offered apples as a snack. Homework help was available; other kids were talking about a play they're staging.

"You get to make new friends here," said Kaitlyn Fountaine, 8, who was wearing a polka-dotted shirt she had taken from the bin of free clothing kept on hand for kids in need.

"They're nice here," said Crystal Rosie, 8, who with her sister Brittany, 9, was munching a plate of pork chops and potatoes. Until recently homeless, according to center directors, the Rosie girls are doing better now that they are living with relatives.

The Dulski Center is a place of stability and hope for Carrie, who said three of her five siblings are in foster homes. She's the youngest.

"They don't even know I'm alive," she said, of her siblings. "I think they must be having fun. Maybe they're going to Fantasy Island."

cvogel@buffnews.com


http://www.buffalonews.com/341/story/399894.html

[samanthajane13]

Growing up in a world without fathers
By Mark Sommer
News Staff Reporter

Many poverty-stricken households are run by single mothers. Where are the fathers? That's a question many ask, from mothers and children to social workers and academics.

"Where are the fathers? I wish I knew the answer," said Pedro Velez- Lopez, a youth court advocate with Hispanics United. He handled 94 cases this year through Oct. 1; all 94 involved single-mother families.

"That void - the absence of fathers - is truly detrimental," said Ron Stewart, a Buffalo State College sociology professor who specializes in the African-American family, and black males in particular.While single-parent homes are more prevalent among low-income families, they're most pronounced among African-Americans. Some 65 percent of black households were led by a single parent as of December 2006, according to the U.S. Census Supplemental Survey and American Community Survey.

Stewart said the absence of fathers is a major factor in sons turning to a tough street culture in search of acceptance and identity, and in daughters seeking surrogate fathers in gang members and drug dealers, and getting pregnant without being in a committed relationship. But he worries all black males are being unfairly painted by the same brush.

"We do have young black males attending college and living up to expectations of society. Not all black men are gangbangers and drug dealers and criminals," Stewart said.


A legacy of poverty


Some observers, like the late New York Sen. Daniel Moynihan, have blamed the large number of single-parent households on a "culture of poverty" that is passed on generationally.

"There is one unmistakable lesson in American history," Moynihan wrote in 1965. "A community that allows a large number of young men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future - that community asks for and gets chaos."

But Wendell Wild, a social worker for the Buffalo Public Schools, counters that. "The 'culture of poverty' has a premise that somehow the poor are different, like there is something wrong with them. They are poor, they don't have enough support and their lives are difficult and chaotic because of it.

"But they are trying no more or less than the rest of us, and they are no more or less responsible than the rest of us."

Wild said he sees "a ton of disorganization" in children's lives during home visits. Blaming the individual, he said, ignores the loss of good-paying jobs, inferior education, lack of job training, affordable child care and health insurance, substandard housing and predatory landlords, and lack of investment in poor and often segregated neighborhoods.

"The problem of poverty has been individualized and psychologized, when it's a structural economic problem that requires structural economic solutions," Wild said.

West Side resident David Rodriguez, who helps support two children but does not live with them, understands that desperation.

"Sometimes poverty makes you do some strange things. I have found myself dumpster-diving for food," said Rodriguez, a driver for La Nova pizzeria. He worries that if something happens to his car, he could become unemployed again.

"Poverty drives some people into crime. And I don't say it's a good thing, but people have to take care of their child no matter what."


Money flows up


Aaron Bartley, director of PUSH Buffalo, a grass-roots group working to rebuild the West Side, calls the 'culture of poverty' a "distraction from the culture of greed," as wealth in the U.S. becomes increasingly concentrated at the top.

"I know it may sound crazy to someone in Amherst," he said, "but the only way these young men can reach [society's expectations] - unless they are exceptionally gifted or exceptional in some way - is to seek it through primarily illicit opportunities."

One of PUSH Buffalo's goals is to extend the mayor's summer jobs program for youth year-round. A larger vision is a citywide public works program that could employ people to rebuild struggling neighborhoods.

"We wouldn't catch all of the people caught up in [drugs and other illicit activities], but you'd see most turning to the culture of work almost overnight," Bartley predicted.

Henry Louis Taylor, a University at Buffalo planning expert, says the alienation, sense of hopelessness, anger and the economic conditions that help drive this despair, have gotten worse.

"The marriageable pool of black and Latino men who have the jobs and income that would allow them to take care of a family is small. We don't have programs set up to support them," Taylor said.

He sees the same problems encircling another generation of children.

"We saw these problems emerging 17 years ago. It's just become deeper and more complicated with the passage of time. We didn't solve those problems, or really try.

"It takes a village," Taylor added, "but we don't have a village."

msommer@buffnews.com


http://www.buffalonews.com/341/story/399893.html

[samanthajane13]

Is the American dream still possible for poor kids in Buffalo?
By Charity Vogel
News Staff Reporter

Poverty in Buffalo used to be a story of possibility. Think about the people who built this city years ago: immigrants who arrived with nothing in their pockets. Many of them found decent jobs in a growing city, worked hard and carved out a little slice of the American Dream.

That's not the way poverty in Buffalo works anymore. Today, the city is diminished, and opportunities are, too. The story of poverty in Buffalo has become one of hopelessness. And children have become its biggest victims.New census figures, showing Buffalo to be one of the poorest major cities in the United States, put hard numbers to the situation: Poverty here is severe. It's pervasive. And it's devastating.

Nearly one in three adults in the city is poor. Among children, the rate is nearly 43 percent.

Of the very smallest children in the city - those under 5 - fully half are now growing up poor.

And, 22 percent of Buffalo's children are surviving in what is called "extreme poverty" - a standard of living so low it is half of the federal poverty level. Or about $10,000 a year, for a family of four.

Over the next three days, The Buffalo News will take a closer look at child poverty in the city.

Today, these children worry about getting a meal or sneakers for school. Tomorrow, they'll have a tough time finishing high school, getting a job, staying out of jail, owning a home. In other words: achieving the basic American Dream that built this city.

"It's really hard to dream when the nightmare is your reality," said Emma Jordan-Simpson, director of the Children's Defense Fund of New York. "A lot of kids now - poverty is their nightmare."

Ultimately, these kids will struggle to raise children of their own who will not be poor.

And that will shape the future of Buffalo for decades to come.

Their story, then, is our story.


No way out


Poverty, in 2007, is redefining what it means to have an American childhood. The American Dream - that golden ideal of hard work and success - has been pushed so far out of the picture for today's poor children that they don't even know it exists.

Some of them live in a world so desolate they have not a single person to look up to.

"My dad doesn't answer my phone calls," said Gabrielle Barrett, 10, a fifth-grader in South Buffalo. "I never see him. He lives somewhere by the Thruway."

These kids don't know it, of course, but the Buffalo area has changed dramatically since their grandparents grew up. Jobs have disappeared, or moved out to the suburbs, taking much of the middle class - black and white - with it. The city's population is half what it was 50 years ago.

"Years ago, there was a sense of community - people could help. Today, people live lives of alienation," said Jordan-Simpson. "The traditional supports people would have had to raise their kids are gone."

Because poverty is everywhere, and because it runs so deep, it has created a culture that -- especially for children -- is very hard to escape.

"There's a despair among young people now. They have no future - so they live for today," said Judy Tutuska, who oversees food stamps for Erie County. "I'm a city person. I grew up in the city. And I've seen a world of change."


Where poverty lives


Time was, most blocks in the city had a poor family or two. In those days, local and national poverty experts said, families used to turn inward to solve crises: to relatives, churches and ethnic communities.

Today, in some neighborhoods, poverty affects almost every house.

Drive down some streets and you'll see this kind of widespread poverty, signified in blighted storefronts, boarded-up homes, rustedout cars and tacked-up sheets fluttering at broken windows.

One city resident, living on a cashier's income, said she feels overwhelmed by the signs of poverty she sees all around her. She defined prosperity this way: Gutters on houses. Because there aren't any, on the homes on her street.

You can see Buffalo's poverty in other ways, too.

The number of food stamp households in Erie County in which the families are working poor or other nonwelfare recipients has skyrocketed 64 percent since 2000, to more than 40,000 households, county data shows.

Meanwhile, the family-based social fabric has frayed, in some neighborhoods to the point of disintegration.

In Erie County, among 4,550 families with children who get temporary assistance checks from the Social Services Department, county data shows that just 550 are headed by two parents.

Among the 621 homeless families who turned to Erie County for help between January and October of this year, only 25 had two parents.

And, at the T.J. Dulski Community Center on the East Side, dozens of children gather each night for a hot dinner because they have nowhere else to go.

"Nobody's home for these kids," said Linda Hansen, a director at the Lewis Street center. "These kids move in, they move out, they stay with relatives; we do have two of them that are homeless..."

She stopped, to wipe away a few tears of frustration. "I'm sorry - it's just, that kind of social condition - you know it exists, but when you see it, it's hard."

Shanay Johnson, 17, said she sees that social dysfunction all around her.

A senior at Bennett High School, Johnson lives with her mom, whom she calls her biggest influence, along with her grandma. Her dad is in jail; she hasn't heard from him in ages.

"None of my friends - none of them have fathers that live in the same household," said Johnson. "I guess it's accepted."

"But I think it matters," she said. "I wish I had my dad."

That dissolving family fabric has been replaced, for many poor residents, by an array of government services, charity centers and social service agencies.

Those outfits try to fill all the services needed, but it's a daunting task.


Continued...

[samanthajane13]

The job problem


Poverty in Buffalo is a bigger issue today than it was even a decade or two ago, officials said, because of the scope and depth of the problems some poor families have.

Those who want to work have trouble finding jobs when employment opportunities are steadily shrinking. Many available jobs don't pay well, or they require degrees and training that the poor often don't have and can't afford. Then there's the problem of getting to and from work when, as in many poor households, there's no car.

Add to that: addictions to alcohol and drugs, domestic violence, child abuse, truancy, food and nutrition problems, chronic illness and homelessness - people in the trenches in the battle against poverty in Buffalo see all these issues every day.

"You have a generation of young people out there whose parents might outlive them," said Catherine Lewis-Smith, director of a West Side medical office, who sees poverty-related health problems like obesity, heart disease and diabetes in many of her patients. "That's frightening."

Many days, those who deal with the city's poor cringe at the magnitude - and complexity - of the problem.

"Kids now are worse off," said Michael Weiner, commissioner of Erie County's Social Services Department. "When you have pockets of deep poverty, like we do in certain neighborhoods in the city, you're going to have problems with crime. You're going to have high unemployment. You're going to have more abuse of children. You're going to have all kinds of other problems."

Still, even today, many people don't realize how different poverty is in 2007.

A poll of Erie County voters that Zogby International did for The Buffalo News in early October shows that most people - 69 percent - believe the American Dream is still within reach for poor kids in Buffalo.


Two steps behind


When a community, like Buffalo, starts to tilt dangerously into poverty levels that are extremely deep, what happens is a reordering of the city's economic future, experts said.

"What we have is an alternative game of Monopoly," said Dr. Mark R. Rank, a nationally known poverty expert at Washington University in St. Louis. "If you grow up in a household in poverty, you wind up not having the opportunities of kids growing up in middle-class households. These kids are at a disadvantage in the job market.

"We like to think everything is fair - that everyone starts with equal opportunities. But given those prior advantages, who do you think is going to win or lose? That's what we have now, in this country - which is supposed to be a land of opportunity."

Because of that, young people like Shanay Johnson are in the minority.

She completed an internship at Lewis-Smith's medical office on the West Side last summer and has since landed a job at Victoria's Secret. She feels like she's getting ahead, a little bit, against the odds - but she knows many of her friends aren't. "If you want to get out of poverty, you've got to work hard at it," Johnson said.

Antanette Cotton, too, is trying to become one of the lucky ones. She's an unusual case: Her mom and dad are married, and they both work - at lower-paying but steady jobs. Though they don't make much, they plan to buy a house someday in the city.

For them, that's the American Dream - and they are raising Antanette to want the same thing.

"Kids who are born in the ghetto, they stay there," said Antanette, 15, who dreams of opening her own hair shop someday. "You have to want more for yourself."

A new study by a panel of poverty experts this spring estimated the cost of children living in poverty in America to be $500 billion each year.

At Georgetown University, one of the authors of the research, Dr. Harry J. Holzer, said this factors in the costs that continue into adulthood.

"With kids, you know they grow up in this environment that affects them," said Holzer. "It reduces their earnings later in life. They're more likely to engage in crime. And they're more likely to have bad health. All of those things cost money."


One at a time


The scope of child poverty can seem daunting and frightening.

Those who work with poor kids say that sometimes the best way to help kids is to try to touch them, one at a time, with care and attention. That's what Linda Hansen thinks.

When she goes home at night, satisfied, after feeding 40 hungry kids, she realizes this one-on-one attention is the best gift she can give them.

"There is some hope," she said. "There are still kids trying to finish their education. I like to have conversations with the kids where I ask them, 'What's your plan?'

"What's really troubling to me is when they say, "I don't know.' "

cvogel@buffnews.com


http://www.buffalonews.com/341/story/399892.html

[samanthajane13]

More than 18,000 poor Buffalo children grow up without fathers
By Charity Vogel
NEWS STAFF REPORTER

Dante Brown is a playful, rambunctious toddler growing up on the city’s West Side. TraJanae Sanders is the same kind of kid, growing up on the East Side.

A lot separates these 2-year-olds, but in some important ways, their young lives already echo with similarity. Both are poor.

Both are being raised by young women who bore them as teenagers.

And neither child has a dad at home. Dante and TraJanae are two faces of a change that’s deeply affecting many neighborhoods in Buffalo — where today 43 percent of children live below the poverty line.

These two children, and at least 18,450 others in the city, are growing up in low-income homes headed by women alone. This is fatherless Buffalo.

The disintegration of the two-parent family in poor city neighborhoods, many people say, has contributed to the transformation of many once-vital streets into poverty-racked places where low-rent apartments fill with the same kinds of occupants:

Single mothers with young children. Fathers, here, have largely vanished.

“He’s a joke to me now,” Dante Brown’s mother, Janelle Dzina, said about the father of Dante. He left Buffalo for Toronto when Janelle was four months’ pregnant.

“These men,” said Dzina, who also has a 1-year-old daughter, Maria Irizarry, “they don’t respect women.”

The number of children growing up in poverty without fathers at home in Buffalo includes 5,388 of the city’s youngest children, those under age 5, census data shows.

And those numbers reveal just a slice of the problem. Many single moms — TraJanae’s mom, TaNisha Cole, among them — live with older female relatives to cope and thus don’t show up in most statistics.

Everyone — from the women raising babies, to public officials, to fathers themselves — agrees that this shift in household structure matters, especially to children.

“I’m going to work as hard as I can to be there for my children,” said Darius Sanders, 30, no relation to TraJanae, who got out of prison last year and has four kids in Buffalo with two women, none of whom he lives with. “But I feel like I’ve been on a hill for the last seven, eight months. It’s rough.”

Close observers differ in their opinions of why the problem exists — and how to fix it.

Some say society is to blame, for setting poor men up for failure as dads.

“They’re being excluded,” said Sterling Pierce Jr., who works with poor parents in the city, many of them fathers, who don’t live with their kids. “It’s a societal problem.”

Others argue that much of the blame rests with the fathers.

“These men, they don’t know how to be fathers,” said Dr. Alvin F. Poussaint, a Harvard professor and nationally known voice on the status of the black family in America. “They walk away from it. They get their feelings of manhood from making babies — not from raising babies.”

Buffalo is not alone in facing this problem. It’s changing the fabric of cities nationwide.

Across the country, 37 percent of all children born in 2005 had single mothers.

In the black community, the proportion is much greater: Nearly 70 percent of black children are now born into single-mother households, data shows.

In recent months, this disintegration of the low-income family has drawn new attention.

Sen. Barack Obama spoke of the breakdown of poor families in a major speech on race in Philadelphia in March, when the Illinois Democrat criticized the “legacy of defeat” that plagues many black families today.

“A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family contributed to the erosion of black families,” Obama said, “a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened.”

The families of Dante and TraJanae know those problems only too well.

Dante’s mom, Janelle, received welfare for 18 months because the fathers didn’t provide steady income for her kids. The 21-year-old recently landed a part-time job at a downtown restaurant.

TraJanae’s mom braids hair to make money; she relies on her mother for shelter and food, and she uses the WIC program for baby supplies. TraJanae’s father has not helped at all, she said.

“My daughter is 2z, and he’s given her a total of $50 and two sweaters,” said Cole, 21. “He’s pretty much like other guys his age. They want to be rappers. I’m not thinking about being a rapper — I’ve got diapers and wipes to buy.”

‘It’s hard to parent’

What’s happening to fathers in Buffalo’s poor neighborhoods?

Why are they disappearing? And does it matter?

Even the fathers themselves don’t know all the answers.

“It’s hard to parent,” said Sanders, a truck driver struggling to get by on the poverty line. “That connection is not there. I’m still trying to figure that out, to be honest.”

Much of the problem, observers said, may lie in the educational and job opportunities open to poor men.

Buffalo schools have a high dropout rate: 39 percent. After school ends, young men in depressed neighborhoods struggle to find good-paying, secure jobs. Many don’t have transportation, which adds to the problem, since few jobs exist in run-down city neighborhoods.

“Some people say, let them pull themselves up by their bootstraps, get a job and make money,” said Lenora B. Foote-Beavers, a support magistrate for Erie County Family Court. “I say, what if they don’t have bootstraps? What then? Especially in a depressed area like Buffalo, where good jobs are hard to find.”

That’s why many of the young women who get pregnant by these men find themselves the better-educated and more steadily employed of the pair.

Like TaNisha Cole. When she found out she was pregnant, neither Cole nor the baby’s father had a full-time job. Cole stuck it out and finished high school; her boyfriend didn’t. He dropped out, planning on earning a GED, but never did.

“He was like, ‘Let’s get a house and live together,’ ” said Cole, watching her daughter play with coloring books in a tiny bedroom decorated with Disney princess posters and a yellow TV. “I was not in agreement with that. Neither one of us was working to the point we’d be stable enough to pay rent, pay bills, buy diapers, all of that.”

Another problem with some men — particularly in black communities — is that they end up with arrest and prison records. In New York, 6.4 percent of black adult men were in prison, compared with 0.5 percent of white adult men, a 2002 study by Human Rights Watch found.

That makes it difficult for these men to support families once they get

out of jail, some said, since many employers don’t want to hire people with these backgrounds.

“They get recycled out, they’re ex-inmates who are stigmatized, who don’t have any skills and who have problems getting jobs because no one will hire them,” said Poussaint. “And when they’ve been in jail, they feel even more like they’re unable to be a father — they feel they should stay away from their kids, because they’re a bad role model.”

Sanders went through that cycle last July, when he was released from prison.

“It was like starting from scratch,” Sanders said of walking out of prison with $30,000 in child support claims against him for his four kids, a revoked truck driver’s license and no prospects of work. “I’m trying to get my life back on track.”


Continued...

[samanthajane13]

A touchy subject

There’s also such a thing as personal responsibility of the fathers — a touchy subject.

Poussaint’s new book with entertainer Bill Cosby, “Come on People,” has been criticized by some for its message that black men need to take more responsibility for their choices and family obligations.

“People say, ‘You’re blaming the victim.’ They say you should never blame the victim or criticize them,” said Poussaint. “That’s backward. That’s a status-

quo position. It’s a position that has almost no expectations of the victim.”

Dr. Ruby K. Payne, a nationally known expert on poor children and education, has also drawn attention — and some controversy — for her views on black men and their role in fathering children but not caring for families.

“When you don’t have role identity [as through a job], you only have gender identity. And proof of gender identity is sexual identity,” said Payne, based in Texas. “And proof of that is the children you produce.”

But if something is shifting deep within Buffalo’s poor fathers, something has changed in the minds of the city’s poor young women, too.

Mostly, it’s a matter of expectations — the ideas of these young women about what their futures will look like.

“There’s a lot of bitterness among these girls, about men, about the fathers of their kids,” said Carol Greetham, who runs a support group for single teenage mothers at the Buffalo Christian Center downtown.

The idea of a baby’s father in the home, for these teens, she said, “is so foreign, it’s like seeing surfing on TV for them.”

Payne said that babies have become something important in the lives of poor young men and women, but not in a healthy way: They’ve become a rite of passage.

“Rites of passage in the middle class are when you graduate, or when you can drive,” she said. “In poverty, it’s fathering — or mothering — a child.”

Major transformation

Young women living in poverty in Buffalo’s neighborhoods said that a major transformation of family structure has occurred in their families in just the last generation or two.

They remember their grandmothers as married women, living with one man in a stable home.

Their own mothers had more varied experiences: Some met and married men and raised families with them, but many others became single mothers — often, the first generation of single mothers in their families.

Now, these young women in the late teens and 20s find themselves living in a universe where no young women they know in their peer group are married or engaged.

These women do not expect to have a long-term relationship with the men that father their children.

This is not a fluke or a mistake. It’s the common culture.

“Some of the baby’s fathers are around, but most are not,” said Cole, who hopes to move into an apartment of her own later this year. “They’re saying, ‘So what if you had a baby — I laid down with you, that’s it.’ I see that every day. These guys say, ‘I’m too young to be a father.’ They’re trying to be a gangster.”

A few young women still hold out hopes for that kind of two-parent home.

“I think it’s right to get married. I want to get married,” said Dzina, who grew up in an Italian-American Catholic family and broke down crying when she told her mother she was pregnant with Dante. “I just want stability. I want my children to see daddy leaving for work every morning.”

Some small steps

The fatherlessness of Buffalo’s poor children isn’t a problem that can be fixed overnight.

But some small steps toward reversing the trend are being taken.

On the state level, a pilot program launched in late 2006 has put programs to enforce “responsible” parenthood into place in five locations statewide.

In Erie County, that resulted in $500,000 going toward programs to help absent parents reunite with their families. In Chautauqua County, the programs totaled $200,000. Since their inception, those programs in the bicounty area have helped 869 parents, mostly fathers, in various ways, and some have returned to their families, officials said.

One such program will lay out $300,000 over two years to aid hundreds of men and some women who are currently dissociated from their families, said Pierce, the program’s coordinator.

“It’s designed to help them feel more comfortable being a parent,” said Pierce. “It’s a learning process. If they’re not in that home, living with that child, how do they learn those skills? Typically, these fathers don’t have the support systems. They don’t have the moms showing them how to change a diaper.”

In addition, an earned-income tax credit program for noncustodial parents was launched across the state in 2007 in an effort to provide financial incentive to absent fathers to keep up with their child support payments, said David A. Hansell, commissioner of the state Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance.

“We should all have an altruistic interest in helping these children, whether they’re our children or not,” said Hansell. “But kids who grow up in a home without a second parent are more likely to end up in prison, more likely to have problems with employment, they’re less likely to graduate from high school and college.”

On the grassroots level, some small groups have formed to help poor people on both sides of the equation: men with being good fathers, women with coping as single moms. The teen moms’ group that Greetham runs with co-organizer Diana Hills at the Christian Center is one example.

At bimonthly meetings, teen mothers get a chance to eat dinner together, socialize and learn from guest speakers and other educational programs. Greetham and Hills, who began the group three years ago with one teen to start, said they’ve helped about 25 young moms so far.

“It’s growing slowly, organically,” said Hills. “I’m not disappointed with where we are. But there are so many more girls out there.”

cvogel@buffnews.com


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