POVERTY AND MUNICIPAL HOME RELIEF

Poverty and Municipal Home Relief

Poverty and municipal home relief

Introduction

There is no single description of poverty. But for many, perhaps most, it means homes with inadequate heating, unstable plumbing, and uncertain electricity. It often means a home where some go to bed hungry and malnutrition is very frequent. For almost all the poverty stricken families it means that life is a constant struggle to obtain the merest necessities of existence, the things that most of us take for granted (Wood and Mango 2001) This paper discusses the role of municipal home relief in today's society and its reason in connection with History of social views toward poverty..

We must ask ourselves if indeed spending money will really improve the whole situation, or will it set our nation in further unnecessary debt? But most importantly, the ultimate question that needs to be addressed: why are people poor and what is the bigger issue surrounding poverty?

Discussion

Since 1980, the number of financial aid applicants has risen from 2.4 million to about 10 million children and adults. In the last five years, the number of recipients rose by more than 75 percent. It costs about 7 billion a year to support this effervescent statistic. The costs are simply too much to handle. Social characteristics of families have changed as well. In the stepping-stones of this relief program, white widows headed most of the families. Today, a strong majority of financial aid dependency is caused by abandonment of children by fathers. However some critics may argue that financial aid is caused by broken family relationships irresponsibility's. Simply stated, "the welfare 'problem' has become a crisis (Adelman and Robinson, 2008).

Meanwhile in the year 2000, families at the top of the lowest quintile (those at the 20 percent level) had an average income of $17,950. In comparison, the 2002 official poverty guideline for the continental United States for a family of 3 was $15,020. This means that a typical family needs to have an income near the top of the lowest quintile to get above the official poverty line. The official poverty line fails to consider the high housing costs of many low-income families, the lack of employment benefits, the costs of going to work (transportation and child care), and other factors (Strange 2006 ). Many families with earnings in the second quintile are still struggling with circumstances that are properly named poverty. Another way to see this same picture is to consider that a full time, full year, minimum wage job only earns an annual income of $10,300. Even more so, in recent surveys conducted by the NPR, the cost rose to $30,000 to support a family of 4.

While it is hard for some to imagine, millions of workers receive the minimum wage or an amount close to the minimum wage. Indeed, there are estimates that as many as 2 million people work in jobs earning less than the minimum wage, either as farm workers, in jobs in businesses too small to have ...