Poverty in Madison – Part One

Guess what, we have poor people in Madison, and with the economy, that number is growing! That’s what some on the Council learned last night.

I have pages and pages and pages of notes on what people said. Here’s the highlights:

– Alders who attended: Verveer, Cnare, Konkel, Solomon, Verveer, Bruer, Rummel, Palm, Compton, Clausius, Schumacher, Clear
– Alders out of the room for 75% of the presentation: Bruer
– Alders who made it to the end of the presentations (8:00): Konkel, Verveer, Rummel, Palm, Compton, Clear
– Staff who were there that didn’t speak: Tim Cooley, Lucia Nunez, Ariel Ford
– 10 members of the public showed up including: Soglin, Shiva Bidar-Sielaff,Maya Cole, former S. Madison Weed and Seed coordinator Leslie McAllister, staff from South Madison Planning Council, Nieghborhood President from Darbo-Worthington area and a few others.
– Mayor, no where in sight. Sent Ray Harmon and Joel Plant.

Pat Schramm
– Even tho our unemployment rate is still relatively low, the scale in numbers is large and bigger than she’s ever seen it.
– The gap between Madison and our 6 county area is narrowing, i.e. our economies are more alike.
– Up until the recession, our major concern was the shrinking workforce, the people entering the market are 15% lower than the people leaving.
– 22,000 people in Madison do not speak English or very little, which means we need bilingual capabilities
– 45% of our elementary school population gets free or reduced lunch and this is the workforce in 8 years and while there is no correlation between poverty and success, there is a correlation between poverty and opportunity. We need to find ways to get these people technical skills.
– Companies need to work on thinking about “career pathways” to move people up to more skilled jobs.

Lynn Green
– Poverty affects everything in your life.
– Poverty is hard to document, but it is on the rise.
– The affect of the rise in poverty on services is that we serve what we can (capacity limit), but the problems are getting worse.
– In child protective services, the injuries are worse.
– There is increased stress in families with more mental health and substance abuse, including more hopitalizations for psychiatric hospitalizations ($2M deficit in last year’s budget, waiting lists for programs are longer.
– Joining Forces for Families social workers are working on basic needs – food, shelter, clothing.
– When they are hiring for entry level jobs that need a high school degree, they are getting applicants that have master’s degrees.
– For energy assistance, from October 2007 to 2008 they gave out $2.6M to 7.000 familes. From Oct 2008 – Dec 11, 2008 they went through $2M and served 2,000 families.
– The staff dealt with 206 families that had been disconnected this winter.
– The housing assistance program – once a year you can get $150 per person in your family if you can prove you are homeless – is completely overwhelmed with applications at the moment.
– They had seen a 32.5% increase in applications for medical asistance, food stamps and W-2 last year – they had 133 requests per day last year. In January, they experiences another 21% increase.

Andy Heidt
– Housing is the foundation and keeps the family together.
– If you can’t pay your rent, let other bills slide, get bad credit and then can’t get new housing.
– We haven’t build one new unit of public housing in 40 years and the housing we have is aging and not keeping up with technology for people with disabilities.
– Truax and its proximity to MATC holds some exciting possibilities for partnering with the services available there and the education opportunities.
– Tax exemption issue threatens 1,000 affordable housing units in Madison when we can’t afford to lose a single unit and instead we need more units with services.
– The affordable housing trust fund needs to be used here in Madison (“We don’t need to build Bayview in Belleville, light rail will take a long time to get there!”
– Housing issues are hitting the middle class with the foreclosure issues.
– We should not charge such high interest rates on seniors who can’t pay their property taxes.
– We should be innovative and purchase properties, land bank and look for collaborations with private sector, government and non-profits.

Noble Wray
– We have a tale of two cities – police spending most of time working with only one of them.
– Poverty doesn’t create crime, but it creates a negative synergy.
– Our housing patterns are part of the negative synergy.
– We need a regional approach to poverty.
– We need to address the fact that people come from Milwaukee and Chicago if we’re going to be honest about the problem. 30 to 40% of arrests have social security numbers that are traced back to Chicago.
– Probation and parole need to place people where their families are.
– When gas prices went up – there were an increase in drive offs at the gas pump.
– Domestic violence is expected to rise.
– Problems with properties that have been abandoned.

Dan Nerad
– The children are not our future, we are their as we make decisions about how our community develops.
– He wants to see schools and the city working together.
– A tale of two school districts
– Early childhood development is key – kids who have not been read to or haven’t used crayons and scissors start out behind.
– He handed out charts with poverty and achievement gap data. It’s pretty staggering, I’ll try to find a way to post those charts.
– For every child that wants to come into the district during open enrollment, 2 or 3 want to leave
– 50% of kids qualify for free or reduced lunch.
– 798 homeless kids in last school year – this year they’ve already reached 2/3s of that number.
– We need 4 year old kindergarden to help kids start off right.

That was the end of the presentations.

Alder Rhodes-Conway asked what one thing we could do, beyond what Andy mentioned (solve the tax exemption problem, build affordable housing and use the affordable housing trust fund)

Noble Wray – Study the nubmers in neighborhood indicators and push to operationalize it.

Lynn Green – Employment and training and self-sufficiency. Says W-2 program doesn’t do enough training. Likes that we pushed to hire residents at Allied Drive in our project out there.

Dan Nerad – We have children in nursing offices with health and dental needs and we need 4 year old kindergarden.

Pat Schram – Housing, housing, housing and more affordable ousing. Inability to have a place to live with undo all the good work everyone has done.

More to come tomorrow.