Poverty

Posted on by Jim Cotterill

At the same time that city leaders and proud citizens of Indianapolis boast about our economic development successes, a deadly cancer is spreading throughout the body of our city—poverty.

Between 2000 and 2015 the rate of those living below the poverty level in Indianapolis more than doubled to exceed 20 percent of our city’s population, according to “Poverty Explodes in Indy”, a front-page Indianapolis Business Journal article (October 2017).

A city-wide poverty rate of 20 percent sounds pretty bad, right? Consider this… The poverty rate in the Crown Hill neighborhood—where UNITE INDY’s office is located, today is double the city’s—40 percent! That’s two out of every five people—right here in our own neighborhood—living in poverty. Even worse, the poverty rate in the Meadows neighborhood is 42 percent!

Although the Indiana Institute of Working Families says that it takes an annual income of $50,800 to be self-sufficient, a typical family of four living in poverty in Indianapolis, is surviving on $25,500, which is only $301 more than the amount that would classify a single parent with two children as living in poverty.

While the rate of whites in Indianapolis living below the poverty level is 13.2 percent, for Asian residents it’s 21.9 percent, for blacks it’s 28 percent, and for Hispanics it’s 34.3 percent.

According to U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. Census Bureau and Indiana Family Social Services, 31 percent of children under the age of 18—almost one out of every three children—in Marion County lives in poverty.

Our city’s child poverty rate as well as its general poverty rate each exceed their respective national rates by almost one third.

One in four families in Indianapolis lives within an area of concentrated poverty.

This is unacceptable, and it’s way past time for action!

The Root Cause

We realize that there isn’t just one, single factor that condemns someone to a lifetime in poverty.

But, we’ve chosen to tackle just one, because we believe it’s the major cause at the root of the problem, because our hearts have called us here, and because it’s the one area that we’re truly equipped to address.

The War on Poverty didn’t work. While there is certainly a need for a safety net for some, welfare has served only to lock too many families into a vicious cycle of multigenerational dependency.

Rather than decades more of government handouts, our brothers and sisters need a hand-up. Let’s work together to help them to replace their sense of hopelessness with hope, to replace the captive nature of their dependence upon others with liberation through self-reliance, and to replace the stress of never-ending debt with true financial freedom.

The root cause of poverty that we’ve chosen to tackle is the lack of work—the need for good jobs.

So we train people why they should work, how to find a job, how to prove their value to an employer so that they can keep a job, and how to prosper over time.

We don’t believe that people are inherently lazy. In fact, most in poverty will tell you that they would love to have a good job. A major problem is that the only jobs many can qualify for initially are low level, non-skilled labor positions that don’t pay well enough to raise a family above the poverty level.

We believe that, with the right job preparation training—if he or she must—a person can start at the lowest level, work his or her way up to a better job, and by following a well-developed roadmap out of poverty, which is part of our training, eventually land in the career of their choice.

Why do the poor need help? It’s difficult to understand at first. You’ve heard people say, “There are plenty of jobs out there. Why don’t people just go to work?”

The short answer is that many people, especially those who grew up without a hard-working role model, through no fault of their own simply don’t even know where to start.

To help them achieve success, UNITE INDY has become Central Indiana’s Certified Provider of Jobs for Life, a biblically-based job preparation course—taught in 300 cities in nine countries—that teaches students:

  • You were made to work.
  • You were created with God-given skills and talents to apply to your work.
  • There is dignity in work.
  • We worship God through our work.
  • We serve our family and meet our needs through work.
  • We love our neighbors through work.

Although the course is built on a Christian foundation, people of any faith or no faith are welcome to participate. We don’t preach to them or attempt to convert students.

In addition to the faith-based teaching (bullet points above), our Jobs for Life students will also be prepared with practical instruction that includes:

  • Confidence building
  • Development of a vocational plan
  • Resume preparation
  • Creation of a 60 second commercial
  • Employer expectations
  • Mock interviews
  • Interaction with area employers
  • And more!

Each Jobs for Life student is paired with a mentor, which we call their Champion, who walks alongside the student during the 8-week course, helping him or her to identify and overcome obstacles. Champions make an effort to remain in touch for six months to a year after graduation, and hopefully the duo will form a lifelong bond.

We do our best to educate area employers about Jobs for Life—the course content, the emphasis on character development, and the high level of participant commitment required to complete the course—in hopes that employers will grant priority consideration to our graduates.

Second Chances

We started with a group of parolees who decided to settle within Marion or one of the surrounding counties. Not only does work help them (and their families) to defeat the curse of poverty, obtaining a good job is also the biggest deterrent to returning to incarceration.

To aid them in their job search, UNITE INDY has developed SecondChanceIndy.com, the first and only job site that connects those with a record to area employers willing to give a second chance.

Once visitation limitations are lifted in Indiana prisons, we’ll be taking Jobs for Life behind the walls, and enabling reentrants to access SecondChanceIndy.com when they return to our community. Next, we will be offering to serve unemployed or underemployed residents of the communities that surround our urban churches.

Pay Day Lending

One of the biggest contributors to the downward spiral of debt that leads to bankruptcy and poverty is payday lending. Those that have the least are forced to pay the most in order to borrow what they often desperately need to just to get by when the car breaks down, the hot water heater fails, or the furnace goes out. The typical payday borrower has a median income just over $19,000 per year and re-borrows eight to 10 times, paying fees and interest that can bring the Annual Percentage Rate to as high as 391 percent, which is 15 to 20 times as expensive as credit card debt!

Even prior to COVID-19 taking its toll, Indianapolis had the second-highest number of evictions of any major city in the United States—more than Chicago and Los Angeles combined, despite only having one-third of Chicago’s population.

Is it any wonder that many of our neighbors, who have grown up in families that have experienced multigenerational poverty, who go to sleep every single night with the gnawing ache of hunger in the pit of their stomachs, wake up burdened by a sense of hopelessness?

Because poverty is linked directly to the major problems that plague those living in the urban core of our community, we believe that addressing its root cause will also have a highly positive impact on these issues:

The Poverty Rate by neighborhood within Marion County, Indiana, can be found HERE.

The expected adult household income for poor children growing up in any area in Indianapolis can be found HERE.

What can you do to fight Poverty in Indianapolis? Click HERE.

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Published by

Jim Cotterill