We were confronted this week with a report that contained brutal — and very conflicting — facts about the nation’s capital: Poverty is increasing, and the middle class and poor blame the rich, or at least the politicians they believe favor the wealthy.
The D.C. Fiscal Poverty Institute released a report Tuesday concluding that one out of five District residents lives at or below the poverty line. It estimates that 106,500 residents live in households that make less than the poverty rate, set at $21,800 for a family of four.
This is doubly troubling because the number of people living below the poverty line has increased by 11,000 in the past year. It is triply troubling because kids suffer the most: One in three D.C. children lives below the poverty line, about double the national average.
The news is especially hard to swallow because the poor families live in a city that also is home to families of fabulous wealth. And, of course, our poor reside spitting distance from the Congress and White House that so often decry poverty.
The same report, financed by a coalition of 40 local organizations, used census data to show that poverty is increasing in black wards while residents in white parts of the city are actually earning more. Not too surprising, but here’s the troubling part.
In my view, the widening gap is clearly the result of demographics and market forces. Well-educated people, white and black, are moving into the city and getting well-paying jobs. Meanwhile, the recession has plunged more residents into poverty. Most are African-American.
In political terms, that divide between white and black — rich and poor — helped city council Chairman Vincent Gray defeat Mayor Adrian Fenty in the recent mayoral primary. Many African-American voters saw their prospects decline and their jobs disappear, and they blamed Fenty. Fenty, they were convinced, had favored white wards. Gray played into this anger and turned it into votes.
This assumption is absurd and self-defeating. It also flies in face of the fiscal realities. The facts are that most of the local revenues that make up the city’s $10 billion budget come from the white wards; meanwhile, the bulk of government services go to black residents in the form of social services, education and pubic safety.
How then, is Fenty or any politician responsible for favoring white wards?
The brutal truth is that wealth and poverty are almost entirely beyond the control of politicians. Yes, they can play on the anger, fear and envy that emanate from the disparity in income. But can they actually deliver on promises of righting the balance between rich and poor?
Fenty, despite his many flaws, started to right that balance by taking control of the District’s public schools and forcing reform. Education leads to jobs. Jobs can give people the chance to earn their way out of poverty.
Vince Gray has earned the votes of poor and middle-class blacks by promising them a better life, as they see in the white wards. Now let’s see him deliver.
Harry Jaffe’s column appears on Tuesday and Friday. He can be contacted at [email protected].
