true but half are grown ass adults. i dont make excuses for adults. anyone over 30 knows how the real world works. i guess the herd mentality wins out but having a pity party wont help things. thats what got it here.
I read this the first time and wanted to disagree, but I read it again and I agree with some of what you are saying. I am a commissioner on the Palm Beach County Housing Authority and HUD makes it impossible for some people to move out of poverty, those who are on housing. If a single parent has a job and making income where she can pay poverty level rents and she meets a guy who is working, he cant live with her, but if they get married and he is working and can stay in that housing situation for 18 months and require them to save money for a down payment or to move somewhere they can pay market rents, its the ideal situation. But HUD is against that with its restrictive policies, so in essence, its like pay to stay for that single mom, because they are subsidizing the rent, utilities, etc, with a little flexibility in the rules, we could move these people out of the system and they could actually take care of themselves and pay market rent and better living conditions. Im working to change it, but its pretty frustrating, so I agree some programs create a cycle of poverty.
It's become modern-day slavery, and many white people are entrapped, as well. When a person does not work and does not have a work ethic, the community around them suffers, as does that person.
I would also like women on welfare to work for their money, with the caveat that the mothers would receive free childcare/preschool. This could also help prepare their children better for school, in that they will get the preschool education that most of them don't get now. Without preschool these days, children are behind from the first day of kindergarten, which starts the vicious cycle of unequal opportunity in education.
Since the 1990's, welfare is limited to 3 years and recipients must take job training/job placement classes and seek work. It seems to be working because welfare is way down. On the other hand single mothers with no car and little money raising 3 or more kids is a full-time job with little time available for work. Public housing is the big subsidy now. Once the model was to make the housing very spartan, like small apartments in multi-story buildings. Such places became a cesspool of crime and squalor that people wanted out of. They have demolished most of the old projects and replaced them with much nicer single-family dwellings which are kept mowed and painted by the government. Much better environment, but . . . There is a black woman who recently retired from my office. I watched her raise a child by herself on a secretaries salary, pay her own rent, buy her own car and struggle to get by in a bad neighborhood in a small and run-down house. She never had more kids because she couldn't afford them and she was pissed, I mean pissed, at the nice new public housing given to women who never worked, had 4 kids by four fathers, none of whom hung around. These people find the houses so nice that they have little incentive to leave them and work hard for a crummy old, but affordable apartment. And it irritates the hell out of the single moms that work hard and have to pay for everything.
If Hamsterdam were still around this would all be contained. But for real. I know TV shows don't represent real life situations but The Wire gets pretty close to telling a true story.
I was telling @fanatic that if you like The Wire, David Simon the creator, basically took his Television Show Homicide Life on the Streets, and created The Wire from it. It's about the Baltimore Homicide unit, and during the late 80's early 90's was in my opinion the best show on TV and still is one of the best shows ever created. In fact that's where Richard Belzer's character John Munch (Homicide/Law and Order SVU) got his start. He was a crossover character. A lot of those writers went on write for other shows like The Shield, The Wire, Sons of Anarchy, Law and Order etc, they all got their start on Homicide. Did you ever watch Homicide?
