Surviving Poverty

Creating Sustainable Ties among the Poor

Joan Maya Mazelis

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781479864669
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Sociologia urbana

Surviving Poverty carefully examines the experiences of people living below the poverty level, looking in particular at the tension between social isolation and social ties among the poor. Joan Maya Mazelis draws on in-depth interviews with poor people in Philadelphia to explore how they survive and the benefits they gain by being connected to one another. Half of the study participants are members of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union, a distinctive organization that brings poor people together in the struggle to survive. The mutually supportive relationships the members create, which last for years, even decades, contrast dramatically with the experiences of participants without such affiliation.
In interviews, participants discuss their struggles and hardships, and their responses highlight the importance of cultivating relationships among people living in poverty. Surviving Poverty documents the ways in which social ties become beneficial and sustainable, allowing members to share their skills and resources and providing those living in similar situations a space to unite and speak collectively to the growing and deepening poverty in the United States. The study concludes that productive, sustainable ties between poor people have an enduring and valuable impact. Grounding her study in current debates about the importance of alleviating poverty, Mazelis proposes new modes of improving the lives of the poor. Surviving Poverty is invested in both structural and social change and demonstrates the power support services can have to foster relationships and build sustainable social ties for those living in poverty.

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Social Ties among the Poor in an Era of Unprecedented Inequality

1. Keep Working to Be What You Want: The Power of Individualism

2. I Stay to Myself: Avoidance of Social Ties

3. The Only Way We’re Going to Survive: Social Ties as a Survival Strategy

4. What Goes around Comes Around: Reciprocity in a Poor People’s Social Network

5. Our Strength Is in Our Unity: Sustainable Social Ties

Conclusion: Creating Change on the Outskirts of Hope

Appendix: Research Design, Methods, and Data Analysis

Notes

References

Index

About the Author

Preface

On December 16, 2003, activists from the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU) stage a protest outside the mayor’s office in Philadelphia’s City Hall to demand “Homes for the Holidays.” People gather at 4 p.m. and stay for several hours. Singing Christmas carols, the activists share food one of them has made and brought for dinner—they scoop the bean stew into small plastic bowls and pass them throughout the crowd, making sure the many children present eat first. Someone passes out bread. A leader calls on people individually to tell their stories. Each one of them says she is a homeless member of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union. The leader tells them never to be ashamed of their homelessness. The group sings more Christmas carols, and then someone brings out a cake; it is one of the children’s birthdays. Another leader begins to sing a song:

I went down to the rich man’s house, I took back what he stole from me. . . . I took my humanity, took back my dignity . . .

The children and activists join in and the group begins to sing the verse again, with a slight variation:

I went down to the mayor’s house, I took back what he stole from me. . . . I took my humanity, took back my dignity . . .

Soon administrators agree to meet with the homeless individuals, one at a time, and ask them questions. One member tells me they ask her things like, “How long have you been homeless?” “Where are you staying now?” “How many kids do you have? “Why are you homeless?” Eventually administrators offer to put people, for that night, into shelters, but KWRU leaders say that is unacceptable, that their numbers include some domestic violence victims who can’t be safe in shelters, and that these shelters themselves say that they are not set up to deal with victims of domestic violence.

As KWRU activists argue and administrators stand their ground, a Civil Affairs officer announces to the crowd, “It’s 7:08 p.m. This is your first warning. The building is closed, so you’ll need to exit. You will get another warning—in five minutes I will say ‘it’s 7:13. It’s time to go.’ And five minutes after that anyone who’s still here will be arrested.”

The crowd begins to disperse, with many of the adults herding all the children downstairs and outside. A few minutes after everyone regroups outside, a police van drives off with five KWRU activists inside, five women who decide they are willing to be arrested to prove their point. A news camera follows the ones who remain, and one woman shouts, “How can you arrest people for being homeless?!” The city hall officials begin to walk back through the city hall gate, and close it behind them.

A few weeks after the protest, I learn KWRU has secured five housing vouchers for members, many believe as a result of their protest. As Walter says of the group, “Our strength is in our unity, is in our coming together.” It was that way that night.

I conducted the research for this book from 2003 through 2006, with some follow-up in 2014–2016. I attended this protest and a number of others, and spent a good deal of time at KWRU’s office. This book is based in part on observations from these field experiences, but mostly on semi-structured interviews with twenty-five KWRU members and twenty-five people unaffiliated with KWRU who are also extremely poor Philadelphians. Many of the participants have lived their entire lives in poverty, often in the same or nearby neighborhoods they live in when I meet them. A few participants had slightly more economically secure childhoods on the lowest rungs of the middle class ladder, but have lost their footholds because of a disruption such as a parent’s drug addiction or death.

The majority of participants in this study have experienced homelessness, and some were homeless at the time of the interviews. This book addresses social support, social capital, and isolation—emotional subjects with significant economic effects for these desperately poor people. As KWRU member Walter tells me, to describe why members need the community KWRU provides, “you show me a poor person, or a homeless person, I’ll show you somebody that’s isolated.” The weakening of the public safety net accompanying widening inequality in the United States has increased the significance of such isolation.

This book illustrates some of the problems that make the drastic reduction of state aid disastrous for the nation’s poorest. It describes problems no private safety net can solve, in spite of a growing rhetoric that refuses to provide state support. Yet KWRU is a non–kin-based private safety net, uncommonly strong, that has flourished among the poor in Philadelphia. I argue that this private safety net significantly lessens members’ struggles. I conclude this book with proposals based on my findings, such as funding organizations built on the most effective aspects of KWRU, that are achievable even in the current policy environment.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to many people and institutions that helped make this study possible. I wholeheartedly thank Ilene Kalish, Caelyn Cobb, and NYU Press for believing in this project, and for their expert assistance. I thank production editor Alexia Traganas, copy editor Usha Sanyal, and the entire NYU Press team for their careful attention and hard work. I am deeply grateful to four anonymous reviewers for their constructive and supportive advice, which I have no doubt made the book better than it would have been without their guidance. Errors and omissions that remain are my own. A University of Pennsylvania School of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Fellowship Award in 2003–2004, two grants from the Otto and Gertrude K. Pollak Summer Research Fellowship fund from the University of Pennsylvania Sociology Department, in 2002 and 2003, and a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant Award in 2004–2005 enabled the research phase. In the writing phase, I benefited from an NSF/RU FAIR ADVANCE Mini-Grant and a Research Council Grant at Rutgers University.

My graduate school mentors, Kathryn Edin, Douglas Massey, and David Grazian, showed me unending patience and shared insightful advice and unwavering support over the years. Dave stepped up to fill a role on my committee without even knowing much about my work and offered valuable advice. Doug was always prompt with constructive criticism, and has demonstrated incredible flexibility, loyalty, and encouragement. Over the years, he’s taken every opportunity to let me know he’ll always be in my corner. Kathy has been advisor, mentor, friend, and cheerleader. She pushed me to work beyond limits I perceived, always having faith that I could do more. She believed in my strengths and forgave my weaknesses, and I feel lucky to say we’ve been in a mutual admiration society for nearly eighteen years. She continues to always make time for me at conferences, so we can discuss my work over an early breakfast or an afternoon coffee. I would not be the sociologist I am today without her.

Also at the University of Pennsylvania, Kristen Harknett and Elaine Simon both offered support and advice. The late Michael Katz provided guidance in the early stages of this project and his work continues to be a source of inspiration. Amy Hillier was a classmate in an Urban Studies seminar Michael Katz taught in 1998–1999, and now is at the Cartographic Modeling Laboratory and a professor in the Department of City Planning in the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania. Amy sat down with me to create multiple maps for my first write-up of this research. A decade later she created the revised, consolidated map that appears in this book. Her expertise is evident, and I am lucky to have her as a friend.

Xavier de Souza Briggs was exceedingly generous with guidance, moral support, and research opportunities on the Three-City Study of Moving to Opportunity when he was at Harvard University and MIT that allowed me to think about my own research in new ways; Xav is an intellectual role model as well as a friend. And working on the MTO project gave me the opportunity to meet and become friends with several others who’ve offered support and advice as well: Carla Barrett, Maria Rendon, Cynthia Velazquez Duarte, and Silvia Domínguez.

Friends and colleagues have helped more than they realize. As this book demonstrates, social ties really do matter. Matthew Desmond, Judith Levine, Mario Luis Small, Sandra Susan Smith, and Celeste Watkins-Hayes are all scholars I’ve been fortunate to meet at conferences who have given me deeply valued advice and encouragement, as have editors Naomi Schneider, Suzanne Nichols, and Peter Mickulas. At Yeshiva University I was lucky to find so much support among my colleagues, especially Silke Aisenbrey, Lauren Fitzgerald, and Stephen Pimpare. At Rutgers University, student Brendan Gaughan provided helpful research assistance. The invaluable secretary of the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice, Sherry Pisacano, has consistently gone above and beyond to offer moral as well as practical support. My departmental colleague Stacia Gilliard-Matthews and former Associate Chancellor for Civic Engagement Andrew Seligsohn, now moved on from his role at Rutgers-Camden to be president of Campus Compact, have been there for me without fail, with open arms and open ears. Their support, along with that of Marie Chevrier, Mary Beth Daisey, Tyler Hoffman, Natasha Fletcher, Howard Marchitello, Lori Minnite, and Melissa Yates has made Rutgers an environment conducive to this book’s publication. I thank Lauren Silver, a friend since graduate school and now a colleague at Rutgers, for an early read-through of a draft of the reciprocity chapter. Paul Jargows...