Posted on 12/31/2006 2:58:00 PM PST by Lorianne
Government Test Tracks Families Who Moved; Girls Flourish, Not Boys ___
JACKSONVILLE, N.C. -- A decade ago, Lydia Grayson got as far away from her drug-addled, East Harlem housing project as she could. At the time, she was a 28-year-old mother of three, and, she says, a drug user. She took a federal housing voucher and packed her family on a Greyhound bus with one-way tickets to North Carolina.
Climbing out of poverty hasn't been as easy as getting on the bus. She says her life is now drug-free and more stable, and her children are growing up in a better environment. Yet in many ways, her struggles traveled with her.
"You really need to have a focus to get out of the ghetto," says Ms. Grayson, a New York native.
Her experience offers clues to a question society has wrestled with for years: Can a family escape poverty by getting out of the neighborhood where it takes root? It also sheds light on the government's shifting efforts to use housing policy as a solution to poverty.
A $16 billion federal infrastructure has built up around housing vouchers designed to give poor families more choices about where to live. About two million families currently use "Section 8" vouchers that allow them to move with subsidized rent. Since 1993, the government has been demolishing urban housing projects and forcing families to resettle in other places, sometimes with vouchers.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
And just what in Hell's name gives these damned bureaucrats the right to EXPERIMENT ON HUMANS??
Do they have the permission of the "low poverty" neighborhoods' inhabitants?
EVERY crime above baseline, and attributable to the subjects they moved, should be laid upon their stinking little stoop-shoulders.
If this were flouride studies; school diet studies; or any other such invasive studies, the Libs would be ballistic. The ACLU lawyers would be lining up6 deep at court clerks windows, to file suits. Because it is SOCIAL experimentation, that only harms PRODUCTIVE citizens, there's not a peep out of them.
Somebody needs to stick a finger in their watery, myoptic eyeballs, and cry, "ENOUGH!"
Here in Cincinnati, section 8 housing has destroyed once solid neighborhoods. Its funny, section 8 housing never seems to go to affluent or wealthy neighborhoods...
You are, of course, correct. However the move can help. New life, new friends, rather then people who know your weakness and want to drag you back down.
Humans are a bit like crabs, all to often when they see one getting out of the bucket they do their best to pull them back in.
There is a difference between being poor and being a ward of the state. In the former instance you are self-reliant, successful or not; in the latter case you have surrendered your self-reliance to the management of others.
Being poor means not very much money in your pocket right now, and maybe for a long time; being a ward of the state means that you have no will to succeed any more, you can no longer earn, just be given gifts.
A poor person still has their potential, their hopes and dreams, their talents and initiative, their optimism. A ward has traded all of that for a virtual prison, damned to a life of surviving, not thriving. Sustenance, never abundance. Mediocrity and boredom, a spiral of decline.
Interesting that the girls did better though. I would have thought the opposite.
They didnt count out of wed lock pregnancies I notice. Or grades.
Judging from personal experience, that translates to about 580 property crimes per 100 boys, since about 90% of the crimes do not result in an arrest.
Either "too petty"; perp too young; a warning rather than arrest; victim too afraid to press charges; damage or loss not reported; no evidence of who did it; etc., etc., etc.
Aren't social experiments wonderful?
"Interesting that the girls did better though. I would have thought the opposite."
They moved to a better neighborhood, but still don't have a father in the home.
One step at a time.
Too big a jump upwards would cause Culture Shock Syndrome to the poor dears, and discouraging and depress them even more.
It is for their own good, rather than any pettiness or MEAN SPIRITEDNESS on the part of the more affluent....
Go to any ghetto high school graduation.Female grads outnumber male grads at LEAST two to one.
Thats not to say they are smarter than the boys.They just persevere more and are way more likely to avoid the kind of unruly behavior that gets the boys"put out"of school.
That's exactly why I would have thought the girls would have done worse, no dad. It seems that no dad is harder on the girls than the guys, but that's just a casual observation.
I've lived among the ghetto thugs, and I've lived among the illegal Mexicans. I'd prefer neither, but at least the Mexicans kept to themselves, went to work, and occassionally treated me with respect.
I've lived among the ghetto thugs, and I've lived among the illegal Mexicans. I'd prefer neither, but at least the Mexicans kept to themselves, went to work, and occassionally treated me with respect.
BTW: I wouldn't call what the ghetto thugs speak as "English."
It isn't just black kids. There is something in the dependant welfare mentality which fights against the (traditionally derived through hard work) success of the offspring.
I have seen and heard welfare mothers tell their teenaged sons to not take good paying jobs the young men were capable of doing for a vast variety of reasons, none of which were valid.
At the root of it all seems to be the fear that if the kids succeed they will look down on the parent for not having done so.
There are good people in even the worst neighborhoods and I don't blame anyone for trying to find a better place to live. On the other hand, a neighborhood wouldn't be bad if most of the people did not want/allow it to be bad. Too many people take the slum mentality with them wherever they go.
Outstanding observation, imo.
Very true,it isn't just black kids with the entitlement mentality or with moms that pamper them and make every excuse in the book for their unwillingness to grow up.
It isn't either the welfare or underclass folks either.In my life,I have had the very sad opportunity to watch many well to do white kids piss away so many great options trying to live the druggie life or the hedonism lifestyle.
In my schools,I pretty much deal now with blacks and Mexicans with a few Asians thrown in.Its agonizing to see these kids,basically sweet and good natured,fall later to the whole ghetto subculture and they can't see the patterns they are weaving.
When they do wake up,its often after getting a ten year bid at San Quentin.
True,they don't often have a dad in the home.
And do you want to know a dirty little secret?Often its because MOM has driven him away.
Again I need to clarify.
Because I try to EXPLAIN a certain state of mind does mean I personally ADVOCATE that state of mind or think it is a wise position.
Sure,it would be way more preferable if blacks would just let the past go and live in the present.
Yet many do not and all I am doing is examining WHY.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.