GEOGRAPHY OF POVERTY: BROWNSVILLE STILL IN EPICENTER

The most vulnerable Americans are being crushed by the grip of poverty, from the deserts of the Southwest through the black belt in the South, to the post-industrial, rusting factory towns that dot the Midwest and Northeast.

From border to border, high-poverty rates have crippled entire communities, leaving bellies burning with hunger and hope of better days dwindling. Income inequality has widened in recent decades while upward mobility has declined. A tiny percentage of high income Americans hold the majority of the wealth in this country.

Quite plainly, the rich have grown richer and if you’re born poor here you’re likely to die poor. The slight declines in the national poverty rate have done little to allay the day-to-day plight of so many who are just scraping by, largely invisibly and along the margins.

The poverty rate for African Americans and Hispanics is particularly stark, with 27 percent and 23.5 percent respectively falling below the poverty line.

By Trymaine Lee

MSNBC

ROWNSVILLE, Texas — The women often arrive carrying children in their arms, their burdens etched in sun-beaten skin. The men come with blistered hands and feet from hard labor or hard journeys. They arrive day and night, a stream of the weary, to this barbed wire compound of low slung buildings just minutes from the Mexican border.

They come for hot meals and soft beds—human comfort for those sent into the wind by economic or emotional calamity.

People come to this shelter—known locally as the Ozanam Center and throughout Latin America as Casa Romero—from across the U.S.-Mexico border and throughout this forsaken city. It is both a way station and a destination for thousands of homeless immigrants and deeply impoverished local residents—an oasis in a city perennially ranked as America’s poorest.

“There’s a lot of need, a lot of hunger, a lot of undocumented along the border from here to El Paso,” shelter director Victor Maldonado said. “Sometimes the needs get so heavy. You just take a breath and try to do your best and pray and hope that wherever they are going, whatever they are looking for comes through.”

Maldonado stood under the searing Texas sun on a recent afternoon, watching a van pull into the compound carrying more than a half-dozen homeless men and women.

“We take in anybody and everybody regardless of your documentation or your status,” Maldonado said. “That’s no excuse to close our doors to anyone. They are here and that’s not going to change. It’s the human thing to do to help them.”

Shuttered buildings and broken dreams litter many of the cities that dot the U.S. border with Mexico. It’s often hard for people in these communities to find good jobs or access to a quality education.
Hunger in the Valley

HUNGER IN THE VALLEY

Texas is no anomaly. All across the Southwest, from the long, arid stretches of southern California to the badlands of Utah, Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico, persistent pockets of poverty have been exacerbated by a messy tangle of bad economic and immigration policy. Generations of mostly Hispanic families, U.S. citizens and the undocumented alike, have faced insurmountable challenges in achieving the kind of American prosperity that drew so many of them to this country in the first place.

Of the 353 counties in the United States deemed by the federal government to be persistently poor—meaning the poverty rate has been above 20 percent for three consecutive decades—85 percent are in rural areas including Hispanic communities like Brownsville, set in the belly of the Rio Grande Valley at the southernmost point of Texas.“Sadly, there’s a segment of our population that will never be lifted out of poverty. They’re stuck forever.”

With a poverty rate that has hovered around 36 percent in recent years, Brownsville regularly tops the list of America’s poorest cities. Poverty in Cameron County, which includes Brownsville, is just as dismal. Between 2009 and 2013, according to the most recent census, about 35 percent of county residents fell beneath the poverty line. The numbers of poor children in the county are even more numbing, with nearly 47 percent living in poverty. This region of south Texas also struggles with deep health and educational disparities.

Fifty years after the War on Poverty, this wealthy nation still has plenty of places like Brownsville—regions coping with widespread joblessness, persistent income inequality and staggering hunger and food insecurity.

“Statewide, one in four of our children are hungry. In the valley that number is one in two,” said Terri Drefke, CEO of the Food Bank of the Rio Grande Valley. “A lot of folks need extra assistance, and whether they are getting it from the food bank or from SNAP [food stamps] and just trying to make it on their own, it’s all supplemental and none of it is enough to make things whole.”

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