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From morals to economics, poverty is everyone’s problem

May 14, 2008

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Lisa Marsh, 39, is a South Lake Tahoe resident and a single mother of three. She dreams of a better life for herself and her children, but the realities of everyday living often get in the way of dreams.

“A lot of us don’t like to classify ourselves as the ‘have-nots,’ and yet at the same time you start looking around and going my god there is just no way we will never be able to buy a house,” Marsh said.

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“I have (renter) friends who are living off their credit cards who you would consider middle class, but I can’t even do that.

“If it weren’t for HUD Section 8 housing, I would be homeless,” Marsh said.
Marsh is not alone. Across the lake in Kings Beach residents tell a similar story.

In a recent survey by Domus Development, the Workforce Housing Association of Truckee Tahoe found that residents of Kings Beach are paying 50-60 percent of their income for housing.

“That doesn’t include food for your child or gas, it is just going to rent,” said Emilio Vaca, of Tahoe Women’s Services. “You are eventually going to realize that it is better to go live in Reno, Sparks or Carson, and drive in every day.”

Both Vaca and Marsh have seen more and more people move to Reno or Carson City and commute to the lake for work.

“In the past decade there has been a transition from living and working at the lake, to working at the lake and living in the valley,” Vaca said. “The reality is that there is a gentrified community being built, that those that can live here should live here and those who can’t pretty much all we need you is to clean our toilets, do our yard work and maintain our casinos, but we don’t want you to live here.”

Vaca says that attitude is destructive and creates a shallow community.

“The young ones who get involved (with their community) and create a change to better the town are being driven out.”

Vaca says many of the people replacing them are uninvolved. He says many have the attitude, “I’m happy where I’m at. I don’t have a problem, why is everybody else complaining? Why should I care, it is not my problem.”

Vaca says it is often the people who don’ t have much that are willing to give.

“Even if they don’t have anything to give they still give you the little they do have,” he said. “The individuals that have everything are like, ‘what do you want?’ That is so sad. That is not a community.”

From, “Not my problem,” to “What can I do?”

Incline Village resident Santa Claus, who legally changed his name, has seen this generosity in his travels.

Santa’s Bless the Children Tour began in 2006 and ended in 2007 after touring all 50 states, to help draw attention to children’s issues.

After meeting many people on the tour Claus said, “The people who are most generous with their spirit were people who aren’t well off. When I grew up, we were encouraged to help the helpless.”

For Claus, helping others isn’t an option, it is a calling.

“We are taught that we are to love on another. If you look at it from a Christian perspective, as I do as a monk and clergy, it wasn’t a suggestion, we are to love one another.

“People used to ask me why I wore a collar as clergy,” Claus said. “What I would tell people is that it reminds me what goes around comes around. I think that is true if we are talking about poverty, or education or health and human services or the environment. If the haves do not help the have-nots to a certain degree, things tend to fall apart.”

Yet the solutions are out there.

Author Scott Miller, who has written and studied poverty for 20 years, considers poverty a form of modern-day slavery.

“I think the biggest challenge we have is indifference,” Miller said. “People use the Biblical passage of the poor will always be with us as a way to reinforce indifference. I don’t think that passage is in the right context. And it is not a ticket to indifference. The message is not to ignore the poor.”

Besides the moral question, Miller says, poverty costs everyone money and poverty affects everyone in the community.

The Center for American Progress estimates $500 billion a year for raising children living in poverty,” Miller said. “(There are) 12.9 million kids living in poverty. It is really much larger than that, but the official poverty guidelines suggest 12.9 million. That works out to about $38,000 per child per year if you let them get raised in poverty.

“That’s increased crime, increased health-care problems, and reduced productivity in the workforce. We are shooting ourselves in the foot to allow this much poverty to continue.”

But Miller has come up with a plan to help end poverty. The plan called Circles™ seeks to build relationships between the classes by pairing up middle- and upper-class citizens with people in need. By building relationships, people come to understand each other and work together for a better future.

Miller says people only need an invite.

“If you take a look at any community and see it in concentric circles, the inner circle you have people who are pretty committed to do something about poverty, but what they need is some structure, an invitation to do something about that,” Miller said. “So when we put together a Circles™ campaign in a community we start off by drawing in people who already want to do something and organize a way in which people with some resource can be in a friendship relationship with people who don’t have enough resources and help them move toward having enough resources to make ends meet and move themselves out of poverty.

“I think the most important thing is to have a structure in the town that is user-friendly that allows (people) to get involved in a way (they) can see that will work,” Miller said.

“It is very hard to have a direct relationship with a family in poverty the way we set up (the American) system. If you can create a way in which I can get know the family then people’s commitment to do something, to help somebody that they can actually get to know, and they know they are doing everything they can to get them selves our of poverty, people’s commitment and generosity opens up more and more in those kind of relationships.”

Right now South Lake Tahoe does not have a Circles™ campaign, but there are campaigns in Carson City and Lyon County, as well as in 16 other states.

Lake Tahoe is Poverty with a ViewLisa Marsh walks with Laney at Valhalla.

“There is a big discussion to try and find a balance in a community where people of all economical and social and other levels can co-exist and help each other,” Claus said. “That isn’t happing in a lot of resort communities.”

Marsh doesn’t like to think what will happen to Lake Tahoe if only the wealthy are left there.

“If Tahoe ended up being a community of strictly second-home owners, what are you going to do with the city workers?” Marsh asked. “Are we going to have low-income housing down at that end of town where they don’t get seen? I saw that down in Oakland. There was a line that you don’t cross with out locking your doors. And that is what happens. The middle class evaporates, then you end up having the $2 million dollar homes and the renters that are in the projects and there is nothing in the middle.

Marsh has thought about moving somewhere cheaper, but stays in Tahoe not only because she has roots here, but because of the scenic quality of life.

“ I think it is easier to live in poverty at Tahoe, than living in poverty in the city.” Marsh said. “It is a different kind of poverty. It doesn’t cost anything to take my kids for a walk down to the stream and get in a science lesson while you are doing it. I think there are more options (here) than somewhere else.”

According to the last US Census in 2000 nearly 3,000 people in South Lake Tahoe were living in poverty. Lisa Marsh’s story is just one of them.

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Written by Liz Margerum · Filed Under Feature #2, People 

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