Poverty: Who Cares?

At a recent meeting of the poverty-reduction task force created by Gov. Tim Kaine, an advocate for homeless veterans suggested that the principal problem facing the poor in Virginia is that their fellow citizens have hearts of stone. "People don't care," the advocate said. "That's the biggest problem we have here in Virginia."

Like any other sweeping generalization -- "people don't read"; "people don't exercise" -- the first statement is true of some individuals but not of others, and certainly not true of the commonwealth in the aggregate. From the United Way and the Central Virginia Food Bank to Sergeant Santa and Hunters for the Hungry, the Old Dominion boasts a profusion of charitable organizations.

In fact, according to the Urban Institute's National Center for Charitable Statistics, there are nearly 25,000 public charities in Virginia. They include more than 600 devoted to housing; more than 400 devoted to youth; more than 1,900 devoted to human services; and more than 900 devoted to philanthropy and volunteerism.

There are so many charitable organizations that it often requires the efforts of umbrella groups, such as Homeward, to coordinate the work of the rest. And those public charities don't include the thousands of churches across the state that routinely hold clothing and food drives, endow scholarships, rehab homes, conduct prison ministries, and provide a conduit for neighbors to help neighbors. (We won't even get into corporate philanthropy, except to note that, according to the National Philanthropic Trust, the nation's largest corporate grantmaker is the oft-reviled Wal-Mart.)

. . .

All of that eleemosynary activity occurs in addition to the many federal, state, and local anti-poverty programs that exist, from the obvious (e.g., Jobs Corps and Medicaid) to the not-so-obvious (e.g., the public schools). Most of those programs grew out of concern for people in need. Over time, society realized some anti-poverty programs perpetuated the very problems they were meant to ameliorate. Hence, e.g., welfare-to-work, derided by some as uncaring and even mean-spirited.

Indeed, the biggest problem facing efforts to reduce poverty is not a lack of concern, but a lack of consensus. To some, caring means providing financial support. To others, that is a recipe for perpetual dependency. To some, the cure for drug addiction is deterrence through punishment. To others, that is a recipe for perpetual relapse. To some, school vouchers would rescue inner-city students from failed schools. To others, that is a recipe for destroying public education. And so on.

Decades into the war on poverty, sharp differences over how to wage it still exist. The principal challenge facing the governor's task force is to come up with concrete proposals that do not merely recycle old ideas; that might actually work; and that a majority of lawmakers in the General Assembly might actually agree on.

While the task force deliberates, Virginia's thousands of charitable organizations will continue to do their good works -- in humble obscurity perhaps, but also in the knowledge that the difference they make is greater, and more important, than the public recognition they receive.