Poverty Issues in Nashville

Nashville, the city I love and call home, is having real issues with poverty. In his Tennessean article today, Michael Cass cites that the poverty rate in Nashville rose from 13% in 2000 to 16.9% in 2009. The poverty rate for children under age 5 is 34.4%. That is astounding -- over one-third of the children under age 5 live in poverty in Nashville, Tennessee. Between September 2009 and September 2010, the number of people receiving food stamps increased by 11.25%. In addition, over 13, 000 families in Davidson County live on an income of less than $15,000 a year. The "experts," whoever they may be, are saying this increased poverty rate are due to the economic recession (and the loss of non-knowledge-based jobs) and May's flood. The article also hints that the 33,000 foreign-born residents gained in 10 years may also be contributing to the poverty rate.

When I see these statistics, my heart hurts with the incredible loss of potential I see in Nashville. I think about the children who are waiting lists to get into Preston Taylor Ministries's after-school program. (PTM serves families living in the Preston Taylor public housing neighborhood north of Charlotte Ave.) These children want to succeed, and their parents want them to succeed, but the realistic (and fiscally-responsible) economic limits on programs like PTM leave them without help. I think about my friend who is struggling to find a job teaching English as a second language to adults (she was laid off this month), and how she could be a key to helping some of these families escape the poverty cycle. The people she meets are from Africa's war-torn countries, the Middle East, and Asia -- they have skills, they just need the language. These are courageous people who have left all they've known to come to America, the proverbial land of opportunity, and they are shoehorned into low-paying jobs because they don't know English. I think about the people who criticize TennCare programs as being too generous, and I want to introduce them to these children who literally would never see a doctor without TennCare's benefits.

When the flood hit Nashville in May, the city pulled together to help those in need. The crisis isn't over -- this city needs to continue pulling together to help the increasing number of people in financial peril and create options for success.