Richard Koubek of diocesan Catholic Charities addresses an April 28 conference at Adelphi University on finding solutions to poverty on Long Island.
Garden City — More than 200 local leaders who convened at Adelphi University last week proposed practical steps toward eliminating poverty on Long Island, from instituting universal pre-kindergarten for low-income families to increasing money for buses in Nassau and Suffolk Counties.
Entitled “Ending Poverty on Long Island: An Action Plan,” the conference was sponsored by MICAH (The Mobilized Interfaith Coalition Against Hunger) and Adelphi’s School of Social Work. Since last fall, MICAH, an interfaith advocacy effort, has attempted to raise awareness of poverty on Long Island and its root causes.
Now it is ready to move beyond consciousness-raising to advocating for concrete actions.
“This was only the beginning,” said Richard Koubek, administrator for the Public Policy Education Network for diocesan Catholic Charities and a coordinator for MICAH. The MICAH steering committee will meet this month to form a strategic plan based on the public policy proposals of seven study groups.
Koubek said that he was heartened by the number of people attending, including about 100 members of the different faith communities involved in MICAH, other activists, and a contingent of Adelphi staff, faculty, and students. “It’s good to get the young people,” he said.
In addition, he noted that the participation of Paul Tonna, former Suffolk County Legislature presiding officer, Michael White, director of the Long Island Regional Planning Board, V. Elaine Gross, president of ERASE Racism, and Roger Clayman, director of the Long Island Federation of Labor, demonstrates the seriousness of their effort.
Before meeting in small study groups, participants heard a keynote address by Tonna, who is now the director of the Energeia Partnership at Molloy College, which seeks to bring together different Long Island institutions to address common problems.
“We are a fractured and overtaxed region and therefore very distracted,” he said. “Our busy middle-class, suburban lifestyle often leaves us unaware of the trials and tribulations that many working families face, struggling to feed and shelter their families.”
He challenged people of faith to go beyond being “church mice” and to actively work in the public sphere to help the poor tell their stories, and help Long Islanders see how these issues relate to them personally.
“We are a suburban area with urban issues,” said Paule Pachter, director of Long Island Cares, The Harry Chapin Food Bank, speaking at the workshop on wages. He noted that a 2006 study found that 260,000 Long Islanders are either hungry or suffer malnutrition, including 93,000 children.
“We have working families going to our food pantries and parish outreach offices who are making $28,000 a year and are struggling to make ends meet,” said Martha Graziano, a parish social ministry developer for diocesan Catholic Charities.
Such families fall above the federal poverty line of about $21,000 for a family of four, several participants pointed out, but that line is unrealistically low, especially for Long Island.
“The federal poverty line has to be regionalized,” said Peter Barnett, director of Wyandanch Homes and Property Development Corporation, adjusted to the higher cost of living in places like Long Island.
Bill Ayres, co-founder with the late singer Harry Chapin of the World Hunger Year, an anti-poverty organization, called for greater efforts to promote “wage supplements,” such as food stamps and earned income tax credits for the working poor.
Such supplements would help working families and also stimulate the Long Island economy. Many working people who are eligible don’t apply for them, Ayres said. “They estimated that in New York City, the amount of assistance in food stamps that people are eligible for but not getting is three quarters of a billion dollars.”
Ayres said that there are “probably $100 million in rebates that Long Island working families are not receiving for the earned income tax credit.”
The group agreed to propose promotion of such wage supplements and also advocate for regionalizing the federal poverty line as two practical steps to address poverty on Long Island.
“It’s good we’re raising consciousness today,” said Trudy Goldberg, professor of social work at Adelphi, “but it helps to have something to do with all this raised consciousness.”
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