Hudson meets with local minds on fighting poverty

U.S. Rep. Richard Hudson (NC-08) made it very clear: The government cannot hug people. People hug people. And people, not government, should man the front lines of service and lead implementation.

In a round-table discussion with Cabarrus County nonprofits, the Representative met with community leaders to brainstorm how federal government could make their job easier.

“Part of our underlying assumptions of our poverty initiative is the federal government can’t hug people,” Hudson said. “The federal government is a very inefficient way of delivering services. You folks on the front lines are very good at hugging people and delivering meals and providing housing. How can we help you do that or get out of your way?”

Hudson launched his “A Better Way to Fight Poverty” tour across North Carolina in mid-August, making a stop in Kannapolis on Wednesday, Aug. 17, at the Chamber of Commerce. The congressman set out to discuss strategies to help people break the cycle of poverty, emphasizing that one in five children across the country go hungry and 46.7 million people fall below the poverty line.

“In this day in age in this wealthy nation, it’s really unbelievable to think about,” he said. “The country declared war on poverty 50 years ago. We’ve spent trillions of dollars since then to deal with the situation. You could probably argue that the floor maybe has increased so the people at the lowest end of poverty maybe aren’t as destitute as they were 50 years ago, but we still have this huge population of people, and I would argue that some of the programs out of the federal government actually trap people in this situation.”

Hudson outlined a plan to fight poverty, focusing on getting people the tools they need, rewarding efforts to break the cycle and demanding results—both from the organizations and those receiving services.

“Republicans care about people in poverty,” he said. “We just have a different idea of how to solve the problem, and what I proposed was we ought to change the model. Instead of basing the success of the war on poverty on how much money we spend or how many mouths we feed, let’s start measuring success based on how many people we lift out of poverty.”

Local control

The idea to move more control to local organizations resonated well with the gathered nonprofit directors. Many gathered said that a lot of the issues they faced required individual solutions rather than a one size fits all.

"From a social sense, who can solve these issues and reestablish our values, and those values belong to the community," Ed Hosack, executive director of Cooperative Christian Ministry, said. "Our local leadership works very closely with this team and many others, and our local leadership knows where the results are and how to get it and who's working together to make that happen. And locally we can leverage assets and resources locally that multiply the outcomes."

Valerie Melton, executive director of Boys & Girls Club of Cabarrus County, however, said that sometimes more local control can subject nonprofits to the fickle nature of changing leadership.

"What's funny is the funding that I lost was the one that was decided by a local council," Melton said. "So sometimes depending on who that group of people is making those decisions, it's a powerful thing."

One part of distancing service agencies from the federal government is removing some bureaucracy and simplifying the process. For example, Hudson said Welfare comprises almost 100 different projects.

"Most people don't have any idea there are 92 programs," the representative said. "They reformed one in 1997, got a lot of press, transformed a lot of lives, impacted our economy just by transforming one of them. But 92 programs—our idea is let's take the 92 programs and collapse them into one funding stream so we're not paying for 92 different bureaucracies, you don't have 92 different ways of accessing the help."

On a more local level, Ben Rose, director of the Cabarrus County Department of Social Services, said simplifying many of the services that department administrators would help with access and save staff time.

"You hit one word: Bureaucracy," he said. "The programs that we administer, the rules, the bureaucracy, are tremendous. To qualify for food stamps should be a two-page policy and it's a 2,000-page policy."

The anti-incentive

A large component to Hudson's plan is helping people shake the cycle, to pull themselves up and above that poverty line.

Hudson said he often looks at three different groups struggling to do that: Those who fall below the line due to age or disability, those who are born into it and those who sit on the bubble.

"You've got the third group, I call them kind of one broken down car away from poverty, one water heater breaking away from poverty," Hudson said. "People just living paycheck to paycheck just barely scraping by.

"You really need different descriptions to help lift them out of poverty."

One of the biggest hurdles people face remains having to choose on occasion between getting a better job and maintaining certain government subsidies such as low-cost child care or funds for transportation to and from work.

"It may be all they need is transportation," Hudson said. "All they may need is child care, or maybe it's some combination of that skills and training. The way it's stacked now, you've got a single mother working and trying to lift herself out of poverty. As soon as she's just starting to make it, we say, 'Oh, you're making too much money. We've got to take your child care away.' And she's right back into it."

Rose said he had seen examples of this in the community. Transportation, child care and health care tend to be big road blocks for people who might turn down raises or promotions so they can stay in a certain income bracket and make ends meet.

"I think, you know, looking at ways to reward people that get into the work force, help support that and keep them there," he said.

At the end of the day, Hudson said everyone's input would go a long way toward getting things done. The Representative said it will take people of all walks of life coming to the table.

"I'm excited that we as Republicans are now talking about these issues and now have a plan," he said. "I don't think one party can solve all of the problems that we're facing. It's going to take us working together."