'Invisible Child' (NYT series on impoverished child/family)

Just finished reading all five parts. This is an absolute masterpiece of reporting and writing, perhaps the best I've ever read from a newspaper.

 

It's just a bunch of hooey, say NY Post.

They're not homeless, they just live in a place for homeless families. Big deal that there are mice and sex assaults there. These people are irresponsible.

Also, since 2000, they've received a half million in aid that they're too rich for.

Fuck 'em, we've given them too much!

http://nypost.com/2013/12/09/the-new-york-times-homeless-hooey/

 

Incredible piece and I read it, like many I'm sure, with a sense of hopelessness. A lot of interesting comments, but I thought this one is spot on.

What do you? Really, what can you do? There's no easy solution. And the hard one -- taking the kids away from the parents -- is unpalatable to many.

Anyone who reads this article (a superb piece of journalism, sure to win a prize) would want to rescue Dasani and her siblings. But there is no good solution. No matter what is done for this family, we cannot save the children from their unfit parents, without harming the children by separating them from their unfit parents. And the taxpayers just continue to give to this family, which just keeps growing, despite free medical care, including free access to every type of birth control - free housing in one of the most expensive cities in the world, free food at home and school, in addition to $14,500/year in free money for food (which is likely not "lost" - just exchanged at a discounted rate to buy alcohol, drugs, and cigarettes), plus another $14,000/year in survivor benefits, plus another $5,000/year in earned income tax refund, not that either parent earns anything. The article doesn't mention it, but likely the parents are also collecting SSI on at least three of the children - the legally blind child, and the two children with asthma - to the tune of another $20,000/year. Then there's WIC for the baby and any child under 5. So this family is likely collecting $55,000/year in government support, while also receiving free room and board and utilities! And that's without the parents even being on SSDI themselves, which they easily could qualify for (and perhaps are already on), on the basis of having the "disability" of being drug addicts!

 

The Post Editorial is way to dismissive of the conditions faced by the children.

If the government is going to house folks, weather in a shelter, traditional housing, or even a jail cell, they should be safe from mice and, more importantly, sexual predators.

But, don't we need to face the question of why we've made keeping a family together the highest priority. A couple of "listless" drug addicts, with 8 kids, and no work history of work are never going to be suitable parents to Desani.

Poverty is no crime, and is no reason to remove a child. And, we do need to provide a safety net for the poor -- especially children.

But, if a parent is incapable of caring for their children, we're just encouraging generational poverty, and child abuse. And, when additional children bring additional benefits (like food assistance, that can be traded for pennies on the dollar for cash), we encourage folks like this to have additional kids they can't take care of.

 

Read the whole thing? The parents had their moments of savvy, overwhelmed as they may have been by bouts of selfishness and immaturity. Not that selfishness and immaturity is unique to the poor. The poor just can't afford the same missteps much wealthier people like us can.

 

From the comments section on that editorial:

 

Most of us have moments of selfishness and immaturity. Moments. This story, which is overwhelmingly sad to me, is not of a child/children trapped in a household characterized by "bouts" of selfishness/immaturity.

 

Keeping the family together is the highest priority because, for a child, that family, as incompetent as they may be, may be all they have in the world. Take their family away, and if they're lucky, they're put into a loving foster home. If they're not lucky, they're stuck with indifferent foster parents and then they have nobody to love them.

Unless you want to advocate forced sterilization of welfare recipents, there's not much of an alternative that can be done. Although, as I've advocated on here, I do think that, instead of drug-testing welfare recipients like some states are doing, that they should make a drug conviction an automatic suspension of benefits for a certain length of time. For those who truly want to remain on the dole, fear of a conviction can motivate them to stay off drugs. For those who cannot resist the temptation, well, then taxpayer dollars won't be wasted on them.

 

But the kids. That's my answer to this, every time. But the kids. You cannot punish little kids for having idiot parents. Morally, you just can't.

 

Those kids are already being punished. Abused even. Their parents may love them, yes. But don't kid yourself that those children aren't being punished.

 

Someone needs to learn how to calculate area.

 

But specific to "benefits," which usually means SNAP or the unemployment pay. But particularly SNAP. I'm just not convinced that, to use the ecomomist's term, the behavior is elastic enough to impose those sorts of incentives to stay clean. SNAP is really for the kids. The fact that a drunk or addicted or deadbeat parent might siphon some of the food off the top is simply unavoidable collateral damage and the price paid for using that parent as a necessary middle man.