On Friday afternoon, the basement of the St. Stanislaus Church Social Center was crowded with over 150 members of the Buffalo community for the second annual Poverty Research Workshop, which focused on the issue of women and homelessness.
Buffalo is the third-highest region of poverty in the country, with 30 percent of the city's population living under the poverty level. The event aimed to raise awareness on poverty in the community and provide a forum in which community members could speak out about recent findings in the field and areas that still need to be studied.
"We wanted to get Buffalo talking," said Kristin Cipollone, consultant for the Homeless Alliance of WNY and a UB doctoral ELP student. "The goal is to generate community needs and give students, faculty, and community members topics that need to be investigated to better understand and alleviate poverty."
All workshop participants were greeted with a large array of handouts from sponsors and service providers. The Homeless Alliance of Western New York and the Partnership for the Public Good compiled a collection of topics to present to faculty and students with the goal of encouraging continued research in the field and highlighting topics of interest.
The keynote speaker in the first half of the workshop was Dr. Maureen Hayes, senior research associate at the National Center for Family Homelessness. Hayes presented her findings as the project director for the multiyear Service and Housing Interventions for Families in Transition (SHIFT). Hayes conducted her findings through data collected from individuals who have been exposed to varying housing models.
"It's not just about getting these families off the streets, but how can we help them stabilize for long periods of time and maintain their independence," Hayes said.
Hayes found that housing programs made a large difference in the recovery of the women and families she studied. Buffalo has a large need for housing programs such as transitional housing and permanent supportive housing.
Kevin Blair, associate professor of social work at Niagara University, spoke in response to Hayes' findings. Blair touched on the issue of opportunity costs affecting the ability of women to achieve higher education.
"There's the tuition, the books, the fees, and so on," Blair said. "These are the direct costs [of achieving higher education]. The indirect costs are the money and time they are giving up for these four to six years."
Blair also discussed the need to educate undergrads on poverty and has been working on developing a minor that focuses on the effects of poverty at Niagara and other schools around the country.
"Most [students] come in with a lot of myths," Blair said. "[Students] are surprised at the results which turn up in the field work, such as the fact that being poor is time-consuming. Many impoverished people work but are unable to meet the cost of living due to lack of social support."
Teresa Miller, professor at law at UB, presented the topic of inadequate housing for females resulting in incarceration. Miller found that 35 percent of parolees in the U.S. return to prison as a result of parole violation.
"We are populating prisons with people who can't make it on the outside," Miller said. "[This is] largely because of the technical violations that they committed because they are set up to fail. A key determinant to the success of paroles is adequate housing."
Public housing under the federal law has the right to restrict housing rights to those recently incarcerated, and drug offenders must prove that they are receiving rehabilitation to be considered for public housing. Miller says that this civil penalty assumes all drug offenders as continued users, setting these individuals up to fail without giving them an opportunity.
The final speaker, Kenneth Gaston, case manager from GROUP ministries, addressed the importance of community health workers and their role in the struggle against homelessness and poverty.
"Often time we look at homelessness from a very narrow perspective," Gaston said. "[We] forget about other issues such as health care, which plays a big role."
Gaston believes that it is important to "bridge the gap" between community service providers and doctors. Community health workers operate directly with individuals affected by poverty to work toward avoiding homelessness.
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