Category: **Resources: ESPC Documents:

Report by Marian J. Rossiter and Katherine R. Rossiter, 2009. Prairie Metropolis Centre.

Did you know?

• 46 to 74 percent of immigrant youth whose first language is not English fail to finish high school.
• Immigrant youth are recruited into gangs and illegal activity as early as the age of 10, and continuing to the ages of 18-20.
• Immigrant and refugee youth are not perceived to be in conflict with the law more than their Canadian peers, but they are more vulnerable to gang recruitment.

If the basic needs of immigrant youth are not met they will seek alternative means, which may lead to involvement in organized crime. This report examines key factors at play in the lives of immigrant youths who become involved in crime, gangs, and violence in Edmonton.

Prime risk factors identified are:

• Family – poverty, lack of healthy family relationships, mental and physical health
• Individual – pre-immigration violence, addiction, health issues
• Peer – social exclusion, discrimination, inter-ethnic conflict
• School – lack of ESL and curriculum adaptation; bullying; interrupted formal education
• Community – lack of role models and leadership opportunities within their ethno-cultural community; lack of safe and affordable housing

Many of these risk factors will compound on each other to create extremely volatile situations.

4 major policy recommendations are made by the authors:

• Enhance integration by providing adequate funding for settlement, mental health, and multicultural services to facilitate adaptation.
• Government must ensure that the socioeconomic circumstances of immigrant families allow them to meet their basic needs. Programs for safe housing and appropriate employment are necessary.
• Communities must have comprehensive support networks for immigrant youth and their families in place to provide youth with information about social and health services, education, employment, and other resources.
• Schools are in an ideal place to meet the needs of immigrant youth. A process of needs and risk assessment should be set up, followed by adequate ESL support and necessary curriculum adaptation. Culturally and ethnically diverse staff populations are in a position to act as role models. Zero-tolerance methods for dealing with bullying and other transgressions should be replaced with restorative measures. Immigrant students should be supplied with career counselling, goal-setting guidance, after-school programs aimed at helping them adapt and integrate, and funding for further education.

Coordination between multiple levels of government and diverse sectors of the community is essential for reducing the risk of immigrant youth becoming involved in criminal activity.

This paper is useful for anyone working with immigrants or at-risk youth; educators.

Review by Jennifer Hoyer  

ESPC Documents/PUBLICATIONS/A.06.C RESEARCH UPDATES/2009 September Research Update.pdf

Review in December 2008 Research Update of:

The Cost of Poverty: an analysis of the economic cost of poverty in Ontario. Report by Nathan Laurie, Ontario Association of Food Banks, November 2008.

The Costs of Child Poverty for Individuals and Society: a literature review. Report by Julia Griggs and Robert Walker, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, October 2008.

Estimating the Costs of Child Poverty. Report by Donald Hirsch, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, October 2008.

The Economic Costs of Poverty in the United States: subsequent effects of children growing up poor. Report by Harry Holzer et al., Center for American Progress, January 2007.

Poverty is expensive. Some new reports, from the UK, the US, and across Canada, are demonstrating that the costs of poverty over the long term are far greater than the costs of prevention. What‟s more, these studies have deliberately used conservative measures in estimating the financial costs of poverty to ensure that the cost of poverty is not exaggerated or overstated – which means that in all likelihood, the true costs of poverty are even greater. The numbers below are summarized from 4 reports that have recently been added to our library on the costs of poverty to society. Note that there are, inevitably, great challenges in calculating the financial costs of poverty – while the various reports are useful tools and give an idea of how poverty reduction programs could save money, the different methodological approaches yield different cost estimates and are not directly comparable.

• Overall: Overall cost of poverty in Ontario: $10.4 billion to $13.1 billion per year, which is equal to $2299 to $2895 per household in Ontario per year, or 5.5 to 6.6% of Ontario‟s GDP. Overall cost of child poverty in the US: $500 billion per year, or 4% of GDP.
• Intergenerational Effects: Children are not poor by their own making, and there is evidence demonstrating that children who grow up poor are less able to escape poverty later in life. Lost income tax revenues created by lower incomes of adults who grew up in poverty: in Ontario, $1.3 billion to $1.6 billion per year; in Canada, $3.1 billion to $3.8 billion per year. Lost productivity resulting from the experience of growing up in poverty or near poverty in the US: $170 billion per year, or 1.3% of GDP.
• Health: Growing up in poverty negatively affects health – this conclusion is supported by well-documented and peer reviewed studies that have examined the relationship between socio-economic status and a variety of health indicators throughout the life cycle. Cost of increased health expenditure and reduced value of health in the USA: more than $150 billion, or 1.2% of GDP per year. Cost of additional primary healthcare expenditure resulting from child poverty in the UK: approximately £859 million per year. Cost of additional acute healthcare expenditure resulting from child poverty in the UK: £1.2 billion per year. Potential health care savings of raising the incomes of those in the lowest quintile to be equivalent to the income of the second-lowest quintile: in Ontario, $2.9 billion per year; in Canada, $7.6 billion per year.
• Crime: Although crime is correlated with poverty, it is difficult to establish definitive causal links between the two. A number of studies, however, demonstrate links between crime and other indicators of poverty, such as educational attainment, literacy levels, and neighbourhood inequality. Additional costs of crime created by child poverty in the US: $170 billion per year, or 1.3% of their GDP. Cost of child poverty for additional police and criminal justice services in the UK: £1.2 to £2.9 billion per year. Potential savings in the cost of crime by reducing poverty and raising literacy levels: in Ontario, $250 to $550 million per year; in Canada, $1 to $2 billion per year.

Book by Betsey Leondar-Wright, 2005
Reviewed by Anette Kinley in December 2008 Research Update

It is often the case that organizations or groups trying to address poverty and working-class issues are mainly, if not totally, represented by middle-class people. The differences in perspectives and life experiences between classes can lead to a variety of misunderstandings, missteps and frustrations that create barriers to working together effectively toward common goals.

Class Matters is an engaging collection of stories and practical ideas from experienced advocates that illuminate how the class differences that can limit the progress of groups working for social change can be overcome. To put it in author Betsy Leondar-Wright’s words, “We all have the choice to get by, get over, or get together. This book is for those who take the “get together” path, and its goal is to help us get together across class differences.” (page 7)

Even though I haven’t read it from cover to cover – yet! – I am convinced that Class Matters should be recommended, if not required, reading for people working for social change. It is of particular interest to those who are working with, or seeking to work with, people from diverse class backgrounds (and across cultures, ethnicities, gender, sexual orientations, etc.).

The variety of issues covered by this book makes it difficult to summarize. One of its main focuses, however, is recognizing and countering the socially conditioned, and often unconscious, behaviours and assumptions that distance middle-class activists from the working-class people they are trying to help.

“… we all make mistakes. There’s not a middle-class person alive who hasn’t said dumb,insensitive things that step on working-class toes. … As we talk, working-class people notice how oblivious or how aware of class issues we seem, and make decisions about how much to collaborate with us based on those evaluations, among others factors. The goal of reducing the classism in our speech is not to keep ourselves out of trouble by avoiding angering working-class people, and it’s not to reach some kind of perfect non-classist purity. The goal is to make ourselves more trustworthy and to alienate working-class people less so that we can work together for economic justice and other common goals.” (page 89)

The book concludes with practical tips and resources to help break down the barriers of class difference and enable groups to work together effectively for social change. Some of these tips include: 

• Moving from pretense to authenticity: building trust through honesty in dialogue.
• Moving from politeness and caution to openness and humor: build relationships through friendliness and respect.
• Moving from competition and superiority to confident humility: recognizing our common limitations as human beings.
• Moving from excessive abstraction to groundedness: rooting discussion and action in reality.
• Moving from guilt to balanced responsibility: avoiding being mislead or immobilized by guilt.
• Moving from individual achievement to community interdependence: seeing the big picture, balancing individual tasks and relation-ships/working together.

Class Matters is now at the top of my reading list! If you’re experiencing, or just plain interested in, the tensions and challenges (and rewards!) of cross-class work, you might want to add it to yours, too.

Book by Charles Durrett, 2009

Reviewed in April 2009 Research Update & featured in Summer 2009 fACTivist newsletter

Senior cohousing is a model of independent-intradependent living that is vastly different from assisted living facilities and retirement communities, and distinct from communes and intentional communities. The cohousing model incorporates both private dwellings and common facilities, designed specifically for a community of residents – in this case, seniors – interested in building a supportive community together.

Now, I‘m only in my mid-20s, but this book actually made me want to move into a Senior Co-housing community! The book is full of interviews, pictures, design plans, and stories of suc-cessful (and a few unsuccessful) cohousing com-munities. What resonates most strongly is the contentment, satisfaction and fulfillment of actively participating in a community as an alterna-tive to our independent, and often isolated, family households.

Cohousing for seniors takes the uniqueness of aging into account. Some communities, for ex-ample, incorporate an extra suite for a full-time caregiver to occupy, should one of the residents find themselves in need of that type of support. Mutual care and support seem to be the norm in the communities profiled in this book. As one resident explained, “In the house where I‘m living now, if I fall off a ladder, who‘s going to know? In cohousing, even if you‘re in your own house, you‘re going to know if you don‘t see somebody”. Senior cohousing provides community supports in many different forms, such as shared meals, community activities and events, easy opportunities to informally visit and socialize, and the opportunity to help one another with chores and errands. The model provides the peace of mind of knowing that there is always somebody that you know and trust if you really need help, and because all community members will be in need of some supports at some point, providing care or help is not viewed as burdensome, but rather as a form of insurance.

These social features seem to be what make the cohousing model stand out from other models. In many of the examples, a group of potential community members engaged in a long process of visioning, designing, and building their community. Community principles, obligations, decision-making processes, and conflict resolution are discussed and agreed upon at the outset, meaning that residents come to cohousing with a commitment to one another, and an idea of the shared values of the community. Participating in the design process means that the community can be structured both to fit and to be flexible. Some communities have prioritized features like easy access to shopping and services, accessible floor plans and elevators, extra-quiet individual units, and energy efficiency and environmental sustainability. Communities can include both higher and lower income seniors, and the vast majority of cohousing communities are financially self-sustaining.

This book does a great job of illustrating the potential of the senior cohousing concept. It gives examples of what has worked and what has failed, and provides resources and answers questions for people looking to start or to join a senior cohousing community. The handbook contains examples from Denmark, the USA, and around the world. In addition to looking at some of the advantages and risks, the handbook answers common questions regarding the physical design, the social design, financial considerations, the planning process, and the day-to-day life in a cohousing community.

Book by Martin Sanchez-Jankowski, 2008

Reviewed by Cheryl Melney in April 2009 Research Update

Martin Sanchez-Jankowski, the author of Cracks in the Pavement, took a very serious approach in his research of poor neighborhoods. He spent nine years immersed in fieldwork, where he studied five different poor neighborhoods, three in New York (the Bronx and Brooklyn, not NYC), and two in Los Angeles. He stayed with families who live in crowded social housing, and he spent his days interacting with people in a number of different social settings. 

In Cracks in the Pavement, Sanchez-Jankowski focuses specifically on five different social institutions in poor neighborhoods, these being:

• Social housing complexes;
• ‘Mom and Pop’ grocery stores;
• Barber shops and Hair Salons;
• Gangs; and
• Schools

Sanchez-Jankowski’s work clarifies many misconceptions about the poor that previous researchers have made, such as the assumption that poor neighborhoods are naturally disorganized. He points out that many poor neighborhoods are in fact quite organized and have social rules and accepted behaviors that are generally understood within the neighborhood. He also points out how adaptable poor neighborhoods are to the many outside forces that affect them.
What is most interesting about this book is that Sanchez- Jankowski is able to immerse the reader into the neighborhoods he studies. There are many anecdotes and quotes from the residents, which help you “get to know” the people in this book, and give a sliver of understanding about their lives. This book is also very respectfully written. Sanchez-Jankowski himself grew up in a poor neighborhood, so he is better able to understand how to interact with people appropriately. 

This book also explores power relations amongst social institutions and in the neighborhoods. For example, in one community, the housing board who runs the social housing sometimes allow people into the housing complex that do not actually qualify, such as new immigrants, because they are considered likely to pay their rents. This choice not only excludes people who actually do qualify for housing, in one neighborhood it also created conflict between recent Mexican immigrants and Mexican families who were born in the United States.

Cracks in the Pavement is interesting from a social policy perspective in that it helps us better understand how various policies can affect the delicate makeup of poor neighborhoods. This book is written about American neighborhoods, so of course some the issues are not applicable in Canada. However, the characteristics of resilience and creativity cross over to all people who have had to survive in economic hardship and deprivation, and this book really gave me a sense of admiration for the people whose lives it depicts.