According to a report released by the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 20 percent of West Virginians were living in poverty last year, the ninth highest rate in…
According to a report released by the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 20 percent of West Virginians were living in poverty last year, the ninth highest rate in the nation.
The federal government reported Thursday that 380,000 of the state’s 1.8 million residents lived below the federal poverty line of $24,250 for a family of four.
The report says one quarter of West Virginia’s children reside in homes earning about $24,000 annually.
The state’s median household income was an estimated $41,059 in 2014, about $10,000 less than the nationwide average.
The news comes two days after the federal government announced that West Virginia has the nation’s highest unemployment rate of 7.6 percent. In August, the federal government announced the state has the lowest civilian workforce participation.
Stress. We all live with it, but at what point does it become toxic? When do social pressures turn from a healthy challenge to a source of poison? These are some of the ideas turned over in a public health dialogue at West Virginia University last week that explored the “social determinants of health.” Guest-speaker Dr. Paula Braveman spoke about how social factors in our lives play a role in our health.
“We’re in a very different place talking about the social determinants of health than we were ten years ago, twenty years ago even,” Braveman said. She explained, science and our growing understanding of human bodily processes is making it easier to gain insights into the biological effects of environmental factors like income and social status.
“That’s a huge leap to be able not to just say, ‘we think,’ but, ‘this is the way things work.’ We can trace the biology of…social determinants of health.”
Good Stress vs. Bad Stress
Braveman knows a lot about stress. She points out that some kinds of stress actually promote health. The kind of stress we feel when we are challenged, when we know overcoming the challenge is within our reach—that stress, Braveman says is good for us.
Then there’s “toxic” stress which is when perpetual anxiety invades your brain and body, changing your chemistry, and making you more susceptible to problems like diabetes, depression, cancer, and heart disease.
All common in West Virginia.
Braveman explains that chronic “toxic” stress is the kind you experience when your child gets sick and your thankless, minimum-wage job gives you no leeway to be able to stay home and be with that child, and your car is out of inspection and in need of new tires, and your laid-off husband has a drinking problem. When that life is normal, Braveman says, in addition to making you more predisposed to certain illnesses, the constant stress deregulates body including the immune system, so you just get sick more often.
The Fix
No one has come up with any quick fix to solving these kinds of scenarios, or an easy way to interrupt the cycles of poverty that are often the side effect. But Braveman points out two important steps that could quickly create waves of positive change:
Raise minimum wage – providing the poorest with more resources
Invest in childcare – an investment in the future of society
Braveman says building resiliency to rise above chaos in our communities takes concerted and organized efforts on the part of both individuals and policy-makers alike. Access to good nutrition, education, community, and transportation are all factors that play a role as much as a good job and clean water and air. And as for individuals, Braveman says, support groups are important. People need to know that they aren’t struggling alone in order to better able to cope.
** Dr. Braveman’s was the third in a series of public health dialogues being hosted at West Virginia University. The final talk this year is December fifth. It’s about a community-based drug overdose prevention program. The talks are free and open to the public.
We often hear about urban cities, like Detroit, that are dealing with abandoned, dilapidated buildings. But some communities in West Virginia are struggling with neighborhood blight too.
The WV Hub is working with partners across West Virginia to plan a three day event in Huntington this October. The summit will help people across West Virginia who are working to fix blighted, abandoned and dilapidated properties. Civic groups in Huntington have been collaborating on this type of work and have made great strides recently.
And in Charleston, two non-profits are working to rebuild and remove dilapidated homes in their neighborhood, known as the West Side Flats.
Credit Roxy Todd
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This building was once Dr. Hopson’s office
At the heart of the West Side Flats neighborhood is Mary C. Snow elementary school. This neighborhood has the second highest percentage of African American residents in West Virginia.
The school itself is named in honor of West Virginia’s first female African American principal of an integrated school. Snow was not only an educator- she was also known for her civic engagement in this neighborhood. And for most community organizers here, like Reverend Matthew J. Watts, the memory of the real Mary C. Snow is a reminder of what individuals can do to help revive the West Side.
“Some people just stay here, they want to see it turn around again, and we believe that it can. Despite the vacant houses, there’s still 4,000 reasons on the broader West Side, those are the kids. That is why we should fight. They deserve a chance to live a safe, wholesome, healthy place that inspires them,” says Watts.
Watts is the CEO of a non-profit called HOPE Community Development Corporation. He says the dilapidation of buildings reduces home values and can become a magnet for crime.
Credit PBS NewsHour/Sam Weber
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Roxy Todd speaking with Reverend Watts on 2nd Avenue, in front of one of the homes that Bob Hardy and the Charleston Economic Development Corporation built.
“On those four blocks, there are 61 vacant structures—61. And they pose a public health threat in terms of public safety, health, etc. for the children and families. And we believe that it contributes to the overall negative feelings this neighborhood has.”
But as Watts walks along 3rd Avenue and points to homes with fresh flowerbeds out front and houses that are well maintained, he says its clear that not everyone on the West Side has given up hope.
Credit Roxy Todd
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A vacant lot on 3rd Ave. that is being maintained as a green space
Many of the houses here still posses a historic charm from the days when this was an up and coming neighborhood for middle class African American families.
During segregation, this was also the cultural center of activity for the black community in Charleston, including tourists who were not allowed to stay downtown. But now, middle class families have moved away.
Credit Roxy Todd
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Vacant home along 3rd Ave.
In the last year, Reverend Watts and his organization has spent $250,000 to remove asbestos and prepare 12 vacant homes for demolition. The removal of these structures was a partnership between HOPE CDC, the city of Charleston, and the Charleston Urban Renewal Authority.
Bob Hardy has been helping this neighborhood since the 1990’s. Before anyone else had a vision to restore this neighborhood, Hardy was working to rehab dilapidated homes along 2nd Avenue.
Credit Roxy Todd
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Bob Hardy, standing in front of one of the 10 affordable houses that he helped build
Hardy’s father was a shop teacher, and he is a licensed contractor himself. As executive director of the Charleston Economic Community Development Corporation, he has helped build 10 new homes in the West Side flats neighborhood. He’s helped rehab about 50 houses.
Hardy grew up in the West Side Hills, which looks down into this neighborhood. His vision for restoring this area came because he believes it’s like the front yard of the entire West Side. He sees the potential here to develop affordable housing because of the neighborhood’s close proximity to downtown.
The community here has been supporting a large part of these efforts, even though 1 in 3 residents here are living in poverty.
And though he’s been involved in this work for over 20 years, Hardy says he believes the neighborhood is going to turn around and the people here are going to pull themselves out of poverty.
“The race is not given to the swift or to the strong, but to those who endure until the end. My mother gave me that. Never quit.”
Together, Hardy and Watts working to continue to rehab homes here on the West Side. They are each cautiously optimistic that Charleston officials can partner with them more in the future to restore the West Side flats neighborhood.
During the tour of the West Side flats neighborhood, Roxy Todd met up with a few correspondents from the PBS NewsHour who were visiting the Mary C. Snow school. Their story, “Summer slide: the year-round solution”, will air on September 7 on PBS NewsHour Weekend.
Credit PBS NewsHour/Sam Weber
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Reverend Watts speaks with PBS NewsHour correspondent Alison Stewart
David Sneade works as the director and minister at a homeless shelter in downtown Charleston. He was homeless himself, off and on, for about 19 years.
“I wouldn’t be afraid to say there’s at least 2,500-3,000 homeless people just in Charleston,” said Sneade, who has spoken with many of those people.
He works with Union Mission, a Christian organization that receives no government assistance and serves about 30,000-40,000 men women and children a month across West Virginia. Union Mission receives about $7 million a year from private donations.
Sneade’s job and life’s mission often includes going out in the middle of the night, offering people water, hot soup and sandwiches.
“The people that you see in Charleston, just Charleston alone, during the day are not the same people you will see walking around Charleston at night,” he said.
On an extremely hot and muggy night a few summers ago, Sneade and another chaplain from Union Mission were handing out water and sandwiches to people. Two blocks from the shimmering gold of the state capitol building, they saw a woman who was leaning against a fence. They offered her a bottle of water and two sandwiches.
“And she asked for 3 more bottles of water and 6 sandwiches and we gave it to her and she started crying and saying now she wouldn’t have to go out and prostitute her body, she could stay home and feed her kids.”
Another night last summer, Sneade and another chaplain were on the West Side giving out water.
“One of the little kids was a little girl about 2 years old. Her mom gave her that little 8 oz. bottle of water, and she was just gulping it down, she was so dehydrated.”
That girl finished the water and began to cry. When you haven’t had enough to drink, you can’t make tears. They gave her another bottle of water, and then another. It was so hot and muggy and she was so tired, that she continued to cry as she drank about four bottles of water.
Credit Roxy Todd
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Carl is one of the chaplains at Union Mission Crossroads.
Credit Roxy Todd
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Chaplain Carl (middle) and two of the men who are staying at the Union Mission Crossroads shelter.
Sneade has worked in the Union Mission Crossroads shelter for about 10 years. And in the last two years, he says the number of people in need has increased as the economy in West Virginia has suffered many job losses. Since 2012, the number of men staying at the shelter has doubled.
Like many of those who work at the shelter, Sneade used to be homeless himself. He grew up extremely poor in a small town in Maryland. His father tried to drown him when he was just six months old.
“These people don’t know what love is. I didn’t know what love is. My father, when I was six months old, threw me in the canal. He picked me up out of the crib one morning and walked down to the edge of the canal there and threw me in and just walked away.”
As a baby, Sneade was discovered in the water and spent the next 6 months in the hospital with malnutrition and pneumonia. Not long ago, he reunited with his father.
“I love my dad. My grandmother said, ‘But he tried to kill you.’ I love my dad.”
But it took Sneade a lot of hard years living on the streets, and at least four close calls with death, before he got to this point of forgiveness. And he points out that many people who are homeless have been hurt and abused. One of the things that hurts the most, is whenever he hears people making fun of someone on the street. He knows the pain of that too.
“I guess the whole time that I’ve been saved and sober I just tell people… homeless people, they’re not the outcasts of society. I just try to hug them and tell them I love them. I believe in tough love.”
The West Side in Charleston is one of the largest urban neighborhoods in the state. Within sight of the Mary C. Snow West Side Elementary School are vacant lots and abandoned buildings. This neighborhood is besieged with many problems like childhood poverty and high crime rates. It’s also a neighborhood that suffers from negative stereotyping—a place where good people and good projects are often overlooked.
Aiming to highlight these challenges and some possible solutions, a collaboration is launching between West Virginia University’s Division of Diversity and the West Side Revive Project.
Reverend Matthew Watts, a pastor at Grace Bible Church, heads up the West Side Revive Project.
“And so we’re trying to help the broader community realize that this is a community of enormous potential. And actually the future growth of Charleston hinges on what we do,” Watts said at the presentation last Friday at the Mary C. Snow West Side Elementary School. The Hope Community Development Corporation initiated the West Side Revive Project.
The meeting last week was also attended by David Fryson and a group of scholars from WVU’s Division of Diversity. Fryson was recently named the Division Vice President. At the meeting, Fryson said that he remembers the real Mary C. Snow and said her legacy should remind people to organize to make great things happen on the West Side. He said WVU is looking to assist the West Side Revive Project, chiefly by evaluating the research the group has done.
Credit Roxy Todd
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Reverend Watts said it’s encouraging to see WVU begin to validate the work his project has been doing for years.
“[There’s] a lot of energy, and a lot of interest in the project. And we have never been more excited for the potential for the West Side of Charleston to truly return to this healthy and wholesome residential community that it used to be,” said Watts.
Watts explained that back in the 1950’s the West Side was a neighborhood where middle class black families could buy nice homes. The West Side’s decline began as many of those families left West Virginia to find jobs.
Though the neighborhood does have many problems it is going to have to face head on, Watts believes that for the first time in years, there is reason to hope that things here can change.
A group working to change policy in West Virginia to improve communities and end child poverty in the state is hoping to get input on how to do it, from residents. Organizers at the Our Children Our Future campaign are hosting four workshops this month.
The Our Children Our Future Campaign is conducting day long trainings in four separate towns across West Virginia. The group touches on issues like policy advocacy, healthy lifestyles, voter education, and more.
The group wants residents to attend the events and is encouraging them to get involved in decision-making for West Virginia from the bottom-up.
