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Studies based on federal census data have helped shine a light in recent years on Syracuse’s high poverty rates, however these explorations only tell part of the story. Concentrated poverty is associated with neighborhood crime, wage disparity, lack of reliable transportation, academic resources, fewer recreation venues and more. This leads to a vicious cycle in which each challenge reinforces and magnifies others.

One may think that the characteristics of poverty within Syracuse span all regions of the city. In reality, when you look deeper you can see that the challenges and opportunities experienced by residents vary based on neighborhood. It can be difficult for social programs to succeed in their efforts to decrease poverty if they are not addressing the nuances within the areas where they work.

A recent paper released by the Central New York Community Foundation examines how the use of precise measurements within a poverty index, which compares each tract along multiple dimensions that reinforce one another, can drive meaningful change through holistic yet customized neighborhood solutions.

View the Paper:

Every decade, the U.S. Constitution requires an accurate count of every resident in America.  The decennial census is a civic duty that is of great importance to how the country is shaped and how federal dollars will be allocated.

Counting every individual, especially children, is crucial to the overall health of a state. While census accuracy for adults has been improving, the undercount of children under five years old has been on a gradual increase. According to The Leadership Conference Education Fund, the net undercount rate for young children is more than three times what it was in 1980, increasing from 1.4 percent to 4.6 percent in 2010.

Undercounting children can be a costly one – denying vulnerable communities a seat at the table when it comes to policy decision making. Like adults, children are counted towards total population numbers, which are used to determine federal and state funding allocations, political representation and the drawing of legislative district boundaries for the U.S. House of Representatives, state legislatures and local boards. Ultimately, if an accurate count is not achieved, the needs of the children are likely to be underrepresented and vital programs underfunded.

So why is this happening? A variety of obstacles could stand in the way of children being accurately recorded in census responses, especially when they are living in areas of high poverty, where significant numbers of residents move frequently or are new to a neighborhood. Young children in large families are also subject to being undercounted, because they are living in complex households. In 2010, the U.S. Census Bureau indicated that nearly a quarter of the country’s children lived in households with six or more people. In addition, language barriers exist in places where English is a second language, discouraging survey completion.

A new potential road block to completion of the 2020 Census is the planned inclusion of a citizenship question. Such a question poses special risk to cities like Syracuse that are home to several refugee and immigrant communities. These residents are more likely to feel hesitation in filling out the questionnaire, fearing it puts them or their families at risk. This would be the first time in 70 years that U.S. citizenship status would be questioned in the survey. The Supreme Court is currently deciding whether it can be included.

Locally, the Central New York Community Foundation has seen first-hand how undercounting children can impact programming. When evaluating how many children were enrolled in the Imagination Library program by census tract, we found more children enrolled than we thought living in some neighborhoods.

Advocating for a complete count is something that the Community Foundation deems necessary. We will continue to join with our partners locally and state-wide to ensure accurate data is collected so that we can make a lasting impact on our communities.

To learn more about the risks of a 2020 Census undercount, check out https://cnyvitals.org/census-2020-challenges-ahead-for-cny/.

Bea Lea, a new American and mother of three young children, didn’t expect to be fighting another battle here in the United States when she fled her native country of Congo. Her eyes have seen a lot, including the deaths of her father and brother, but nothing prepared her for what the family would endure shortly after they moved into their first home on the Northside of Syracuse.

At first glance, her three-year old son, George, is an outgoing, vivacious toddler trying to keep up with his siblings. However, underneath the smiles and countless conversations he tries to convey is a young boy who has already been robbed of his childhood.

Lea doesn’t remember the exact day George fell violently ill, but she said she remembers being at a standstill, scared of the sudden sickness George was exhibiting. Extreme bouts of diarrhea and uncontrolled vomiting consumed him. Frightened, Lea took him to the hospital where he was later found to have a blood lead level of 32 micrograms per deciliter.

“I kept saying ‘what is lead?’ to the doctor,” said Lea. “I was confused because in my country we don’t have lead.”

The Federal Government banned the use of lead paint in 1978. But the poisoned paint still lingers in walls, doors and porches in numerous Syracuse homes. About 91 percent of homes in Syracuse were built before 1980, according to the U.S. Census.

George has already gone through three very painful medical procedures known as Chelation Therapy. The procedure itself involves the administration of chelating agents to remove heavy metals from the body. When Lea took her son back to the hospital for a check-up, it had been discovered that George’s blood lead level had risen to 38 and then again to 42 micrograms per deciliter.

“After Legal Services of Central New York educated me on lead in my home, I went back to the doctors and said, ‘I believe my baby is going to die” said Lea. “‘And if my baby dies, you’re going to have to kill me, too, so you need to help me get out of this home.’”

Since the move, Lea says that her son’s blood lead levels are slowly coming down.

“New Americans come to the United States to make a better life for themselves and their children,” said Lea. “We are walking right into a new danger in a place we thought would provide us safety.”

Lea has been unable to work because of the constant care that George requires. She expresses that a part of her identity has been lost in all of this, too. George is not currently enrolled in school because of his health.

“Imagine being told your child will never be smart again,” said Lea. “Knowing that your child was born healthy and smiling and he is now changed forever.”

Lea says she wants people to be held accountable for their actions and the government to take measurable steps to ensure this doesn’t continue to happen in Syracuse.

“We need to talk to the government and really do something,” she said. “The landlords of these homes already know that their properties have a problem with lead. If something is done we can put an end to this.”

It is time to eradicate childhood lead poisoning in Syracuse for good.
​Together, we can do better for our children.

How You Can Help

Written by Wendy Rhodes

Wendy Rhodes, Director of Development & Communications of Legal Services of Central New York, tells us how the organization organized the community around an often unknown epidemic in poverty-stricken neighborhoods – unstable housing.

Eviction is a major challenge in our region. Over half of Syracuse residents rent their homes, and 58% of them have a housing cost burden. This means they spend more than 30% of their income on housing, leaving less money for food and healthcare and often putting them in the difficult position of having to choose which bills to pay each month. Upwards of 11,000 Syracuse residents face eviction each year, and throughout Central New York these numbers climb higher. Eviction is a significant contributor to housing instability and a challenge that we need to take on as a community.

To address this issue head-on, we at Legal Services of Central New York assembled a coalition of partners around our 2018 Evicted initiative.  From July through October, we challenged communities throughout Central New York to read and discuss the eye opening and oftentimes heartbreaking book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Princeton University sociologist Matthew Desmond.  The New York Times declared it “…an exhaustively researched, vividly realized and, above all, unignorable book — after Evicted, it will no longer be possible to have a serious discussion about poverty without having a serious discussion about housing”. The book was recognized with a Pulitzer Prize and as one of the 10 Best Books of 2016 by the New York Times Book Review.

Evicted tells the real-life stories of eight families in Milwaukee caught in the relentless cycle of housing instability. Nearly all of their money goes towards rent yet they are still living on the brink of homelessness, constantly grappling with eviction, unsafe housing conditions, and dangerous neighborhoods. The book also highlights two landlords whose properties and business practices have a substantive impact on the futures of these vulnerable families.  As Dr. Desmond notes, “without a home everything else falls apart”.

Evicted heartbreakingly demonstrates the impossible decisions and challenges people living in poverty face every day.  How do you choose whether to pay for rent or heat if you only have enough money to pay for one?  How can you build a pathway out of poverty when 80%, 90%, or even 100% of your income goes to rent (and your home may be unsafe, unsanitary, dangerous or illegal)?  How is it possible that domestic violence victims are often evicted for reporting their abuser? How can children succeed in school when they are constantly moving, forcing rapid changes in schools throughout the school year and absences while their parents are looking for a new home and moving in crisis situations?  How do children stay healthy when they are living in unsanitary conditions? How does all of this impact individual physical and mental health, and erode social and economic capital in neighborhoods?

City-Wide Book Club in partnership with the City of Syracuse

To present these questions and more, we co-hosted a Summer Book Club in partnership with the City of Syracuse and Mayor Ben Walsh.  The free book club engaged people in neighborhoods across Syracuse and communities throughout our region with important conversations around housing stability.

More than 300 people registered for the book club and received weekly wrap-up emails with discussion questions and thoughts from local leaders which were compiled into a free Readers Guide which is still available at https://www.lscny.org/evicted-book-club/.

Participants encouraged their existing book clubs to read and discuss the book together, formed new clubs for the express purpose of reading and discussing the book, or read the book on their own and discussed it in our virtual book club on Facebook.  More than 100 copies of Evicted were donated to the Onondaga County Public Library, and its eight city branches also hosted a series of book club discussions with special guest Sally Santangelo, executive director of CNY Fair Housing.

Book club participants, including local leaders who contributed to the Readers Guide were often surprised by the scope and challenges of housing instability in Syracuse and how directly the real-life stories in Evicted paralleled the experiences of Syracuse residents.  Reading Evicted was also eye-opening for many participants, especially those who live in the suburbs.  We constantly received feedback from suburban residents that they were not aware of the prevalence of poor housing conditions, instability, and eviction.  One book club in DeWitt/Fayetteville even said they were considering purchasing a home, renovating it, renting to people living in poverty, and being landlords who are catalysts for change by working to break the cycle of poverty by providing safe, stable housing!

Free Community Event with Author Dr. Matthew Desmond

We also hosted a free community event on October 23 at Henninger High School as a culmination of the Summer Book Club.  City of Syracuse Mayor, Ben Walsh, provided a welcome for the evening, and more than 800 people attended to meet and learn from author and MacArthur Genius Award recipient Dr. Matthew Desmond. Desmond highlighted the immense struggles of living in poverty. He expanded upon the personal stories highlighted in his book and illustrated the negative impact eviction has on individuals, communities, and society with compelling statistics and data.  Dr. Desmond discussed another challenge faced by parents, especially black women, is that landlords typically view children as a liability and often refuse to rent to tenants with children. He showed that poverty leaves people constantly on the brink of crisis and seemingly small challenges such as a higher-than-expected heating bill can create an eviction situation. He also explained how eviction has a long tail, creating financial judgements and credit damage that follow people for years and contribute to an ongoing cycle of poverty.

We received overwhelmingly positive feedback regarding the Evicted initiative.  One Southside resident, Ms. H, was the first attendee to arrive.  She came by bus more than an hour early to make sure she got a seat. She knew the importance of this conversation and felt validated that people were acknowledging and talking about the struggles faced by people in her neighborhood every day.  Another participant, Ms. A, who lives in Baldwinsville, shared that she had no idea what a devastating impact housing instability and eviction had on people’s lives or that it was a pressing issue in our region.  Eviction was not something she saw in her circle of friends.  Now that she is more aware, she plans to start volunteering with several local organizations working to address homelessness and poverty.

Put a book in the hands of a child and they hold the key to their future. Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library has been acting on this philosophy across America since 1995, distributing free, high-quality books to children from birth until age five, regardless of family income and at no expense to the recipients. Inspired by the organization’s national success, community leaders brought Imagination Library to the Syracuse area in 2010. What started out as a small launch targeting the city’s Northside neighborhoods has now swept the entire county – proving that the early literacy movement has found a permanent home in Central New York.

The importance of regularly reading to children from birth, and onward, cannot be overstated. Something as seemingly simple as story time actually develops the skills necessary for children to enter kindergarten ready to learn. Unfortunately, all children do not enter school at the same level of readiness.

“We know that children who enter school not ready can struggle, lose confidence and fall behind, which comes at a cost that the students, their families and our community cannot afford,” explained Virginia Carmody, development director of the Literacy Coalition of Onondaga County.

Imagination Library is the centerpiece of a broader community literacy plan spearheaded by the Literacy Coalition. Through collaboration with the Central New York Community Foundation, enrollment data is being collected and organized by census tract so that target areas can be established. For example, in one census tract on the Northside of Syracuse, only about 25 percent of children are deemed “ready” for kindergarten. In response, the Literacy Coalition and its partners have worked to enroll more than 60 percent of eligible children within this census tract into Imagination Library.

This approach is helping put books in the hands of those who need it most. By analyzing which census tracts have low enrollment, Imagination Library is able to set goals for reaching those in greatest need of its services. However, these targeted goals do not aim to exclude. All children up to the age of five who reside in Onondaga County are eligible to enroll in Imagination Library.

“We now mail books to over 15,000 kids each month and have distributed more than half a million age-appropriate books,” said Carmody.

The expansion of Imagination Library is also indebted to Onondaga County, the City of Syracuse and the Reisman Foundation for their continued support as well as many community referral partners who help connect families with young children to the program. Local birthing hospitals, Catholic Charities, InterFaith Works, Head Start, Syracuse Housing Authority and Onondaga County’s Departments of Children & Families and Health all partner with Imagination Library in an effort to ensure as many children as possible are exposed to this opportunity.

“Supporting Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library has been a powerful way to make a lasting impact on the lives of thousands of children and families in our community,” said Carmody. “These are some of the most formative years for children.”

A child’s early education – pre-kindergarten through third grade – is a crucial period considered to be predictive of their success in the future. The books provided by Imagination Library help instill a love for reading in the hearts and minds of children that will hopefully endure through early childhood and beyond.