What If They Gave A Recovery And No One Came?

Given the American short attention span, perhaps the fact that we’ve grown bored with “recession talk” is to be expected. Dealing with foreclosures, the end of debt-fueled excess, and the rest, is not fun and sits uneasily on our usual approach of endless growth and optimism.

That, I think is why the early bleating about “notes of recovery” or a “few small shoots” in the garden of future prosperity is so unsurprising. Businesses and Wall Street investors want an up story, and the idea of a turnaround is good for business, and by the media’s extension, good for all of us.

So what if the facts don’t fit the story?

Reports of Ben Bernanke’s statement to Congress this week suggested that he predicted a recovery by the end of the year; lost in those reports were both the caveats he put on it, and the highly fragile nature of what he predicted. Basically, if things don’t get worse, if banks can remain solvent… we might (emphasize might) see some hopeful signs by the end of the year.

Heck, it’s like we’re already there, right?

Or take Tuesday’s report in the New York Times suggesting “early signs” of a housing recovery in Sacramento, implying that as Sacramento goes… so goes the nation. Of course, is there any data to back that up?

Nationally, signs of progress in real estate are still faint at best. Existing home sales in March were down 7 percent from last year, according to the National Association of Realtors.

The supply of unsold homes was about 10 months, a number that has changed little over the last year and is abnormally high.

Okay, so we might not be having a recovery yet… what does any of this have to do with poverty?

The willful race to find “encouraging signs” of recovery is, at base, a decision to ignore the signs of desperation and failing among us. By almost any – indeed, nearly every – measure, poverty is increasing: more unemployed, more demand for services, more homelessness, less opportunities. Across the country communities are hurting, not in pockets, but en masse.

Indeed, directly under the hopeful reporting of Sacramento, was a Times article pointing out that more renters are slipping into eviction situations:

Kevin Brewster-Streeks, 29, and his partner, Greg Armstrong, 22, struggled to pay their $1,650 rent on Mr. Armstrong’s $18-an-hour salary as a medical assistant after Mr. Brewster-Streeks’s $36,450 job as a records clerk at a law firm was eliminated last year.

They borrowed $2,000 from relatives and friends and racked up $8,000 in credit-card debt. Mr. Armstrong withdrew about $4,000 from two pension and retirement accounts, and Mr. Brewster-Streeks started working as a hospital clerk for less than half of his previous pay. But they could not keep up: after two bouts in housing court, they moved out in February, owing nearly $7,000 in back rent.

“It’s kind of dehumanizing,” Mr. Brewster-Streeks said of the experience. “They see you as a certain kind of person. We’ve never been that certain kind of person.”

Will we have a recovery? I like to believe we will, as much as anyone. But it’s not coming anytime soon, and it surely can’t happen when we can’t – still – do more for the people falling behind. It’s entirely possible by the end of the year that we’ll have settled into an economy that runs well enough in reduced circumstances, that isn’t falling as fast as it has in the pas six months. If we plan to call that a “recovery”… well, it will make a lovely story… but that won’t make it true.

(Photo of a Sacramento house by Dan Ancona)