Why Proving That Poverty Is Dangerous Can Be Dangerous for the Poor

Put this in the science-that-compassionate-and-thoughtful-people-dread file.

A study published in the August issue of The Journal of the American College of Surgeons tells us something both important and something many of us may not want to hear. It's the kind of information that in the wrong hands would seem to support certain stereotypes and inspire organized economic bigotry.

People living in low-income communities are 20 times more likely to suffer what the researchers called a penetrating injury — that's a shooting, stabbing, cutting or a few other blunt force injuries — than people living in the highest-income neighborhoods, according to the study.

The researchers behind the new study married the bloody truths that showed up at a Western Tennessee Level 1 Trauma Center — one Elvis Presley Memorial Hospital — with a geo-economic map of where the injuries occurred. And let's just say that after nearly a decade of this work, there's no doubt: there is a relationship between poverty and serious injury.

The new study is intended to be a thought-provoking analysis that points the way to when and where violence prevention efforts really need to be centered. But all too often this is the kind of information that uninformed people use to reach sweeping conclusions about entire groups of people and entire communities. This is the kind of information that shapes everything from where people will live to where they will send their children to school and perhaps worst of all, who they are willing to welcome into their neighborhoods.

People have good reason to be concerned about their family's safety. But the cruel irony is that there's also plenty of evidence (pdf) to suggest that economic and social isolation — meaning the lack of connections to people with better-paying jobs, education, resources, a different range of problem-solving skills and personal contacts — is an essential element of persistent poverty. In essence, if you are poor and surrounded by nothing but other poor people, escape becomes even less likely.

If you need proof that people will mistake scientific evidence for an excuse to steer clear of the poor, direct your attention to Dallas, Texas.

Dallas is a city where nearly a million people live within its official boundaries and nearly as many live just outside of it in sprawling suburbs. And it's a city where more than 21 percent of its residents live in poverty.

In fact, the city has such a significant problem with chronic homelessness that leaders set a goal of creating 700 housing units for the homeless by 2014. In a city with its fair share of vacant buildings and foreclosed homes, that figure no longer sounds particularly ambitious.

But the city's plans have been stymied by neighborhood associations protesting just about any and every plan to build or remodel existing buildings to become housing for the homeless. At least eight different Dallas communities had rejected proposals by the end of 2009. Some of those communities were already home to a number of homeless services agencies. Others were just loudly and simply opposed to formerly homeless people moving into their neighborhood. (Sounds like a candidate for the "not in my backyard" NIMBY Capital of the U.S. award.)

People have every right and reason to  be vocal about what they want and need in their community and demand that public resources be used to help keep every community safe. But everyone also needs a place to live. As the country mulls what do with its recession surplus of can't-be-sold, half-built and fully-abandoned houses, multi-family buildings and commercial properties, we all need to be a lot more thoughtful about what's cause and what's effect when it comes to crime,  poverty and safety.

Photo credit: Jim Fischer