Dallas, meet your working poor: A special project by The Dallas Morning News editorial board
Talk, Talk Texas
Special Edition: The Working Poor
July 12, 2017
Mayor: 'It's hard to make a living in this city.'
Dallas, meet your working poor
Introducing a special project by The Dallas Morning News Editorial Board.
Online 7 a.m. Thursday, July 13
In print beginning Sunday, July 16
Kiala Proctor, 25, with her son, Matthew Palomo, II, 7, in their Dallas apartment on June 9.
Proctor works full time at the Anatole Hilton, earning just over $20,000 a year. She's one of
nearly 31,000 full-time workers in Dallas who are stuck in poverty.
(David Woo/The Dallas Morning News)
DALLAS, MEET YOUR WORKING POOR:
Did you know that nearly 31,000 people in Dallas work full time, all year long, and yet are stuck in poverty? Did you know that their median age is 36, and that about half of them are married and three out of four have children living at home?
That means that thousands of their dependents and spouses are also living in poverty, despite full-time work.
They are working hard, often as hard or harder than those of us who earn higher incomes, and yet their poverty persists.
Our editorial board has been asking why this is for months now, building on work by the Mayor's Task Force on Poverty, and using up-to-date Census data to zero in on poor people who work every day and still stay poor.
Why is that? It's not through lack of effort. As Jesse Jackson said nearly 30 years ago in Atlanta: "Poor people aren't lazy.
They take the early bus."
Well we found that DART, one of the biggest transit agencies in the country, fails those working poor, riders who need it most. Commutes by transit riders who are in poverty are 20 minutes longer, on average, than DART riders who aren't in poverty. Poor people's trips often take more transfers than better-off riders.
Housing is too expensive, relative to their incomes, and federal housing assistance is often but a pipe dream, with waiting lists that stretch over years and many many thousands of names.
Beginning Thursday at 7 a.m., the editorial board will publish a package of editorials, vignettes, photos, videos and graphics that we hope will get all of Dallas talking about this city of such wealth and such widespread poverty, and especially about the tens of thousands of workers who labor steadily but without prosperity.
As part of this work, I sat down with Mayor Mike Rawlings of Dallas to talk about what he's learned, and what he says the city must do, about poverty. I think you'll find that interview, available now, interesting.
The series publishes tomorrow online, and will run for six days in print beginning Sunday.
Ebony Green, right, prepares meatloaf with her daughter Amaris Dobbins, 13, in their apartment on Thursday,
June 8, 2017 in Dallas. They are receiving assistance from the Morning Star Family Foundation with their housing expenses. (David Woo/The Dallas Morning News)
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