War on the poor

Jack Deatherage

(3/2025) In his January 1964 State of the Union address, President Lyndon Johnson proclaimed, "This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America." In the 50 years since then, U.S. taxpayers have spent over $22 trillion on anti- poverty programs. Adjusted for inflation, this spending (which does not include Social Security or Medicare) is three times the cost of all U.S. military wars since the American Revolution. Yet progress against poverty, as measured by the U.S. Census Bureau, has been minimal, and in terms of President Johnson’s main goal of reducing the "causes" rather than the mere "consequences" of poverty, the War on Poverty has failed completely. In fact, a significant portion of the population is now less capable of self-sufficiency than it was when the War on Poverty began. - The Heritage Foundation, September 2014

Slap "lies, damned lies, and statistics" down alongside the various online articles about the effectiveness, or lack, of Johnson's war on the poor, and I abandon what little research I'm capable of. I'd ignore the nationwide topic completely except the war is also happening at the state, county and municipal levels.

How so? "The National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit program was established in 1972 under the federal Clean Water Act (CWA)", followed by "... Section (402)p to the CWA in 1987 in response to the need to address pollution from stormwater discharges from municipal systems." - Maryland's Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System (MS4) Permit Program.

Maryland crammed down unfunded mandates on towns struggling with decaying (often failing water and sewer lines), as well as inflation driving labor and material costs beyond the capabilities of a population slowly sinking into poverty. According to unitedforalice.org, 32% of households in Frederick County were at or below the ALICE: Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed level of poverty. Emmitsburg's share of that is 52%. I don't know if that includes our federally recognized 11.5% of our population currently living in poverty. Assuming it doesn't, how does one squeeze more taxes out of the 36.5% of the households above those poverty levels?

Emmitsburg's poor may not be aware of the federal and state mandates that make their lives more difficult. When one is agonizing over how to pay the electric bill, the rent and purchase groceries, not much attention is likely spared for what distant politicians and bureaucrats are doing to make the situation worse. I doubt most people, poor or not, are aware of what the county does to make life more difficult for everyone living here, but more so for the poor.

Mandatory fire suppression systems in all new construction, electric vehicle charging stations in all new homes and expansion tanks on all water heaters that for decades did not require them, are just a few costs the county has dumped on the area's poor people. How so? These and other county code requirements drive housing costs ever higher. All costs flow downhill. Who is at the bottom of the hill? It ain't those pushing these mandates.

The DW and my parents spent part of their childhoods living in houses without running water, indoor toilets or electricity. Houses lit at night by coal oil lamps and candles. Houses with holes in their kitchen ceilings that allowed the heat to move up into the unheated rooms above. I'm old enough to have lived, however briefly, in some of those houses. The DW and I still had relatives carrying water from a neighborhood spring or lifting water in buckets dropped into wells as late as the 1980s. Water heated on top of wood burning stoves for cooking meals, washing clothes and bathing is not unknown to either of us.

The closest I come to living as my parents did was when I was homeless, sleeping in a dilapidated camper I'd brought to the leather factory on Creamery Road. One of those glorified boxes that sits in the bed of a pickup truck. The floor was falling out of it. The natural gas furnace didn't work. I lit candles to read by at night. Come winter, I slept in my clothes, covered with every blanket I could scrounge. Ever crawl out of bed, shove your feet into shoes that were frozen to the floor? Ever stumble shivering into an uninsulated, unheated, cement floored, block building and turn on the cold water to wash up with because there was no hot water, nor anything but a coffee maker to heat water with? That'll wake ya on a fridged morning.

One day, my motorcycle frozen to the ground beside the camper, better than a foot of snow down, two state policemen confronted me outside the camper. They informed me I could not live in the camper, or the factory. I was violating county and town codes. I shrugged and told them to arrest me then because I had nowhere else to go and I figured jail would be a good deal warmer than the camper. (I also knew there were other homeless people in town who slept in unused barns and backyard garages and had been doing so for years without cops, code enforcers or county inpsectors bothering them. I was just too obvious to ignore I guess.)

The cops looked at each other. The older one said, "You're a nut."

I could have corrected him but nut and idiot are close enough, and nut is easier to spell when writing a police report. They returned to their cruisers and left me to freeze, which was cool by me.

Leaping forward 41 years, I sit through a town council workshop listening to the mayor make his case for changing town codes to protect the low income renters living in houses and buildings that were once grandfathered in as new codes were put in place. Most of the codes are in place to protect the residents and their neighbors on Main Street and a few on the avenues where houses are cheek to jowl. The old town is one chimney, electrical, or gas leak fire away from multiple houses going up in flames. I get it.

I also get that bringing some old houses up to current codes is going to cost nearly as much as tearing down the buildings and putting up compliant new ones. I'm already hearing renters complaining about rent increases and the lack of low income housing. The town enforcing compliance with county codes will drive rents much higher and will increase the exodus of low income residents, some of them life- long Emmitsburgers.

The commissioners' workshop can be watched on the town's YouTube channel- "Board of Commissioners Workshop 2/10/24" (date is incorrect). First hour of the video concerns rental units specifically for college/university students. The last hour is a debate about creating a rental registry. The Emmitsburg branch of the county library has computers the workshop video can be accessed through if needs be.

This potential code change is going to be a tough call for the commissioners. They'd like to know what the citizenry thinks before they establish a new town code.

I've emailed them my thoughts. Don't let the village idiot be the only one they hear from.