The plight of the nation’s indigent and destitute has reached the crisis level. Urban areas across tell a “tale of two cities” with residents of either extreme poverty or an abundance of means. The middle class, which has been on the verge of extinction for years, is dwindling at a rapid pace. Areas such as New York City find gentrification taking hold at a prodigious rate, resulting in entire communities being irradiated. Luxury high-rises and expensive condominiums dominate the landscape, over-shadowing low-income housing developments. The lack of affordable housing is a recurring problem throughout the nation’s urban centers and solutions have not yet been found. To support the healthy development of families, the Bridge MCAP works with public entities, elected officials and private developers to ensure the creation of affordable housing stock.
Simply put, never before has the line of demarcation separating the “haves” from the “have nots” been so stark and undeniably clear and troubling. Hunger in homeless has also reached unprecedented levels across the nation. Areas such as the South Bronx have expansive “food deserts” where scores of families go to bed hungry almost every night. The NYC Department of Education, the nation’s largest public school district, is serving a higher percentage of homeless children and youth than ever before. If these trends are to be reversed, the nation’s poor would require greater access to job training, re-training, adult basic education, ESL and entrepreneurship programs capable of elevating the neediest, out of poverty and illiteracy and into lives of self-sufficiency.