Long lines in D.C. shouldn't be filled with the city's poor

Neki Swinton doesn't need the statistics. She can see it in the lines.

At the public assistance office in Anacostia, the lines used to be a few people deep. Last year, they began stretching to the back of the room. Now they go out the door, almost to the parking lot, under the District's famous giant chair.

"I just never have seen it this way before," said Swinton, a 34-year-old mother of four who has been on and off public assistance for years. The numbers back up what Swinton is seeing.

One in five District residents lives in poverty, according to a study released last week by the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute.

You can see it across the city, and not just at welfare offices.

Look around. There are more panhandlers downtown and more folks using food stamps at grocery stores and farmers markets. Worst of all, you can see it in the overcrowding at D.C. General's family shelter. At one point this winter at the former hospital in Southeast Washington, 200 families were crammed into a space meant for no more than 135, and mothers and children were sleeping on cots in the hallways.

The District's poverty rate was 18.9 percent last year, up from 16.9 percent in 2008, according to the report. And current poverty indicators -- unemployment, homelessness, use of food stamps -- are higher than last year's.

The city has about 106,500 residents (up 11,000 in a year) living at or below the poverty rate, which last year was considered as an annual income of $21,800 for a family of four.

Poverty is the city's most pernicious problem, and it's going to take a heck of a lot more to defeat it than a $15,000 pamphlet written by Marion Barry's ex-girlfriend.

This is not the deep-rooted, generational and tragic poverty you see in cities across the United States. What we see here are families that survive but don't thrive. They are vulnerable to any gust of wind that might knock them down -- an illness, a slow week at work, a missed paycheck, a lost job.

The recession has been a hurricane for these folks, and it exacerbates long-standing problems in the District.

A coalition of social justice organizations launched a campaign last week, Defeat Poverty DC, to turn the focus of this year's city elections to poverty. Members are folks who know the staggering statistics and are familiar with the tragic stories that lead up to or are the result of poverty. They work with teen moms, unemployed dads, foster children and homeless grandmothers.