Now that they have beautiful houses, is poverty over?
Written by Martín Burt, CEO of Fundación Paraguaya
A couple of weeks ago at a conference organized at the Universidad Católica Argentina, the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF) invited me to talk about the Poverty Stoplight, a methodology we developed at Fundación Paraguaya, which today is implemented by 200 organizations in 23 countries. The theme of the meeting with academics and social activists was “Poverty and Hidden Inequality,” and the concern that economic growth and government subsidies do not always directly impact the welfare of poor families. The generalized sentiment of the Argentine experts was that these families require a more intense and focused intervention.
This thought is spreading worldwide. For that reason, I was not surprised that Minister Soledad Núñez of the National Secretariat of Housing and Habitat (SENAVITAT) invited me to the San Francisco neighborhood to talk about the invisible poverty that affects the thousand families who recently received brand new homes from the government there. Arriving at the neighborhood, I was impressed by the modern buildings, the underground electrical connections and the perfectly paved streets, but the families were the same — immersed in the same poverty as always, “the type that becomes invisible before our eyes.”
The minister was worried. She told me: “Our work is not limited to delivering houses, we are concerned about the multidimensional poverty that often is not seen, but that we know negatively affects these families. Our wish is that all these families lead a dignified life.”
She was not wrong. Using the Poverty Stoplight, 780 families in San Francisco diagnosed themselves with the help of technicians from Habitat for Humanity, Moisés Bertoni Foundation, and Senavitat. What we found were the same (or worse) living conditions as poor people in other parts of the country. Unlike the rest of the country, where monetary poverty reaches 1 in 4 families, in San Francisco it affects two out of every three families. Specifically, of the 406 poor families, 151 families go hungry. This means that they do not have enough money to satisfy their need for a 2,500-calorie diet, which helps to determine the national monetary poverty level. We also found that In San Francisco the average monthly family income is PYG 2.5 million, while the national average is PYG 4.6 million, according to government data.
The problem (and subsequent opportunity for effecting real change) is that poverty is multidimensional. It does not only have to do with lack of income; it also involves lack of employment, education and culture, housing and infrastructure, health and environment, and organization and citizen participation. Poverty also has to do with the motivation and interiority of the family, such as levels of self-esteem and family violence — all the subjective and “soft” indicators that are seldom part of poverty measurement tools.
In San Francisco, not everything is a crisis. Obviously, the Senavitat has achieved fantastic success there; they all have safe and spacious homes with modern kitchens and bathrooms, electricity, TV, regular transportation, access to schools, healthcare, postal service, drinking water, garbage collection and identity cards. However, increasing family income is not a panacea; that solution in and of itself will not solve all the problems that the data shows: only 40 families have savings, only 389 have access to credit, only 106 families have insurance, and 81 families live with people with disabilities. In addition, only 236 families say they have the capacity to budget their expenses and plan their future, and only 275 families are part of a self-help group. 340 families do not belong to any groups at all.
The good news is that the Poverty Stoplight not only allows the families of San Francisco to become aware, it also helps each family develop their Life Map and prioritize the indicators that they believe will allow them to have a decent life.
In the prioritization exercise, we were not surprised that most families chose access to saving accounts rather than an increase in their family income; or that access to dental health and eye care was more important than having comfort in their homes. The good news is that all the deficiencies that affect families are understandable, reachable, and actionable by the families themselves. This is why we all need to be motivated and trained to help these families access the difficult-to-obtain but already existing resources in our country.
