Poverty

Andrew Maynard

Example Essay

3:00-3:50 pm

Poverty

Poverty is a problem that plagues every city in every state in every nation around the world. Indigence is an ongoing uphill battle in large cities all the way down to small towns. For instance, in neighborhoods around the El Paso area, poor less fortunate families are everywhere. As I drove through a neighborhood, I noticed many things in the area that were an eyesore to the community which set the 15115i815p little subdivision apart from the rest of the surrounding middle class neighborhoods.

Most of the problems start with the buildings in which these people live in. Most of the poorer families live in duplexes and quadraplexes with twice the occupancy that the apartment is able to hold. These plexes are then crammed right next to each other with little to no room for a yard for small children to play safely in. Just driving past the neighborhood, I noticed the condition in which the homes were kept. The houses had faded peeling paint with bars on the windows and doors to keep out the most likely many burglars that reside in the area. The homes also had missing shingles possibly ripped off by high winds or simply just not maintained by the landlord. What little patch of lawn was available to the people of these substandard homes was just dirt with small patches of weeds. Most of the people living in these kinds of houses do not have enough money to spend on trivial things like grass seed, and they most likely choose not to water their lawns because they will end up paying a higher water bill than what they can afford.

Another thing that I noticed, aside from the houses, was the type of people that resided in the homes. Most of the men that came home from work were dressed in factory worker clothing or just general manual labor apparel. Another common thing that I noticed about the people was that most of them were sitting on the porches drinking beer and smoking in large groups most of the people appeared to be either unhappy or just plain exhausted from their jobs. Around the neighborhood, I saw that younger children and toddlers were playing sometimes out in the street because they had no yard. While they were playing I realized that a lot of the kids were poorly dressed, and they were mostly in torn jeans or shorts and either baggy or too tight shirts, possibly hand downs from a sibling. Some of the toddlers, though, were not even dressed at all. A majority of the smaller kids just had on a diaper while they crawled and walked around with their older siblings. The older youths were mostly dressed in the same colors, most likely representing the gang that they are a part of which is another epidemic of poorer communities.

An issue that identifies a community as having a lack of money, although overlooked by most likely everyone, would be the condition of the streets in the area. This particular neighborhood had litter throughout the streets that also spread into the housing area. Along with litter, there are multicolored cars in the street, and some of the cars had no wheels along with other cars that had the often seen garbage bag windows. On the ground there was oil and a number of other byproducts all over both sides of the road that had leaked from the poorly maintained vehicles. There was also no storm drains in the whole area which meant that the water runoff containing the petroleum products flows to unknown places possibly contaminating the ground of another neighborhood or even worse it could end up flowing into a body of water.

Poverty has strickened this neighborhood as it has many neighborhoods in the El Paso area and neighborhoods all across the world. These problems could describe almost any low-income community because these problems are all too common. Poverty is something that will never go away because there are always going to be families that do not make enough money to keep them out of these types of living areas. As the cost of living continues to rise, the unemployment and poverty levels will rise along with it.