We need to reduce car dependence to reduce poverty

Friday, October 21

Economic Opportunity and Poverty Reduction Task Force

Sister Carmen Center

655 Aspen Ridge, Lafayette

Bus: 225, L. The 225 may get you there a little late. The L will absolutely get you there late running both directions, although you may be better of missing the presentations.

The Economic Opportunity and Poverty Reduction Task Force will be meeting this Friday in Lafayette at the Sister Carmen Center, 655 Aspen Ridge from 2 to 5 for a meeting focused on poverty in Boulder County. The EOPR was created by the Colorado legislature in 2009 to create a plan to cut poverty in our state by half by 2019. They are not doing so well; poverty, especially child poverty, is up. Perhaps the length of the meeting is to make up for the fact that the group really has not accomplished anything so far. Hopefully, it is partly to let people influence the process.

The focus of the meeting will be to introduce people to the Circles Campaign. There is an hour of this.

There is also more than an hour of public participation as well, including both public testimony and small group discussion. I hope that someone brings up the role that forcing people to drive plays in creating poverty and the potential for poverty. Maintaining a car costs between $6-9,000 a year, and this is a cost that people in most other developed countries can chose to spend or not. In other developed countries it is unusual for anyone to lose their job because they can no longer drive or because of transit cuts.

Right now the EOPR has four committees: education, consumer protection, metrics, and employment. Housing does get some attention under consumer protection, but transit is nowhere to be found. If we are going to reduce poverty, we need to directly attack the things that make life in the US so expensive. This means looking at housing policy, industrial policy, and transportation policy.

(I would like to thank Megan Davis and Boulder County for letting me know about this meeting and for providing some of the information in this post.)