The greater Madison area has a reputation for being a great place to move to, raise a family and receive a higher education. Despite of the recent surge in violent crime, Madison is still a relatively safe place to live—not to mention economically viable and socially and environmentally conscious.
Unbeknownst to many of its residents, an isolated enclave known as Allied Drive is the antithesis of this quasi paradise, and it only continues to deteriorate. In a concentrated strip of approximately six blocks, problems of poverty and crime continue to place pervasive obstacles on the road to improvement.
An array of challenges face the residents of Allied Drive that are interconnected, continuing to feed off of one another in a vicious cycle. The entangling roots of these problems lie in the fact that the minimum wage in Madison is only $6.50, and housing is not very affordable on those earnings.
A dual-earner family would be able to get by on this, but not without diligent sacrifice. However, if a single woman were to try to support two children working full time with a minimum wage job, it would be exceedingly difficult just to make ends meet.
Additionally, women statistically get paid less than men, exacerbating this financial quandary. To make matters worse, research shows that of those owed child support, the beneficiaries of payments are not paid 50 percent of the time and 25 percent of the time they are only partially paid.
Allied Drive is mainly composed of families, especially single female-headed households, which comprise 44 percent of that population, compared to only 15 percent in Madison. Given these figures, it is no surprise that residents are sometimes unable to pay their rent.
This has created massive prospects for opportunist drug dealers who, many times, in exchange for paying a tenant's rent, will be permitted by the tenant to conduct drug transactions directly from her apartment. Tension amongst rival drug traffickers erupt into violence, making the street unsafe at night.
Although some point to the pre-existing social programs and organizations in the surrounding area to solve or at least alleviate many of these problems, these programs for the most part are not serving residents of Allied Drive and they are not extensive enough to accomplish those objectives.
The Boys & Girls Club in Fitchburg caters to the broader area, as does Head Start-Red Arrow. The one program that is geared toward helping the residents of Allied Drive is called Project Home, which offers vouchers for Section 8 housing. However, there are currently 35 vacancies in the units, so obviously this initiative is not maximizing its full potential as far as helping the residents of Allied Drive.
Clearly, more options are needed to tackle the many challenges. Progressive programs that have had success in providing affordable housing in other areas ought to be tried on Allied Drive. For instance, the South Bronx Housing Project successfully created 128 affordable housing units via energy-efficient technology, thereby reducing utility costs for residents.
Additionally, cooperative housing could be a viable alternative as well. Research has shown cooperative living creates a community and in doing so creates many positive results. From the financial end residents can build equity by living in co-ops because they own their unit. They operate at cost because co-ops are designed to serve their owners, who are the residents, and not a landlord.
Other economic benefits include tax benefits, a variety of financing options and protection from predatory lenders.
Moreover, there are social advantages as well. The dynamics of a co-op—where people operate in a self-governing, democratic system within their living situation—builds skills that are applicable to other arenas of life.
For example, research has shown that co-op residents have fewer problems with crime because of the informal social controls than people of other living situations and are more likely to vote.
With all of the benefits these two approaches yield, it would be unwise not to consider these as options, or at least try and augment parts of these programs into systems to cater to the needs of the residents on Allied Drive.
Everyone deserves a safe place to live, work and raise a family. People should not be denied these opportunities when we clearly have the resources, brainpower and determination to achieve this goal.
