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Several local policy experts called on Syracuse community members to engage in “frank” and direct conversations about the city’s ongoing child poverty crisis during the Empire State Voices Public Forum on Childhood Poverty Tuesday evening.

The event, hosted in the community room of downtown Syracuse’s Central Library, focused on identifying the past and present of child poverty. Speakers also discussed the future of the federal Child Tax Credit, a tax benefit designed to help parents with the costs of childcare.

The meeting featured three panelists across multiple advocacy groups — including Micheal Marshall from the Poor People’s Campaign, Deka Dancil from the New York Civil Liberties Union and Gabe Gonzalez from the New York state campaign of the Economic Security Project. The conversation was moderated by Jay Brandon, organizing director of ESV.

“When we talk about poverty and taxation, it’s always on some economic model about who’s going to enrich society,” Marshall said. “How about just so that people can live, just so that children can be children?”

The city of Syracuse has the highest child poverty rate among large cities in New York state and the second highest child poverty rate among large cities throughout the nation, CNY VITALS reported. In 2022, a report by New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli found that between 40 and 46% of children in Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo were living in poverty.

Marshall, a Black man who grew up in the Syracuse foster care system, introduced the forum by personally thanking the Black women in his life for taking on the “burden and brunt of all the suffering ways of society.” He also highlighted the effects of redlining in Syracuse, which he said contributes to poverty and disenfranchisement of communities of color throughout the city.

Black children are about three times more likely to live in poverty than white children, before and after accounting for tax credits, according to a study by the Center On Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University.

“When we talk about some of the root systemic issues around poverty and children, you can look at the intention of deliberate policies of government and society and see where people place their values,” Marshall said.

He went on to say that analyzing the Child Tax Credit requires looking at pre-and-post COVID-19 pandemic child poverty rates. The Supplemental Poverty Measure rate for children in New York rose to 20.2% post-pandemic from its pre-pandemic rate of 18.6%.

In 2021, the amount of the Child Tax Credit increased from $2,000 to $3,600 for children under six and $3,000 for all others under 18 in response to COVID-19 related financial hardships. The expansion of the Child Tax Credit expired in 2021, which led to a subsequent spike in child poverty rates.

In 2025, the Republican tax plan will expire, which Gonzalez said will make room for new policies to combat child poverty. The child tax credit is designed for moderate-income families to reduce their tax liability, according to the United States Internal Revenue Service. There are a series of qualifications that children must meet to be considered eligible for the credit.

Gonzalez said his team’s goal is to get the child tax credit plan back to what it was in 2021, where it was fully refundable and “accessible to everybody.”

Another speaker, Dancil, said she grew up as one of nine kids living in poverty. She said her mother, who was unemployed, would let people claim her and her siblings on their taxes so that she could receive a portion of the credit, but sometimes they would just take the money for themselves.

“They took her kids’ social security numbers, claimed the money in taxes and then ditched her after,” Dancil said.

Dancil said reintroducing the refundable aspect of the Child Tax Credit policy would prevent similar incidents from happening to other families living in poverty.

Vice President Kamala Harris has proposed a $6,000 tax credit for families with children should she be elected president in November. Senator J.D. Vance, former President Donald Trump’s choice for vice president, also suggested upping the credit to $5,000. Currently, the credit sits at $2,000.

At the end of the conversation, Brandon said there may be beneficial initiatives already in place to combat systemic poverty. Panelists responded by giving examples of change from their respective organizations.

Marshall said that now, 50 years later, he is in a profession where he is working with the very people, like himself, that have been impacted by the issues of child poverty.

“It is about how you relate to people,” Marshall said. “It’s not about the data and the laws and the policies and rules but just about how you treat your fellow human beings as a child, and if you see a child in distress and need, how do you respond to that child?”

Published on September 18, 2024 at 2:39 am

Contact Claire: cksamsta@syr.edu