Social equity is the concept that all people deserve fair access to livelihood, education and resources. Everyone deserves to be able to fully participate in their community and to have their fundamental needs met. Unfortunately, social equity is still a concept rather than a complete and automatic practice.
The number of homeless individuals in Colorado continues to increase and the resources are unable to keep up. The number of homeless children has become the most alarming; in 2010, it was discovered that Colorado has the fastest growing child poverty rate in the nation. The reasons for this vary, but one of the most crucial factors in this situation is access to quality education.
The stigma of poverty is one of the main barriers for those who can help the impoverished but choose to exclude them from their priorities. A common expectation for the impoverished is that they should be able to pull themselves up by their own boot straps. For some, this is possible, but this is not a practical expectation for everyone and we cannot forget about those who fall in this category. Barriers to individuals being able to help themselves obtain social equity include access to quality education, family structure, affordable rental housing, declines in public assistance, escalating costs of resources, care for mental health, access to health insurance, inmates’ reentry into society and prejudice.
In order to fall out of the cycle of poverty and be socially equitable, one must be economically self-sufficient. This means that one can take care of their basic needs without public or private assistance. This definition broadens the category of social inequity and includes more people than the homeless. The federal poverty level is incredibly outdated and indicates that for a person to be self-sustainable, they only need to make $8.00 per hour. The reality is that this is not a livable wage, but a person who earns this or more would not be officially considered impoverished; therefore, they encounter barriers to public assistance.
If we want to break the cycle of dependency, improvement in access to education and training needs to be in conjunction with access to employment so that a person can obtain a livable wage to sustain themselves.
Society needs to intervene with networks, support and public policy to remove the barriers in order to create an environment where people can become personally sustainable if they aren’t born into that situation.
