United Way Halifax Blog

Interlocking issues for people require interlocking solutions from institutions.

If you are a big community-minded nerd like me, then you will likely have heard of the Tamarack Institute. They have heaps and heaps of lovely information on their website. It’s well worth a lingering perusal. Recently they have released a book called Cities Reducing Poverty. The introduction and contents page are provided in case you want to purchase the book for $10. The introduction is a great primer for wrapping your head around complex community initiatives.

Here is an excerpt:

For practically every family, then, the ingredients of poverty are part financial and part psychological, part personal and part societal, part past and part present. Every problem magnifies the impact of the others, and all are so tightly interlocked that one reversal can produce a chain reaction with results far distant from the original causes.

A rundown apartment can exacerbate a child’s asthma, which leads to a call for an ambulance, which generates a medical bill that cannot be paid, which ruins a credit record, which hikes the interest rate on an auto loan, which forces the purchase
of an unreliable used car, which jeopardizes a mother’s punctuality at work, which limits her promotions and earning capacity, which confines her to poor housing. (Shipler, 2003: 11)

The key to reducing poverty, therefore, is to unlock or disrupt these interlocking cause-and-effect relationships. This requires a comprehensive approach that is sensitive to, and eventually addresses the totality of, the interconnected problems:
… If problems are interlocking then so too solutions must be … a job alone is not enough. Medical insurance alone is not enough. Good housing alone is not enough. Reliable transportation, careful family budgeting, effective parenting, effective schooling are not enough when each is achieved in isolation from the rest. (Shipler, 2003: 11)

In the face of this bewildering array of factors, eliminating poverty for even one person or family is an intimidating prospect. Reducing poverty on a larger scale is even more daunting because the manifestations of poverty vary from person to person and from place to place.

Understanding complex issues and working together towards interlocking solutions is a central challenge for institutions who want to make impact in their community.