MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) - Memphis Mayor A C Wharton wants to reduce the city’s poverty rate by 10 percentage points over the next 10 years.
To do that, he is planning to implement his Blueprint for Prosperity, which seeks to create jobs, increase income and reduce living costs.
Wharton recently shared details of the plan with The Commercial Appeal (https://bit.ly/1isIpuH), saying now is the time to act.
The Center for Neighborhood Technology, based in Chicago, designed the plan’s eight-point strategy.
According to the firm’s projections, the blueprint has the potential to move the city’s poorest families above the federal poverty line.
The poverty rate in Memphis increased from 20.6 percent to 27.2 percent between 2000 and 2010.
“If we don’t do this, it could spin us into a death spiral,” Wharton told the newspaper.
The central strategies of his plan revolve around attracting new jobs to the right locations, improving the mass transit system and educating poor families on how to reduce household expenses.
It focuses on steps the city can take itself because it controls entities such as the Memphis Light, Gas and Water Division, Memphis Housing Authority and Memphis Area Transit Authority.
“I don’t have the excuse of saying well, I could do something about transportation, but we have a privately owned transit company, so they might corporate with us, they may not,” Wharton said.
Wharton says he thinks the initiative will be successful in part because there seems to be a shift in the mindset of leaders, both in the public and private sector.
“We’ve reached that tipping point where those who care, I really do believe, are now in the majority,” Wharton said.
Assisi Foundation Executive Director Jan Young agreed.
“There seems to be a different type of hopeful attitude” in Memphis, Young said. “There seems to be more of that conversation instead of the ’Woe is me, aren’t we awful,’” lament, she said.
“I am not deluded into thinking (the blueprint) is a magic bullet,” she said. “The future of how Memphis thrives is dependent on how well we address the issues of poverty.”
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Information from: The Commercial Appeal, https://www.commercialappeal.com
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