Fighting Poverty

In the latest edition of WORLD Magazine, Marvin Olasky looks at housing market in Florida and says, both government and individuals have to face up to hard choices.
"The bad news for middle-class homeowners, though, is good news for home purchasers. In hard-hit Lee County (Fort Myers and vicinity) on the Gulf coast, a 30 percent vacancy rate means that first-time homebuyers can buy houses that a few years ago were only dreams for them.
Eddie Felton, executive director of the Home Ownership Resource Center of Lee County, says government officials should not give "underwater" owners whatever it takes so that they can stay in their homes. Instead, he "triages" homeowners and helps those in the bottom third to get out of their homes quickly so a family that's a better economic match can get in." (excerpt from Fighting Poverty and Leveraging Greed)

On the program today, my guest will be WORLD Magazine's Editor in Chief, Marvin Olasky.

In 1992, Olasky became an editor of WORLD. That same year he published The Tragedy of American Compassion, which two years later Newt Gingrich distributed to incoming Republican representatives of the 104th Congress.

The book, an overview of poverty-fighting in America from colonial times to the 1990s, argues that private individuals and organizations, particularly Christian churches, have a responsibility to care for the poor, and contends that challenging, personal, and spiritual help, common until the 1930s, was more effective than the government welfare programs of recent decades.

Olasky argues that government programs are ineffective because they are disconnected from the poor, while private charity has the power to change..