When rich people create a publicly funded program for poor people and poor people don’t use it, typically their response is to try and coerce poor people into participation via threatening to take away the meager resources poor people us to try and survive.
Whereas an actually responsible response would include: asking themselves if the program is actually designed in a way that makes sense towards fulfilling poor people’s needs, seeking out views from poor communities about how to better structure the programs, hiring culturally competent people to do outreach in their own communities, hiring people who speak languages spoken in the communities they deal with, work to inform people of the program, provide resources people need to access the program (such as child care or transportation), etc.
Coercive responses show that the people involved are more interested in paternalistic control of poor people’s behavior than in helping or providing resources.















