Owning Up: Poverty, Assets, and the American Dream

This text is about assets and the difference they can make in the lives of the poor. It expands the concept of asset building to encompass a range of skills and support systems that are necessary to lift people out of poverty. It identifies four types of asset that can represent sources of wealth for low-income individuals and communities; economic, including equity, retirement savings and other financial holdings; human, including education, knowledge, skills and talents; social, the networks of trust and reciprocity that bind communities together; and natural, the land, water, air and other natural resources we depend on for survival. It then looks at five organizations at the forefront of building assets for the poor, telling their stories through the eyes of individuals whose lives have been transformed by their work. Despite the success of welfare reform in moving people off public assistance and into jobs, few of the working poor are able to accumulate even the most minimal of assets. This book demonstrates that using asset-building programmes in combination with tradtional income-based support can be an effective means for helping milions of Americans out of poverty.