A New Way to Look at Poverty

Amy Hulst:
On today’s episode, we unpack our framework for poverty alleviation called the Mountain Model, including the critical types of support needed at every stage of the journey.

Hi, this is Amy Hulst, and you’re listening to From Poverty to Prosperity, where we ask what keeps people in poverty in America and what it takes to break free.

We’re here on the From Poverty to Prosperity podcast with my co-host Jason Janz.

Jason Janz:
And my co-host Amy Hulst.

Amy Hulst:
And today we want to talk about the work that we do at CrossPurpose. We’ve been walking with neighbors in Denver for 14 years, all the way from wherever they find themselves in poverty, whether that’s situational or generational. They are in poverty. They are trapped in the cycles and the systems of poverty. And we are working to walk them completely out into what we would call prosperity or flourishing. So let’s back up. Tell me about what is our philosophy behind the work that we do.

Jason Janz:
We wanted to expand a vision of the average American when we think about poverty. Most of poverty talk is let’s get people to their basic human needs met or let’s provide food and clothing and shelter.

Amy Hulst:
Why do you think that is?

Jason Janz:
We are so consumed in this country from just trying to solve the basic human needs problem and make sure everybody’s got a place to live that we don’t really think about some of the upstream problems and solutions that might come along with that. So we need to expand our view of what is possible.

But also, what is required of us as a country to make this dream available to all people? And so we call it the Mountain Model because it actually lifts our vision to what does a summit actually look like. If all we’re doing is just trying to give people food and clothing and shelter, I just believe it’s a short-sighted version. And that’s not the version we have for ourselves or our children. So what if we said, let’s live in a country where that’s available to all people?

Amy Hulst:
So before we climb the mountain, can we set a little bit of a base camp for people who have never actually talked about poverty before? What kind of soil are we living in and starting out this climb in?

Jason Janz:
Let me just map out the mountain. The way we talk about the Mountain Model is there’s four steps up the mountain. Often when I talk on poverty, people say, hey, we don’t believe in just giving people a fish. That just feeds people for a day. We want to teach people to fish. That feeds people for life. It’s an old Chinese proverb. But that actually stops short. We actually have to not just teach people to fish, we want people to actually get a job. That’s equipping them with a fishing pole. But as we know, not all jobs are created equal. We want them to have a good job, one that’s got healthcare benefits and a 401k. That’s a good job, something that people can do for a career, not just a placeholder job. But then we want to go to the next step and say, what would it take for people to own the pond? And that’s really the true heart of the American dream. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, to live the life that I’ve dreamed here in this country.

So those are the four steps up the mountain. And I think that all starts at level one, which is the give-a-fish world. That is usually where people are just suffering with the basics. Really, the known definition of poverty is the inability to provide food, clothing, and shelter for you and your family. And so that’s what step one is all about. It tends to get a ton of attention because that’s where we see the most visible human suffering. It’s also where the safety net plays at large. So billions of dollars are put into that solution from the public sector every year. I could give many more reasons why, but that’s where we tend to start and end conversations around poverty.

Amy Hulst:
What do people get right about poverty, and what do people get wrong about poverty?

Jason Janz:
Because I’ve talked on this for well over a decade, most people, when I talk about poverty, think of a homeless person with a backpack on an off ramp, flying a sign, asking for money. That’s what they think about. They usually think of the unhoused population. But that’s only 1.7 percent of the poverty population in our country. We actually have technical definitions we call the federal poverty guidelines, and there are several other definitions that expand on that. But there’s actually an economic line, and if somebody lives below that, they are technically in poverty by definition in this country. And that is far greater than just the unhoused population. We’re talking fifty-five million Americans who we would say are poor or working poor in this country. I think we can get it wrong by just thinking it’s a very small segment of the population, when most of America is living paycheck to paycheck.

Amy Hulst:
Most organizations stop at maybe just giving a fish or teaching to fish. Why do you think they stop there?

Jason Janz:
I think it’s a lack of resources. What I like to think about is, let’s just look at the food issue. We have the typical food banks. A lot of churches operate food banks. We have large food nonprofits. One that I love to support is the Food Bank of the Rockies here. They feed about half a million Coloradans with their intervention. They actually provide healthy food, they do some home delivery, they allow co-ops, they’re very creative around that. And I call them the nichers in our communities. They find a problem and really zone in on it, and they do a really good job there. We actually want them to do that. They don’t really have the bandwidth to then go do a career education program, do job placement, and think about a homeownership program. That would be a whole mountain view. But nichers, by their very definition, focus on a specific problem. My challenge to those types of organizations, and we need you in communities, and we need you to be subject matter experts at what you do, is to think about creating a cohesive network. Where would you provide a warm handoff to a family that might show up to a clothing bank but wanted career education? Where would they go? And if we knew that, we could create this beautiful chemistry in our custom-designed mountain models in neighborhoods.

Amy Hulst:
So you mentioned nichers. Who else is playing on the proverbial mountain?

Jason Janz:
Yeah. So we talk about nichers. We also talk about negotiators. Negotiators usually work in policy. They’re looking at the whole mountain and saying, how can we help more people move up faster? So you’ll hear about legislative bills around affordable housing, and you’ll see public dollars being spent around workforce development, or just recently Workforce Pell went through and was approved, which now will allow not just higher ed two- and four-year degrees to be publicly financed, but certifications to be financed as well. Negotiators spend their whole lives trying to get good policy passed.

And then we have the navigators. Navigators aren’t nichers, they aren’t negotiators. They actually walk with a human being all the way up the mountain, I’d say at least two or three steps up the mountain, if not all four. That’s much more of a relational approach. It’s centered usually on an individual and their journey. So I think what’s missing in American neighborhoods, we have a lot of nichers, we have a lot of negotiators, but we are actually missing long-term navigation for neighbors to help them navigate the resources that are already provided in many American neighborhoods.

Amy Hulst:
Why do you think navigation, this idea of navigation, is so difficult for cities or organizations to actually pull off?

Jason Janz:
Well, it’s not funded, number one. Philanthropy loves to fund tuition scholarships. They love to fund food interventions. But actually taking the time to guide somebody is a little more squishy sometimes in impact reports, even though it’s absolutely vital to helping navigate the resources that are in communities. And it’s also that you start to develop trust and mutual love for one another in partnership. It’s usually long term to see somebody walk up those four different stages, so you’re looking at maybe a three-, five-, ten-year relationship. And due to the pressure that the philanthropic sector and nonprofits have, we need to create results and numbers and get those into our annual impact reports. Some of those numbers aren’t huge when you’re a navigator, but it’s truly what every human needs. If we even look at our own lives, we’ve all had people who have helped walk us up that mountain, either all the way or at different stages. Different navigators have helped us. I think it’s just about providing that for every neighbor.

Amy Hulst:
The book Together We Climb makes the case for the philanthropic, public, and private sectors to essentially all work together. Is that this whole navigational approach, walking a neighbor all the way up the mountain to where they can own the pond?

Jason Janz:
It’s actually a very old idea. I found it in a book called Understanding Philanthropy, where they talk about the three sectors in every American community. Philanthropy really means the love of humankind, phileo anthropos. And that’s not just donors and foundations, that’s churches, nonprofits, and the average everyday American who’s helping their neighbor when their electricity gets turned off. That’s philanthropy. That’s the love of humankind that happens in communities.

The private sector is business. They employ eighty out of a hundred Americans. And then you have the public sector, which is government, very involved in all of these issues on the mountain in order to create a flourishing community. Those three sectors work together well in some communities and not in others. I do think you need all three to make it work if you’re going to have it work really well, and it’s great to have them all work together. We have an advantage here in Denver. Denver’s a beautiful city for this, where there’s a lot of cooperation and a lot of co-creation around solutions. We definitely have our problems, we definitely have our divisions, we would definitely have some scarcity mindset. But overall, almost everybody I meet in the work here wants to see good things happen. When you lack resources, it tends to get a little dicey. But I do believe we have enough resources in our communities to solve these problems, with those sectors all coming together and helping our neighbors flourish.

Amy Hulst:
Oftentimes when we use the word resources, we think financial and monetary resources. How might we think differently about those three sectors coming together, philanthropy, private, and public, in categories beyond just economic resources?

Jason Janz:
Well, I would think if I just picked on the private sector here and highlighted them, they’re the primary wealth builders, I think, in American communities. The social contract between an employee and their employer can sometimes last five, ten, fifteen, twenty years. What’s happening is that employee is helping that owner or ownership group make a profit and put food on their table. In turn, the employee is getting food put on their table. Probably the number one wealth builder in America outside of homeownership is the matching 401k. That’s usually employer-provided, up to a hundred percent matching, usually up to three to five percent of someone’s income. That’s a huge wealth-building tool for people. So I would like to see the private sector see themselves, not just as offering a benefits package, but actually as a wealth-building tool. I meet a lot of business owners who want to provide that for their employees and their staff, and their heart is to do that. Oftentimes, though, ninety percent of all businesses are small businesses, and they don’t have a full HR department that can do those things. So CrossPurpose, we want to come alongside those companies and say, what would it be like to really see yourselves in this framing, as you are the primary wealth builder for your families? And I just see owners smile just thinking about that concept.

Amy Hulst:
How would somebody’s journey out of poverty look different if these three sectors worked together?

Jason Janz:
Yeah, I think first of all, if you look at human design, you would say for the neighbor, it’s such an advantage. That’s how everything should be designed. Does the average neighbor in your neighborhood know how to access the resources to get help when they need essential things for their life: food, clothing, and shelter? Do they know where to go to get job training and access to tuition? Do they know where to go to get a good job, especially if they have obstacles like justice involvement, a lack of skills, a language barrier, or a lack of experience? Everybody wants two to three years of experience. How do we navigate those areas so they can get a good job? And then when it comes to the wealth-building arena, are there access points for capital for first-time homebuyers? If the neighbor can see that map, and we can actually give them real hope, we’re going to see them run through brick walls to make that happen for them and their families.

So I think that’s one thing, the neighbor experiences flourishing, and then good-hearted people experience mutual wins and high fives all around, everybody realizing we all played a part, and none of us were the silver bullet. We actually, as a community, came together to be the joint bullet, you would say, to see that success happen. I find that extremely satisfying.

Amy Hulst:
What type of organization was CrossPurpose when it started, and do you think it’s still the same type of organization today?

Jason Janz:
Definitely started as a navigation-minded organization, although we wouldn’t have known that terminology. We just saw that as a gap. And because it all started on the front porch with a neighbor, she’s the star of the show, right? She’s the hero of her journey. So we had to sit there and say, what would it take to help her move up that mountain? I think that just became part of how we saw the intervention. We didn’t come at it from industry needing more people in the trades, or figuring out how to get scholarships to low-income students. We were like, what does Tiffany need, and how can we help that all come together?

Amy Hulst:
So navigation isn’t just one thing. How would you define the different types of navigation that are possible?

Jason Janz:
Yeah, in the book, we lay out this idea that the most important navigation that happens is one person in this country helping one other person navigate the mountain. You might say, I don’t know how to do that. Well, think of your own children. Do you know where they’re going to go to be taught to fish? You’re probably going to go on a college tour with them, right? Have you talked to your kid yet about what career they might want to go into? Most parents are beginning that conversation before their kids are. Think in that framing, and think about the one person you know who’s struggling right now, especially economically. Most people have a relative, a friend, somebody within arm’s reach who is struggling. Hopefully, with this book and with the Mountain Model framing, you can start thinking about how you could put this together in your community. Just with some Google searching, some phone calls, and some networking, you could probably map out the pathways that could get somebody to the top.

Secondly, we have organizations all across this country doing good niche-based work. They’re doing negotiator work. They might even be a navigator, but giving them a full mountain view of navigation is where they could build navigation capacity inside their organization. So maybe you’re on a board, and you want to bring this kind of concept to the nonprofit you work with.

Third, there are communities out there that say, we have a lot of resources, we don’t think we need any more organizations, but it’s not connected. What would it take to create the connective tissue to build a Mountain Model ecosystem in our community? We’re talking to a couple of communities about that right now.

And lastly, if you’re involved in policy and you want to look at regions, states, or even our country as a whole and say, what are some things that could be enacted as policy solutions that have been proven, we could help the entire system work better on the mountain. Those are the four types of navigational frameworks that we think could work in anybody’s life.

Amy Hulst:
So let’s say somebody’s listening, they’re a niche organization, maybe they’re a pastor of a church, maybe they’re a policymaker or a lobbyist. Where can they expand their capacity into navigational type work, and what can they do about it? What’s the call to action for them?

Jason Janz:
As a person of faith, I think Jesus gave the magic phrase, love your neighbor as yourself. So first of all, ask, what world do I want to create for my neighbor that I’ve been able to access? For the person sitting in the third row of that congregation, maybe sit down and listen to them and ask them, where do you want to go? And if this congregation were to help you, what would that look like? What’s the dream you have?

Now, I will tell you, a lot of people on step one of the mountain, if you go back to Maslow’s hierarchy, will only articulate a basic human needs vision. They don’t have the oxygen in their life to articulate what Maslow called self-actualization. So you just help them accomplish the dream of stability, and then say, where next? And beauty develops. Mother Teresa said, don’t worry about the numbers. I love this. Love one person at a time, and start with the person right in front of you. The most scalable idea in the history of the world was one person helping one person, all the way.

Amy Hulst:
So for those who have summited, who have walked the very hard mountain all the way to the top, what would you say to them?

Jason Janz:
I just want to make sure we understand, at the summit we talk about owning the pond, and I think one of the limits of the metaphor is that I want that to not just be economic. They actually have control over their lives, and they experience human flourishing in all categories. But then also, if we’ve been given grace, what do we do? We give others grace. So go back down to the bottom of the mountain and help walk somebody up to the top of the mountain.

We actually teach our graduates a seven-week course on generosity, not because they aren’t generous people. Pound for pound, people in poverty are more generous than people in wealth. It’s just about giving them tools to think about really good generosity and what that could look like. That’s the idea. That would create this virtuous cycle in American communities. How beautiful and wholesome would that be for all of us?

Amy Hulst:
Thanks, Jason.

Jason Janz:
Take care, Amy.

Amy Hulst:
That was a great conversation on the Mountain Model. If you’re interested in learning more about what navigation might look like in your community, go to crosspurpose.org/navigation to get in touch with us.