But food stamps, section 8 housing payments and welfare benefits aren’t counted as income. So “poverty” is a relative term.
Exactly! If you count those things those counted as poor are sometimes better off than those that don’t qualify for help.
Unless you’re one of “Holder’s People”, in which case your food stamps count as income:
snip-”Instead of using passé measures of creditworthiness such as, say, credit history and having an adequate income, ACORN convinced lenders to adopt “more flexible underwriting criteria that take into account the realities of lower income communities.” Henceforth, some banks serving inner cities would accept “less traditional income sources such as food stamps.”
http://spectator.org/archives/2008/10/29/acorns-food-stamp-mortgages/print