Center for Poverty Solutions

 Poverty loses when human dignity prevails 

America has lost the War on Poverty. After nearly 60 years and $12 trillion, the poverty rate remains stuck between 11% and 15%. We’ve focused on making poverty more bearable rather than helping people escape a trap that lasts for generations. We’ve created dependence and taken people’s dignity and purpose. There are better ways to treat people, and we will bring free-market solutions to one of the most important policy issues of our time through the Center for Poverty Solutions, starting in Chicago. Together, we can defeat poverty and build self-worth.

Larry Roberts

Larry Roberts

Larry Roberts is a Chicago barber who helps former inmates reclaim their lives and dignity through jobs training.  We first spoke to him in 2021. His school ran a barber shop inside the Chatham neighborhood Walmart until this spring, when Walmart abruptly closed that location and three others. Larry is looking for a new location...

Steven Blake

Steven Blake

Steven Blake was homeless for years until another man showed him how selling fruit in downtown Chicago could rebuild his life. Now Blake employs other homeless people who are working their ways off the streets. “I do not hire people who already ‘have.’ I want to train the ones and teach the ones to be...

Marius Powell

Marius Powell

“You need stable housing to get yourself together, hold a job and contribute to society. Without proper housing people end up using more resources.”

Zaniya Campbell

Zaniya Campbell

“It’s crazy to think about how far I have come. I’m very lucky to have had counselors and social workers like Miss Ashley and Miss Angelina, and that special programs like Curt’s Café exist to see the good in me when school didn’t.”

Dontay Lockett

Dontay Lockett

“My experience with being homeless and with the government, is they really didn’t help that much. They still made you feel like you have to have the same quality that anybody else that’s not homeless.”