Kiryas, NY, doesn’t look like the poorest place in America. The village has no slums, no homeless people, and pretty much no crime. Yet a whopping 70% of Kiryas Joel's 21,000 residents are below the federal poverty line, and its median family income is just $17,929, making it far and away the poorest place in America—at least statistically, according to the New York Times. But Kiryas is an odd place; it’s populated predominantly by ultra-orthodox Satmar Hasidic Jews, most of whom speak almost exclusively Yiddish.
Women there marry young and don’t use birth control, giving the town the lowest median age (12) and highest average family size (6) in the country. But residents manage just fine, thanks to charity from its wealthier members and collective action. About half of the residents receive food stamps, and one-third receive Medicaid benefits and rely on federal vouchers to help pay their housing costs.
The community runs many businesses as nonprofits and, by voting en masse, wields enough political clout to get loads of government help. They recently, for example, built a government-funded $10 million postnatal maternal care center—prompting one state lawmaker to call for an investigation. “They may be truly poor on paper,” the lawmaker says. “They are not truly poor in reality.”
There are towns in Israel just like Kiryas. Everyone in town studies the Torah and no one really works. But in Israel there is a huge welfare state supporting the Orthodox community. In the U.S. they have to get more creative.
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