Start with the definition of a pimp: a person who controls prostitutes, arranges customers for their sex work, and takes some of they money they earn. It's an agent, who forms the interface between the "straight" world and the world of underground sex work.

A "poverty pimp" is someone who relies on poor people to to earn a living, usually by administering goods and services to poor people, and, in turn, making the taxpayers or donors feel good about the work being performed.

While the following article focuses on the strata of middle class people who administer services to the homeless and poor, I'll get into a few other common poverty pimps.

http://la.indymedia.org/news/2003/12/98634.php

Charities: Haiti got ravaged by and earthquake, and people donated. The money overwhelmingly went to "administration" rather than building housing. Red Cross pimped the horror of Haitian disaster to raise donations.

Churches: they tell a good story about helping the poor, but may not allow poor members to access poverty services they offer, and may not want poor members. They may participate in state-church "faith based" welfare businesses. The pimping feeds their sanctimony.

Nonprofit Affordable Housing: funded by the wealthy, they sometimes organize poor people to advocate for housing. The goal of the investors is usually "slum clearance" to wipe out poor communities, and their commitment to affordability is temporary. Yet, they remain in the background, making money, while the poor children frolic in the photos.

Free Healthcare: sometimes, free healthcare is offered, with the proviso that the patiens are used as experimental subjects. In the famous Tuskeegee experiment, healthcare was offered, but medicine was secretly withheld, while men wasted away from curable syphilis. All this was done in the name of science, the glory of the modern world.

The Prison System: the inmates are overwhelmingly poor, but the corporations running the prisons are rich.

The Drug War: the wealthy and middle class want the drugs, and the poor do the grunt work of selling it and delivering it, and then getting arrested and imprisoned for it. The wealthy still get wealthy on the drug trade. The dealers are demonized, so the parents have someone to blame but their own children, or themselves.

War: the working class are sent to fight for the rich man's dreams of world conquest. Some get "treats" for fighting these wars, but some end up mentally destroyed, and end up homeless, sleeping on the sidewalk. The generals trot out the heros to recruit the next generation of soldiers.

Do you know of any other poverty pimping situations?