The Poor: An Invisible Social Class

So, I had a meeting today with our fellow affordable housing task force members to review our strategy after collecting some of our petitions (we received about 500 signatures so far). I was surprised to hear one of our members dismiss the petition results once I told them that we got signatures from people at food pantries. He said that county supervisors won't recognize their signatures because "food pantry people" don't pay taxes so we should try to get signatures from the "representative community". Besides being appalled by his comments, it was even more amazing at the muted reaction from everyone else (considering that these are folks who advocate for affordable housing). The poor has truly become an invisible class in America. With the rich in power and politicians tripping over each other to cater to the middle class, who will speak for the poor?