More than 100 mayors across the U.S. were searching for ways to address poverty that affects millions of Americans, a newspaper report said on Saturday.

At a just-concluded conference in Las Vegas, the mayors reaffirmed their commitment to providing better-paying jobs and affordable healthcare and housing to millions of Americans living in poverty in their cities.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa Villaraigosa urged the mayors to work together to start a national dialogue about the need for better jobs , housing and healthcare, the Los Angeles Times reported.

This was a national problem that should be given enough attention, villaraigosa said, expressing concerns that issues facing the working poor are a low priority in Washington.

He acknowledged that bringing the public's attention to the issue would not be easy.

The mayor said he and a delegation of mayors will travel to Washington to voice their concerns, perhaps by year's end.

It was the third meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors' poverty task force, which members hope will lead to new federal policy, Villaraigosa said.

"We're putting this together for the purpose of forcing a conversation with the nation," the mayor said after the meeting. " We want to put this on the national agenda in a bipartisan way. Neither Democrats nor Republicans have been talking about poverty for a very long time," he said.

Villaraigosa said the high cost of housing and a dearth of higher-paying jobs, among other things, had shrank the number of middle class in Los Angeles and across the country.

Eighteen percent of Los Angeles families live below the poverty line, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. In Los Angeles, poorly educated migrant workers hold two or three jobs and still struggle to pay for housing, food and transportation.

Villaraigosa said he hoped to become a high-profile face in the battle against urban poverty and would advocate new partnerships between government and private industry to bring both jobs and affordable housing to cities across the nation.

For Los Angeles, the mayor voiced support for providing incentives for developers to construct low-income housing, training workers for higher-paying jobs and offering programs to improve literacy.

Providing quality education goes hand-in-hand with efforts to reduce poverty, he said. The country also needs to find a solution to the high cost of healthcare, the mayor said, noting that millions of working Americans cannot afford health insurance.

Source: Xinhua