| Subject: Oregon's poor |
Author:
Betty
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Date Posted: 08:58:33 03/07/05 Mon
In reply to:
Betty
's message, "Oregon welfare applicants ordered to pick through garbage!" on 08:50:44 03/07/05 Mon
story by Andy Duncan
The light turns red and you stop eye-to-eye with a middle-aged woman holding a handwritten sign that says, "I'm hungry. Please help me."
An elderly man pushing a shopping cart filled with what appears to be all his belongings approaches you outside a grocery store and asks if you can spare any change.
And how about this:Hurrying to work on a cold, drizzly morning, you whip into the parking lot of a Dari-Mart to grab a cup of coffee. There's a rusty station wagon that looks like it escaped from a junkyard. The back seats are folded down. There are kids in there, four of them in ragged pajamas. The oldest doesn't appear to be more than seven. They're on a bed of dirty blankets, towels and sleeping bags.
This is their home, you realize, as a woman coming out of the Dari-Mart with a carton of milk and a couple of fruit pie snacks heads for the station wagon. This mother and her four children are living in an old Buick in the dead of winter.
These situations might make us uncomfortable. They might trigger panicky thoughts: What should I do? Why can't the adults get a job? How'd they get to this point? However, one thing is certain. These are not uncommon occurrences in Oregon as a new century, and millennium, spread before us.
But guess what: Though homelessness may be the most visible face of poverty in the state, it's not the most abundant one. It's not even close. Of more than 400,000 poor people, an estimated 7,000 to 10,000 are homeless. The fastest-growing type of poverty in Oregon is the phenomenon sometimes called "the working poor."
Some lay the phenomenon of the working poor at the doorstep of economic changes-specifically, the decline in high-paying production jobs in natural resource industries, such as timber, and an increase in low-paying jobs in the expanding service sector of the economy. (See "The best and worst of times," page 6.)
Others trying to explain why an increasing number of working Oregonians are poor point to the federal Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, sometimes referred to simply as welfare reform. The act requires that people receiving aid through the federal-state program many of us think of as "welfare" (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, or TANF for short) look for work.
Admirers of the welfare reform act note that the number of people on welfare is shrinking and say finding employment, even a low-paying job, is apt to fuel an upward spiral where a person who's been living in poverty gains confidence and skills that make the future brighter. They also say that only about 25 percent of the poor people in Oregon received assistance through TANF at its peak, so a sweeping indictment of welfare reform as the cause of the working poor phenomenon is misleading.
But critics say welfare reform is permanently increasing the number of working poor by pushing people into dead-end jobs without adequately addressing why they were unemployed and on welfare.
"Just because people are off welfare doesn't mean they're out of poverty," says Chuck Sheketoff, director of the Oregon Center for Public Policy in Silverton, which conducts poverty-related research.
According to an article by Kate Taylor in the Portland Oregonian, based on data from the Oregon Department of Human Services, Oregonians leaving welfare for work make an average of $7.35 an hour, work 35 hours a week and still receive some benefits from the state, such as food stamps.
The article asserts that although people on welfare who get even minimum-wage jobs have more money to spend than they did on welfare, families often remain poor. The article says this is because the state takes away childcare and other benefits as people move up the employment ladder and receive raises.
Jim Neely, deputy administrator of the Adult and Family Services Division of the Oregon Department of Human Services, which operates the TANF program, sees it differently. He says income increases significantly for people on welfare when they find a full-time job and that some people leaving welfare move into jobs that clearly take them out of poverty.
But Neely agrees that "for many, especially those with child care needs, raises from $7.35 an hour to $10 or $12 an hour can actually result in reduced spending money compared to $7.35 an hour (because of reduced public benefits)."
Another type of poverty in Oregon is the situation confronting families who don't have a job and receive support through TANF. About 96 percent of these are single parents and their children. More than 90 percent of the single parents are women.
Based on family size, they receive money for living expenses. They receive food stamps and a small percentage receives low-income public housing or housing assistance from a private organization. They also may receive some public assistance for childcare. Still, life for these Oregonians is much harder than some of us may realize. Imagine trying to care for your children and find work while wrestling with welfare eligibility issues and processing requirements.
And what about our most visible kind of poverty: Why are 7,000 to 10,000 people in Oregon homeless?
Housing is expensive and some people with jobs can't afford a house. Some are homeless even though they receive one or more types of public assistance. Maybe food stamps, a welfare check, or some kind of disability payment.
Other homeless people are pretty much without resources for a lot of reasons.
Some recently lost their jobs and economic footing because of illness, accident or downsizing and haven't reached out for help. Some have drug or alcohol problems or mental illness and don't know how to connect with public and private organizations that might help.
Some homeless people are passing through. Consider the case of a man, woman and two small children seen hitchhiking at a freeway on-ramp at Grants Pass. The young father, Richard, was a carpenter. The family had gone to Alaska so he could find a construction job. It didn't work out. They were broke and trying to get back to New Mexico.
Most welfare benefits are for families with dependent children, so many homeless people are single. But a significant number are parents and children, including single parents who recently fled an abusive relationship and aren't yet receiving public assistance. Some are children and young adults fleeing from abusive family situations.
The working poor. People on welfare. The homeless. These faces of poverty are not the bloated-belly, killing kind we see on television programs about other countries. In Oregon, we're more likely to see stories about:
*A single parent trapped between earning money to pay the bills and having time to care for her kids adequately with love and discipline.
*A mother and father occasionally skipping meals so the kids can eat.
*Chronic malnutrition that reduces a child's ability to learn.
*An elderly woman living frugally, choosing to have a cat instead of a telephone.
*Children feeling like outcasts because of how and where they live.
*Young adults on the street.
*Single men and women living under bridges and in forest camps.
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