Former Middle Class Families Find Selves in Poverty

Census shows Akron facing new kind of poverty: Agencies aid more former middle-class residents
Scott, Dave. Ohio.com, September 22, 2011.

U.S. census data confirm what area social agencies already knew: The face of poverty is changing and it’s a lot meaner.

Poverty in Akron has increased to nearly 3 in 10 residents or 29.4 percent in 2010, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. The same category was 23.7 percent before the recession officially began in December 2007.

The report, released today, says 57,312 Akronites were living below the poverty line in 2010. The poverty line for a family of two adults and two children was $21,970 last year. (The figure varies for different-size families.)

Many area social agencies say they are hearing from formerly middle-class people who have no idea how to cope with being poor.


“These are individuals who have never been poor; they don’t know how to use the system,” Dottie Achmoody, chief executive of OPEN-M, said. “They don’t know where the resources are, and even when they find out what the resources are, they are embarrassed. They are ashamed. They come to us as the absolutely last resort.”

Many families are earning less.

The median Ohio household income fell from $49,000 in 2007 to $45,090 in 2010. For Akron, that number — meaning half brought in more, half less — fell from $34,626 to $31,171 in 2010.

“The one thing we are seeing is a whole new face of poverty,” Achmoody said. “We are seeing a lot more situational poor. Individuals or families where two-income households have gone down to one [wage earner], and one household income cannot cover all the bills and expenses.”

Ohio’s unemployment rate was estimated at 9.1 percent earlier this week.

Many of those jobless are turning to social services for the first time in their lives.

“What we are hearing a lot of individuals say is, ‘You know I have worked all of my life. I have never been without a job. I’ve always been able to find some kind of job.’ ” Achmoody said. “But now so many are out of work, it is hard to go out there and find any kind of job, no matter what the pay. We’re seeing people accept jobs much lower than their qualifications are, just to make ends meet.”

She gave the example of a Hudson family: The husband lost his job and the bigger share of family income. His family’s health insurance also was about to expire. He had never been needy before and didn’t know what to do. Eventually, he turned to OPEN-M’s free clinic.

Achmoody said the man wasn’t as savvy as some chronically poor people.

“Some with generational poverty, they’ve been dealing with this stuff all their life,” she said. “They are beyond embarrassed and they know where all the resources are ... but this new poor, they do not know, and it’s difficult.”

Since 2007, median household income has declined in every major Ohio city, with Cleveland at the bottom rung, falling from $29,982 in 2007 to $25,977 in 2010.

Jeff Kaiser, executive director of Akron’s Haven of Rest, said the poor are younger now, too.

“What we are seeing is a younger generation of men coming into the facility,” he said. “It used to be anywhere from 45 to 65, and now it’s more like 18 to 35.”

In some cases, the young people have never held a job. Haven of Rest’s mission includes leading them to job training so they can become self-sufficient.

“Our goal is to get them back into society,” he said. “It takes time. It used to be two and three months, and now it’s taking a lot longer. It can take anywhere between four months up to a year to get them back into society.”

Women and children are feeling the brunt, he said.

He said the mission’s women’s director, Yvette Mc- Millan, reports that many women say they formerly lived with one and two other families under one roof and even then they couldn’t make ends meet and were forced to ask the Mission’s Harvest Home for shelter.

The Akron Canton Regional Foodbank tripled its storage volume with a new warehouse three years ago — and it needed it.

“Our distribution has shot up 48 percent in the last three years. That’s in the overall food we distribute,” said Dan Flowers, chief executive of the food bank.

He saw 23 percent more people using the agency’s services in 2009.

“In this last few years and in this recession, a lot of people who have never had to access the food banks and the public benefits are finding them doing it for the very first time. ... So by all means we have seen, certainly, a lot of first-time clients come in.”

He said national food distributors have had to reduce contributions, but local retailers, including Walmart, Sam’s Club, Acme and Giant Eagle, have made up the slack.

Flowers said no one who asks for food has been turned away. Still, there are hungry in the Akron area.

Instead of hunger, he uses the term “food insecurity,” which means an inability to provide necessary food. Flowers said 16 percent of Summit County residents – 25 percent of all children – faced that problem last year.

But help is available.

“I guess the one piece of advice I’d give to people in poverty is if they need help, don’t be scared to ask for it ... because there are a lot of people that want to help,” Flowers said.

570,000 Ohio children live in poverty - and the TANF Budget is insufficient to meet their needs

According to the State Budget Matters edition on The TANF Budget by the Center for Community Solutions:

• The federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program is the largest source of funding for states for programs that help low-income families.  Ohio uses TANF funds primarily for cash assistance, county allocations, and early child care and education.

• For many years, Ohio did not spend all of its federal TANF block grant. This created a surplus balance, but those funds were spent down in the last biennium. The federal TANF grant has been flat-funded for over a decade.

• The TANF program was created during an economic boom and did not anticipate the challenges caused by a long and deep recession. The number of families receiving cash assistance has increased sharply since the start of the recession, and TANF funding is stretched too thin to meet all of their basic needs.

• Due to the use of one-time funds in the current biennium, expected FY 2012-2013 funding is insufficient to support current spending. State policymakers not only face the challenge of closing a structural deficit of $8 billion in Ohio’s General Revenue Fund, but they must close a shortfall in Ohio’s largest discretionary social service program as well. 

• Their decisions will impact Ohio's children. The TANF program provides critical support for low-income families – and especially for children. 

• The 2009 American Community Survey shows that 21 percent of Ohio’s children live in poverty, compared with 18 percent in 2007. There are about 570,000 children in Ohio living below the federal poverty line, an increase of almost 75,000 children compared with just two years before.