Harry Targ
1 min ·
INDIANA IS AMERICA
(Lafayette Journal and Courier and Diary of a Heartland Radical)
The precarious existence of the working poor
Mikel Livingston, [email protected] May 30, 2015 (from Lafayette Journal
and Courier)
The foreclosure notices started arriving at the Cooper family's Battle Ground
home in December 2013.
At that point, Lisa Cooper had spent an agonizing eight months wrangling with
the family's mortgage company, trying to explain that her husband had inhaled a
half cup of sawdust chippings in a workplace injury, sidelining him from work
and halting the family's income.
"I just felt hopeless," Cooper said. "Our mortgage company had their attorneys
ready to kick us out of our home."
John Cooper was chainsawing a tree limb without wearing a mask. When the wind
shifted, the chainsaw's back feed went straight into his lungs.
"I had three doctors tell me my husband was lucky to be alive," Lisa Cooper
said. "His lungs were 80 percent filled with carbon dioxide."
John Cooper made about $17 an hour full time before the accident, his wife
said. It was enough to get by, but the family didn't have enough left over to
put aside emergency savings in anticipation of such an injury.
While her husband remained in a medically induced coma, Lisa Cooper, unable to
work due to her own medical issues, found the family's home of 22 years in
jeopardy.
The Coopers aren't alone. Scores of Tippecanoe County residents are employed
but struggling to make ends meet. A single crisis — a medical emergency or a
lost job — can plunge them into poverty, foreclosure or homelessness.
A report from the Indiana Association of United Ways, released late last year,
for the first time puts that population into perspective.
The report explores "ALICE" households — those that are Asset Limited, Income
Constrained and Employed. In other words, they're the working poor, the ones
with income coming in but not enough to cushion them against unforeseen
circumstances.
In Tippecanoe County, 23 percent of households met the ALICE definition in
2012, according to the report. Coupled with the 19 percent of households in
poverty that year, that means that fully 42 percent of Tippecanoe households
are financially struggling. That's nearly 28,700 households out of a total of
nearly 68,000.
"It's the client I've been talking about for a long time," said Marie Morse,
executive director of Homestead Consulting Services, a nonprofit that works
with families at risk of foreclosure. "I do feel like they're getting lost in
the shuffle. When you see them, it looks like they're OK, but behind the
scenes, it doesn't take much for them to falter."
The report
The first ALICE report was compiled in 2009 and focused on a single New Jersey
county. In 2011, the study expanded to include all of New Jersey and in the
following years, other state United Way organizations climbed on board.
In 2014, Indiana for the first time joined six states in funding the study
conducted by Rutgers University-Newark. The Indiana study was funded by the
Indiana Association of United Ways, and the United Way of Greater Lafayette was
among five local United Ways that contributed funding.
"There's an attempt to kind of spread this analysis nationwide," said James
Taylor, CEO of United Way of Greater Lafayette.
"Then Tippecanoe could see where we are in comparison to peer communities."
So how did Tippecanoe County compare in the report?
Tippecanoe ranked 12th of 92 Indiana counties for the highest percentage of
financially struggling households. In the county, those struggling comprise at
least 50 percent of the population in Fairfield and Wabash townships. The
county remains 5 percentage points above the state average of 37 percent.
The report also puts into perspective how much money is required to survive in
Tippecanoe County, showing that even families well above the federal poverty
level are struggling.
According to the household survival budget contained in the study, it would
take an hourly wage of $9, or a salary of $17,526, for a single adult to cover
basic needs in Tippecanoe County. That would adequately cover housing, food,
transportation, health care, taxes and miscellaneous expenses. For a family of
four, it would take an hourly wage of $26, or a salary of $51,128, to cover
those same costs with the addition of child care.
Those amounts are significantly more than the 2012 federal poverty level for
those family sizes — which is $11,170 for a single adult and $23,050 for a
family of four.
"It is important for people to understand it does take $9 an hour for an adult
(to survive in Tippecanoe County), which is achievable, I hope, for a person to
get," Taylor said. "But it's $9 an hour full time, which is more challenging.
The $26 an hour? That's where it starts to get more difficult."
One problem, according to the report, is that the growth of low-paying and
low-skilled jobs "is projected to outpace that of medium- and high-skilled jobs
into the next decade. At the same time, the cost of basic household necessities
continues to rise."
As a result, it will become increasingly difficult for workers to find
full-time jobs that cover the rising costs of living expenses.
"I just think that people forget that even though someone is working, even
though maybe two people are working, by the time you take out child care, car
repairs, all those things, there's just nothing left," Morse said.
A weight is lifted
After John Cooper's recovery, he settled for a $7 an hour part-time job.
Working 25 hours a week, he brought home just a fraction of the salary he'd
been making at his former workplace. It wasn't enough to keep up with mortgage
payments while raising the couple's 11-year-old daughter.
With each mortgage payment missed, the notices kept coming.
Lisa Cooper said she tried to work things out with the mortgage company, but
each time she faxed the required paperwork to the company's overseas offices,
they told her some of the documents were missing.
"I just felt like I was spinning my wheels," Lisa Cooper said.
In October 2013, she made the trip to Homestead Consulting Services. The
nonprofit organization works with at-risk families to stave off foreclosure.
Homestead quickly found that the family qualified for the federal Hardest Hit
Fund program, which provided $7.6 billion in assistance to the 18 states hit
hardest by the housing crisis.
"It was like a weight was lifted off of me when I went in and actually spoke
with Homestead," Lisa Cooper said. "They literally did not waste any time in
saving our home. This was so close to us being in bankruptcy, it's not even
funny."
Through the program, Homestead paid the couple's monthly mortgage, property
taxes and homeowner's insurance. It also absorbed the attorney fees charged to
cover the mortgage company's legal expenses.
The home in which Lisa and John Cooper had lived for two decades was saved.
John Cooper later returned to work at $18 an hour, and in February the Coopers
resumed paying their bills without assistance.
"We absolutely would have lost our home," Lisa Cooper said.
What is ALICE?
ALICE stands for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed households.
Essentially they are the working poor — those who are employed but don't make
enough to save money to cushion themselves against crises such as a job loss or
injury.
"ALICE households are working households and pay taxes; they hold jobs and
provide services that are vital to the Indiana economy in a variety of
positions such as retail salespeople, laborers and movers, team assemblers, and
nursing assistants. The core issue is that these jobs do not pay enough to
afford the basics of housing, child care, food, health care, and
transportation." — United Way 2014 ALICE Report
Who is ALICE?
In Tippecanoe County, there are 67,977 total households, 28,722 of which — or
42 percent — fall below the ALICE threshold.
In the six states in which an ALICE study has been completed:
•Workers between ages 25 and 64 make up the largest segment of households.
•Senior citizens are more likely to qualify as ALICE households.
•ALICE households are more likely to be white.
•Most ALICE households have children.
•Young veterans are most at risk of being in poverty or ALICE households.
How much do you need to survive in Tippecanoe County?
Using government data, the report compiled this survival budget which shows the
minimum amount of money required of a single adult or a family of four in
Tippecanoe County.
Housing: $501/$727
Child care: $0/$1099
Food: $170/$515
Transportation: $341/$681
Health care: $130/$518
Miscellaneous: $133/$387
Taxes: $186/$333
Monthly total: $1,461/$4,261
Full-time hourly wage required to survive: $9/$26
ANNUAL TOTAL: $17,526/$51,128
Federal poverty level for those family sizes: $11,170/$23,050
Source: United Way 2014 ALICE Report, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Labor Statistics,
Internal Revenue Service and state Treasure, ChildCare Aware, U.S. Census
Bureau.
Statewide rankings
Tippecanoe County ranks 12th out of 92 Indiana counties for the highest
percentage of households struggling financially. Here's the breakdown for
Indiana's highest ranking counties. (See original article
athttp://www.jconline.com/…/precarious-existence-wo…/28208787/?
****************************************************
Diary of a Heartland Radical
November 17, 2014
SMOKE AND MIRRORS: PROFITS AND JOBS UP AS HOUSEHOLDS SUFFER
Harry Targ
“The numbers show a conservative blueprint for success: seven straight months
of job growth with unemployment under 6 percent and a state that leads the
nation in new manufacturing jobs. Plus, throw in tax cuts and a budget surplus
for good measure” summarizing an interview with Governor Mike Pence. (David
Brody, CBN News, “GOP Eyes Indiana’s Pence as Presidential
Contender,”www.cbn.com/cbnnews/politics/2014,
June/Indianas-Gov-Pence-a-Presidential-Contender-For-2016/)
News from Indiana celebrates the state’s economic recovery (still below
pre-recession levels). As the statement above suggests, the recipe for Hoosier
success has been tax cuts, corporate and private, and cutting budgets to
maintain surpluses for emergencies. Indiana has been a trend-setter for the
nation as to privatization of the public sector: including shifting to charter
schools, establishing a voucher system encouraging parents to shift their
children from public to private schools, selling off public roads, and
recruiting controversial corporations such as Duke Power and government
agencies, military and civilian, to support research at the state’s flagship
research universities.
A panel of Purdue University economists recently predicted continued economic
and job growth in 2015 approaching pre-recession levels. While panelists
recognized the problem Indiana faces concerning long-term job loss and stagnant
wages, they reported some growth in manufacturing employment and expanding jobs
in data analysis and finance. They reported also that household expenditures
had stabilized. Finally, agriculture, they said, is holding its own. For the
future panelists recommended that workers should be trained for the skills
demanded of a high technology 21st century economy.
The Purdue economists were more cautiously optimistic and less partisan than
politicians such as Governor Pence cited in the Brody article. However, the
relatively positive narrative about the Indiana economy presented by the
Governor and Purdue economists varies greatly from recently published research
findings. For example, the Indiana Institute for Working Families reported on
data from a study of work and poverty in Marion County, which includes the
state’s largest city, Indianapolis. Four of five of the largest growing
industries in the county pay wages at or below family sustainability ($798 per
week for a family of three) and individual and household wages declined
significantly between 2008 and 2012 (Derek Thomas, “Inequality in Indy - A
Rising Problem With Ready Solutions,” August 13, 2014, (www.iiwf.blogspot.com).
Further, Thomas quoted a U.S. Conference of Mayors’ report on wages and income:
“wage inequality grew twice as rapidly in the Indianapolis metro area as in the
rest of the nation since the recession.” This is so because new jobs created
paid less on average than the jobs that were lost since the recession started.
Thomas pointed out that the mayors’ report had several concrete proposals that
could address declining real wages and stimulate job growth. These included
“raising the minimum wage, strengthening the Earned Income Tax Credit, public
programs to retrain displaced workers, universal pre-k and programs to build
the nation’s infrastructure.” They may have added that declining real wages
also could be related to attacks on unions in both the private and public
sectors and the dramatic reduction in public sector employment.
Thomas added that Indianapolis (and Indiana) should take these data seriously
because in Marion County “poverty is still rising, the minimum wage is less
than half of what it takes for a single-mother with an infant to be
economically self-sufficient; 47 percent of workers do not have access to a
paid sick day from work, and a full 32 percent are at or below 150 percent of
the federal poverty guidelines ($29,685 for a family of three).”
More recently, November 10, 2014, the Indiana Association of United Ways issued
a 250 page report on the state called the “Study of Financial Hardship.” The
study, parallel to similar studies in five other states and prepared by a
research team at Rutgers University, refers to Asset Limited, Income
Constrained, Employed or (ALICE). ALICE refers to households with incomes that
are above the poverty rate but below “the basic cost of living.” The startling
data revealed that:
-a third of Hoosier households cannot afford adequate housing, food, health
care, child care, and transportation.
-more precisely 14 percent of households are below the poverty line and 23
percent above poverty but below the threshold out of ALICE, or earning enough
to provide for the basic cost of living.
-570,000 households are within the ALICE status and 353,000 below the poverty
line.
-over 21 percent of households in every Indiana county are above poverty but
below the capacity to provide for basic sustenance.
Referring to those within the ALICE category of wage earners who struggle to
survive but earn less than what it takes to meet basic needs, Kathy Ertel,
Board Chairperson of Indiana Association of United Ways said: “ALICE is our
child care worker, our retail clerk, the CAN who cares for our grandparents,
and our delivery driver” (Roger L. Frick, “Groundbreaking Study Reveals 37% of
Hoosier Households Struggle With the Basics,” Indiana Association of United
Ways, November 10, 2014, ([email protected]).
Assessing the current state of the Indiana economy depends upon where one is
located in terms of economic, political, or professional position. Those
Indiana men, women, and children who come from the 37 percent of households who
earn less, at, or slightly above the poverty line probably have a negative view
of their futures. For them, the tax breaks for the rich and the austerity
policies for the poor are not positive.
www.heartlandradical.blogspot.com
Sent from my iPhone
_______________________________________________
pen-l mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
