Rising poverty may be a reflection of inflation, stagnant paychecks

City officials are worried that Bristol’s poverty rate may be rising more than 1 percent a month, a rate that would leave the community devastated within a few years.
Spurring the concern is the percentage of low-income elementary school students receiving free or reduced-price school lunches soaring by nearly 7 percent just since October.
But that number may be deceptive, say those on the front lines of the fight against poverty.
“I don’t know that Bristol is becoming a magnet for low-income people. I’m just not sure that is actually happening,” said Tom Morrow, director of the Bristol Community Organization.
What may be occurring instead, some say, is that struggling families are taking advantage of the opportunity to get cheap or free lunches for their children because they’re facing rising costs but stagnant paychecks.
“Families are having a harder time making ends meet,” said Linda Rich, director of the Family Resource Centers at three city schools.
“If they were just making it, they’re not making it anymore,” Rich said. “That’s very real.”
But having working parents who are scrambling to pay for heating oil, gasoline, milk, bread and other necessities whose costs have soared is not the same as having the poor flocking to town, overburdening existing social services, schools and other institutions on the front lines.
It doesn’t appear, at least not yet, that those on the front lines of dealing with poverty are seeing a crush of newcomers.
“We’re getting the same number of requests for help with rent” and other assistance, said Kit Plourde, the city’s social services director. “I can’t really say that we’ve had an increase.”
Morrow said, “There are, probably, more poor kids. The economy is certainly not doing as well as it has been.”
But he suspects the reason the school lunch program is seeing a dramatic rise is twofold: the squeeze that inflation has put on workers’ salaries and the use of electronic swipe cards at school cafeterias that has eliminated any stigma for students on the program.
“On the face of it, more kids are getting free and reduced lunch,” Morrow said. “But you have to look beyond the actual figures.”
The figures themselves certainly look scary.
Among Bristol’s elementary schoolchildren, 38.9 percent got a cheap or free lunch in February – up from 36.6 percent as recently as October.
“We hit the tipping point,” said John Smith, a member of the Board of Finance.
He said the city has to take steps “to begin to change the people who want to move into this community or we may never get out of the box” with efforts to revive Bristol.
Ron Messier, another finance commissioner, said it’s going to take a real commitment by the city to tackle the issue – and it’s likely to take years to solve.
What some officials fear – and Board of Education member Tom O’Brien has trumpeted – is the danger that Bristol could slide into more widespread poverty on the scale of New Britain or East Hartford if it can’t hold the line soon.
But it’s at least as likely that most of the increasing poverty is tied to slipping living standards among people who are already in Bristol.
While Plourde said “the numbers don’t lie,” she added that the poverty levels they show are probably an indication that working people are having a harder time paying for necessities and are searching for ways to cut costs.
Morrow said that last year, the applications for heating assistance rose almost 15 percent and are likely to go up as much this winter, too. That’s a clear sign that rising costs are crimping family budgets, he said.
Rich, too, said she’s seeing more requests for help with heating bills.
Working families that didn’t need help in the past, she said, are having a hard time making ends meet.
“Whether you are the working poor or living at or below the poverty level, when those basic things go up in price, it effects all of us, but it effects them more. Their income can only cover so much,” she said.
Rich said that those who have more income can cut back by eating out less or not catching the latest blockbuster, but for those with less money, there’s nothing to cut.
Searching for ways to stretch their money, Rich said, some are probably applying for the federal lunch program who wouldn’t have done so in the past.
In tough times, Morrow said, people do look for areas they can get assistance, including school lunch aid.
“They wouldn’t necessarily have done that before,” he said, “but now, with things being a little tougher, they will look into it.”

Click here for an earlier story about concerns about poverty rising

*******
Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com