Poverty is striking new and different people in Syracuse, say experts.
“People who, two years ago, never would have been struggling are accessing Food Stamps simply to keep food on the table,” says Denise Harlow, CEO of the New York State Community Action Association, a nongovernmental organization that surveys poverty.
More people are receiving temporary assistance for emergency situations, like temporary housing costs, experts on poverty say. The numbers of new applicants for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or Food Stamps, are booming. Local food banks are brimming with new and different clients.
The reason: the economic recession.
The poverty rate in Syracuse is down slightly, according to the census.gov/” target=”_blank”>Census Bureau. As of 2005, the Bureau found 31.3 percent of Syracuse residents had incomes below the federal standard for poverty. In 2005, that was a yearly income of $19,350 for a family of four. By comparison, in 2010, the local poverty rate was 29.4 percent living below the poverty level of $22,050 for a family of four.
But those official government numbers are slow to catch up with what’s actually happening to people here, say poverty experts.
Consider these statistics:
- Since 2006, the number of people in Onondaga County receiving temporary assistance has increased just over 40 percent, according to the New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance. It rose from 10,480 recipients in 2006 to 14,688 recipients in 2010.
- Forty-five percent of people receiving help from the CNY Food Bank lost their jobs in the last two years, according to Ania Stilwell, spokesperson for the food bank.
- In the last four years,12,883 new families began receiving Food Stamps in Onondaga County. That’s an increase of 66 percent increase, according to the New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance. A total of 32,371 families now receive Food Stamps.
- In the last five years, the unemployment rate in Onondaga County has risen 24 percent, according to the CNY United Way’s 2010 Community Assessment. In 2005, the county’s unemployment rate was 5.8 percent. Now it is 8.3 percent.
At the CNY Food Bank, the director of its Food Stamp outreach program, Amalia Swan, has noticed significant changes in the demographics of people applying for Food Stamps.
“The population is more working families that are just not making enough to make ends meet,” says Swan. “And there are more people applying for Food Stamps — unemployed and underemployed.”
Dale Tussing, a Syracuse University economics professor specializing in poverty, says that many of the people in Syracuse who are going to the Food Bank and receiving Food Stamps don’t fit the typical profile of the long-term poor. “They are people who got laid off — full-time, year round workers who now can’t find jobs. But they don’t fall below the poverty line,” he says. In other words, they have more income or assets than defined by the federal poverty standards. But they don’t now have enough income to make ends meet without help, he said.
To bring down the poverty rate, he said, the economy needs to create more jobs for low-income families. “It takes a few years,” Tussing said, “to recover from a recession.”
(Celeste Little is a graduate student in magazine, newspaper and online journalism.)
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