Poverty: Usually it's not their fault

"That's just not based in reality," said Doug Stanley, executive director of Hocking-Athens-Perry Community Action, in an interview on Friday.

Each family who may qualify for public assistance, he said, faces a fixed amount of time that they can receive the benefits, which is three years. Furthermore, during that time, work requirements must be met.

While exact figures are not available, Stanley said he would venture to guess that almost all of the services offered by HAPCAP help low- and moderate-income families.

"It's the single-parent family working a minimum-wage job with no benefits, or it's the two-parent family with several kids and low-paying jobs in the service industry," he said.

This week, U.S. Census figures from 2009 are expected to be released showing record increases in the number of people in the U.S. listed as being in poverty, with the numbers approaching 1960s levels that led to the national war on poverty. Experts are saying the rate could increase by up to 15 percent, meaning that as many as 45 million people, or one in seven Americans, were poor last year.

Stanley said that this winter his agency, through the Home Energy Assistance Program, will help around 4,000 area residents keep their electricity from being shut off.

"The vast majority of those people are working families," he said. "Probably, in the course of the winter, we may spend a couple million dollars of federal money to help people keep their utilities from being shut off."

He said that these working poor families who will receive this help need it not because they don't pay their bills, but because they don't have enough money to pay those bills.

HAPCAP's weatherization assistance program, Stanley said, also helps low-income homeowners and renters increase insulation and reduce air leakage to aid in energy efficiency and decrease monthly utility bills.

"Those are almost all working poor," he said. "Again, the concept that these people are just out there kicking back, smoking cigarettes, drinking beer and waiting for the first of the month is just not reality."

Stanley pointed out that this isn't to say that those people don't exist, but it's not the norm.

One reason why many people hold this misconception about the majority of people receiving public assistance, Stanley said, is because they've been fortunate enough to never have dealt with the system, and therefore don't know how it works.

With the struggling economy, Stanley said, the number of people needing various forms of assistance increases, while at the same time the government has less money to provide it.

"All government budgets are tight, and when the economy is bad there is less money for them to allocate for social services," he said. "But we're all out there fighting for the same pool of money. It's unfortunate."

HAPCAP offers a number of different services from employment and economic development programs, to community development, to energy assistance, to housing help, to food resources. Most of the funding the agency receives, Stanley said, is from the federal government, with some state and local monies, too.

The agency was founded in the 1960s when the war on poverty was launched, Stanley said. Over the years it has helped thousands of families. But somehow the overall plight of poverty hasn't gotten much better.

"From my perspective the issue in Athens County and southeast Ohio is just employment," he said. "Even in the best of times there is an employment problem in our area."

Stanley said that he remembers back in the 1970s when the government funded public service employment. He said that he doesn't think anything like that will or could happen now, but that's what is needed.

"It provided meaningful work to people to help their communities," he said. "It helped local economies. It helped local families, and gave people training and skills. That would have a major impact on the area. But I can't see that happening."

Stanley said the social safety net is really not that safe anymore.

"It's going to keep you from being in that third-world country mode, but it's not what I would consider living the American dream at all," he said. "I would challenge anyone who thinks that the majority of people are taking advantage of the system to prove it."

People make bad choices all the time, he said; for example, they drop out of school and start having children too early in life.

"There is a lot of dysfunction in people who are poor, but not all of it is their fault," he said. "And even if it is their fault, do we let their kids go hungry? Their kid doesn't deserve a good education? Their kid doesn't deserve a chance? Are we going to condemn their kid to the same sort of life?"

ONE MAJOR HAPCAP program works exactly against that type of cyclical, generational poverty.

It's called Head Start and offers comprehensive services for children 3 to 4 years of age whose parents meet the federal government's family income guidelines.

Services for these children include physicals, dental screenings, and speech, hearing, language and vision screenings. Children who participate at the centers attend a classroom-like setting for three and a half hours per day, four days per week. They participate in a number of developmental activities designed to foster growth, according to literature provided by HAPCAP. The agency also offers a home-based version of the program, as well as family daycare.

"When it's time for them to go to kindergarten, they're not behind," Stanley said. "It gives them a head start on school and on life."

More information on HAPCAP and all of its programs can be found online at http://www.hapcap.org.

This is the fifth article in a series focused on working people facing financial hardship in Athens County. This is the story of residents who have had to take on low-wage jobs to make ends meet, and the difficulties they face. This article focuses on the various services offered to help these residents by Hocking-Athens-Perry Community Action, as well as common misconceptions about the plight of the poor.