'Suburban poverty’ hits region

from The News Record

By Richard M. Barron
Staff Writer

The area’s poverty statistics are stark and sobering.

* More than 62,000 people in Guilford, Rockingham and Randolph counties — but not including Greensboro — are classified as poor.

* The number of people on food stamps in High Point is at an all-time high and more than double what it was in the late 1990s.

* Rockingham County has lost 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since 2000.

Those are some of the reasons a new report ranks the three-county area among the 10 regions with the most suburban poverty in the nation. The study by the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, shows that the 2005 poverty rate in Guilford, Rockingham and Randolph counties outside the city of Greensboro is 14.4 percent, a notch below New Orleans and Modesto, Calif.

Why? The spike in what the Brookings study calls "suburban poverty" is the worst fallout yet from the region’s battle with continual textile layoffs and a slow economic recovery.

It underscores the fact that manufacturing built the region’s small communities and that its loss is now squeezing the people who want to stay and build new lives.

Consequently, social service organizations throughout the region report strong increases in demand for their financial assistance programs.

"This county at one time was a pretty wealthy county when American Tobacco was going full speed ... this was a 'have’ county," said Larry Johnson, the director of Rockingham County’s Department of Social Services. "We’ve got more and more of the character or the symptoms of a 'have not’ county, and I think that’s a hard thing to come to grips with."

The report, using census data and released Wednesday, shows that poverty has grown in suburban regions across the nation. Because the Greensboro area includes three counties and considers only Greensboro to be a "center city," its poverty rate encompasses a region that includes the relatively large city of High Point.

The study’s author says that this region’s rising suburban poverty rate mirrors that of Midwestern cities most closely associated with car and steel manufacturing.

Manufacturing once made the Greensboro region relatively "recession-proof." But once other countries proved they could produce cloth, clothes and chairs more cheaply, local jobs bled from the region’s economy.

"In good times it’s a great thing to have a cluster like that that generates growth and income," said Alan Berube of Brookings. "But given the condition of the economy today and globalization and offshoring, it’s having a concentration and reliance on the textile industry that’s driving these poverty increases."

In the broader Piedmont Triad, manufacturing jobs have dropped by 23 percent since 2001.

Rockingham County, with about 90,000 people, has lost more than 4,000 manufacturing jobs since 2000. It’s a significant blow to the area’s tradition, culture and economy because generations of residents could land these jobs and support families with minimal training or education.

In the past five years, the population has remained steady, but the economy has not grown to replace lost jobs. The number of jobs in the county has decreased from 33,000 in 2000 to about 30,000 last year.
That gives workers few places to turn.

"It’s just been a steady stream of losing manufacturing jobs and then being replaced mostly by service jobs," Johnson said. And service jobs in retail or food service typically pay far lower wages than manufacturing jobs. Manufacturing wages in Rockingham average $37,000 a year, while retail jobs pay around $21,000 a year.

"It’s key to remind people today that poverty increasingly isn’t about people who won’t get off their butt and go to work," Berube said. "It’s about people who were working and were the victim of a layoff and people who are taking the low- wage jobs that our economy seems to be very good at creating. It’s important to remember there’s a high- end service sector and there’s a low- end service sector."

The result is a surge in the need for assistance, Johnson said.

"We’ve certainly seen growth here. Right now we’re looking at a 20 to 25 percent increase in all of our public assistance programs in the past two years," he said. "I think that’s pretty significant. "

But local residents are not leaving the county, often because they have strong roots in the community through property, family or both.

"We’ve seen some population leave, but a lot of folks are trying to get public assistance," Johnson said. And for those who don’t have small children, limited food-stamp assistance may be all they can get, he said.
It’s the same in Guilford County outside of Greensboro.

In High Point, about 7,000 people are on food stamps, said John Shore, the director of Guilford County’s Department of Social Services.

Steve Key of Open Door Ministries in High Point isn’t surprised. He sees more need for the group’s assistance across the board.

"I’ve been doing this since 1989," he said. "It just seems like there’s more and more need that’s overflowing what some of the primary agencies can take care of."

People are working for lower wages that don’t support them as the cost s of natural gas, food and transportation rise ever higher, he said.

The young and the old are affected, he said. And the sick seem less able to care for themselves and they become poor. At one time, he said, families were more able to help people with serious illnesses. Now, those people are turning up at his agency, he said.

"You’ve got people who are in low-income categories and the rest of their family is, too, and they don’t have the ability to absorb them, as well," he said.

Berube says economic development programs are already on the Piedmont Triad’s agenda: Improved training, encouraging entrepreneurs and recruiting modern growth industries will ultimately push the work force to recovery.

And Rockingham County’s Johnson is convinced the workers here have what it takes to dig in and make it.

"There’s a real high work ethic in this county," he said. "People want to work. They would prefer working, and I think that’s a plus that will hopefully pull us through this."