Poverty's price in Tompkins County

from The Ithaca Journal

The costs are financial, social and moral
By Jennie Daley and Topher Sanders
Journal Staff

Tony Zegretti first found himself living on the streets of Ithaca when he was 16.

His cycle of poverty began when he dropped out of school in seventh grade to care for his ailing mother. When she died, he had few options.

Now 48, he has struggled through his adult life, living on and off the streets and in and out of shelters.
His story is unique, but Zegretti is not alone in a life of poverty.

More than 13 percent of those residing in Tompkins County have a salary below the poverty line, according to federal guidelines. That number increases to 25 percent using local standards. Additionally, each American has a 50 percent chance of living in poverty for at least a year, according to research by Tom Hirschl, a Cornell University professor.

Yet, Tompkins County residents often hear how much better they are faring economically compared with their neighbors. According to the 2000 census, when you exclude students, the average household income of $43,730 in Tompkins County is above any of the neighboring counties, the state average and the national average. Tompkins County poverty rates are also the lowest in all of those categories except when compared to Tioga County, where the rates are equal.

Those who escape even the single year of poverty Hirschl predicts, however, are still touched by its grip. More than one in four county tax dollars in Tompkins County are spent on the Department of Social Services alone, and many other county programs are funded by local taxes and private contributions.

How we spend that money and the number of people who are affected by poverty are sources of debate. The discussion can often begin with how we define poverty.

Federal guidelines released in January define poverty as a single person earning $10,210 or less, or a family of four with an income of $20,650 annually or less. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates 11,834 people in Tompkins County are living in poverty.

Some argue that the government's definition of poverty leaves out a large number of people, including families, who struggle to remain financially viable but who earn more than the poverty threshold.

The federal government uses the price of food to define poverty. Critics say the measure has failed to evolve and doesn't take into account many aspects of life that affect a person's cost of living.

“That market basket of goods has no variation to whether you live in the country or the city, nor does it consider the extreme cultural differences of how people feed their families,” said Warren Brown, a program director with the Cornell Institute for Social and Economic Research. “Some people put more emphasis on fresh fruits and vegetables while others are more meats and potatoes.”

The poverty formula, which was developed in the 1960s, doesn't consider such variables as the increase of women in the workplace, dual-income families, cost of day care, and the rising cost of housing and transportation.

For example, in 2000 the government considered a single person who was paid $8,350 or less impoverished. In that same year, the average price of a gallon of gas was $1.52. The government has increased the poverty figure by 22 percent in the past seven years, but the average price of a gallon of gas has increased 70 percent to $2.58 in 2006.

“Objectively measuring poverty is incredibly difficult, and I don't think it is adequately done,” Brown said.

The government's guidelines have also been criticized for their universal application. Poverty in Ithaca is defined with the same formula as poverty in New York City despite a drastically different cost of living. In Ithaca, the Fair Market Rent for a two-bedroom dwelling is $773 a month compared with New York City's $1,189 a month. Only Alaska and Hawaii have different poverty guidelines.

There is resistance to changing the poverty model because the method is so firmly established, Brown said.

Businesses and agencies that have a stake in how poverty is tracked would have to completely uproot many of the ways they operate if the government changed the way it measures poverty.

“Some measure of poverty is written into the law for the allocation of a whole lot of federal money, and if you change that you will change the allocation of money,” Brown said.

To get a more realistic picture, some banking organizations and non-profit groups are taking it upon themselves to calculate how much income a person needs to make a living in a particular region.

Alternatives Federal Credit Union generates a living wage analysis every two years to determine how much it takes to live in Tompkins County. The credit union's living wage sum is nearly double that of the government's poverty guideline.

The credit union's most recent analysis, released in 2005, determined that a person should make $19,102 a year to afford housing, transportation, food and health care in Tompkins County.

About 25 percent of the households in Tompkins County have incomes less than $20,000, according to Tompkins Community Action.

“I think just anybody looking at that would question whether that makes sense,” said Carl Feuer, former organizer for the Living Wage Coalition. Feuer worked closely with Alternatives Federal Credit Union to develop the living wage figures.

“In the metropolitan area or the Ithaca area there is just no way that a family of four can really live adequately on $20,000” as the federal poverty guideline states, he said.

For example, Michael and Megan Miller's family, a family of four in Ithaca who earned about $20,000 in 2004, was about $170 in the hole every month. The family used credit cards to purchase food and household necessities because their income was not enough.

Feuer said many government programs often acknowledge the flaw in the government's definition of poverty by making the qualifying criteria some multiple of the poverty standard.

The numbers jumble
Trying to determine how much taxpayer money goes into funding poverty-related services is a bureaucratic morass. Because of the number of services offered, the different eligibility requirements for each and the diverse accounting methods each organization uses, calculating an overall figure was impossible for this report.

What is clear is that Tompkins County spends about one of every four dollars in its budget funding the Department of Social Services, and DSS is only one of the many county departments that deal with local low-income populations.

“The money we spend doesn't begin to meet the need. As large as the dollars are, there's so many people who fall between the cracks,” said County Legislator Martha Robertson, D-Dryden. For example, she said many times people aren't aware of the services available to them. With more than 100 organizations offering programs that can help low-income people, it can be a difficult system to navigate.

When Zegretti dropped out of school in seventh grade, services such as the Department of Social Services didn't exist. He said he left school to care for his mother, and once she died he moved in with another family. After he left them, around the age of 21, Zegretti was on his own. He spoke of living in a tent, eating out of trash bins and working at a string of odd jobs. All of those experiences were colored by his battle with alcoholism and his belief that he didn't need help.

These days, Zegretti stays out of bars and wakes up at 6:30 a.m. in his rental apartment to get ready for his job with Challenge, a local employer. He attributes his turn around to help from area addiction centers, the Red Cross Friendship Center and other local organizations.

The largest provider of services for low-income county residents is DSS. The local share of the department's budget is $18 million out of a total county-authorized operating budget of nearly $40 million. The remaining $22 million is accounted for by state and federal reimbursements.

Some think the county could optimize that figure.

“There's no doubt that's a considerable dollar amount,” said Frank Proto, R-Slaterville. “Some of the county's agencies need to refine how they are delivering services.”

The large number of social service agencies in Tompkins makes evaluating their effectiveness difficult, Proto said. He is in favor of the county's social services agencies generating annual reports that detail which clients received what services and how those clients are progressing. Confidentiality could be maintained by assigning each client a consumer code, he said.

County Legislator Michael J. Sigler, R-Freeville, agreed with Proto that social programs need more evaluation to make sure they are needed.

“I think you have to keep your eye on a lot of social services and ask not only are they still effective but is it something that the county should be paying for or the state or federal government,” Sigler said. “I think that's our job. You actually have to go into each program and evaluate them.”

The reports would ensure taxpayers were getting the most for their money.

“In order for us to determine if an agency or department is delivering the services in an adequate way we need to see what the outcomes are,” Proto said. “We need to determine if the recipient is making any progress.”

Analysis of the report would enable the county to boost the funding of successful programs and reduce the funding of inefficient or unsuccessful programs.

“The primary purpose is to make sure a person is getting help, and sometimes throwing more money at a service doesn't mean that the recipient is getting the help they need,” he said.

The report would also enable the county to clearly see if services are unnecessarily being offered by more than one agency.

“There may be a need to consolidate a couple of the services,” he said. “If you have several agencies that are delivering the same services, the important thing from a taxpayer's standpoint is not to be redundant, this report would help us identify some of the redundancy.”

To understand what the costs are for a county taxpayer, consider the median home price in the county is $169,000 based on 2006 sales. With a county tax rate of $6.30 per $1,000 of assessed home value, a homeowner would owe about $1,065. With one quarter of the county's local share going to DSS, that equals about $266 per household in county taxes supporting the department's operations. This calculation doesn't consider state and federal tax dollars supporting DSS and comparable programs.

In the 2006-07 state fiscal year, which runs from April 1 to March 31, Tompkins County received almost $5 million in state funding for human services, plus around $800,000 for administration costs. That money included support for family services, child care and Title XX, which funds social services. Under Gov. Eliot Spitzer's budget proposal for 2007-08, the county would receive about $115,000 more with an additional, undetermined sum for administration costs.

Where the money goes
Tompkins County public relations personnel said it was unable to provide The Journal with a single estimate on what the county spends annually to assist low-income people. Like The Journal, the county ran into complications because of the variety of income qualifications for varying programs and the issue of programs that don't exclusively serve low-income individuals.

Some department heads did share their own estimates, for instance the Office for the Aging. Even then Lisa Holmes, the executive director, needed to qualify her estimates.

“The Office for the Aging serves individuals of all incomes; however, we attempt to target our services to ensure that the most vulnerable populations have access,” Holmes wrote.

Shirley Sanders could qualify as part of a vulnerable population. Now 77, Sanders' fortunes changed when her husband, Gordon, died unexpectedly 18 years ago. Without the pension from his job at the salt plant in Watkins Glen or his Veterans Affairs pension, Sanders found herself relying on Social Security. Her monthly allotment is $727, putting her yearly income about $1,500 below the federal poverty line.

While Medicare and Medicaid cover the medical costs associated with her recent heart attack and respiratory issues, Sanders said the most difficult part about being on a fixed income is keeping up with her bills. Between her car breaking down and the ever increasing costs for heat, she said it can be tough.

“My heating bills are so high already,” she said, “and they keep going up.”

Her car, now fixed, sits outside the trailer where she lives. The trailer is another fallout from her husband's death. The couple lived in a nine-room Newfield home for decades, but she was eventually unable to maintain it. Better Housing of Tompkins County, the Office for the Aging and Tompkins Community Action, along with others, came in and helped her move into the trailer and then bulldozed her unsafe home.

Beyond the financial
While it is difficult to quantify how much is spent in Tompkins County to help those in need, there is little question that it is a sizeable number. But how much is that money worth? Not only is there a financial cost to these services, there is a moral and social cost to poverty that is even more difficult to quantify.

Cornell professor Tom Hirschl studies many aspects of poverty and feels it is past time to examine policies affecting the poor.

“This is a very fundamental moral question. To refuse people in need is a very serious thing,” Hirschl said. “How we treat each other determines who we are.”

jdaley@ithacajournal.com and cbsanders@ithacajournal.com