Officials promise to work together on poverty solutions

from The Coloradoan

BY KEVIN DUGGAN

The growth of poverty in Larimer County since the start of the decade is clear; finding solutions to the problem will be complex.

Those were some of the conclusions Tuesday from a meeting of city and county officials spurred in part by a recent Coloradoan series on the impact of poverty on local residents and the community.

Collaboration among government, businesses and nonprofit agencies is needed to address the issue, said Joni Friedman, director of the Larimer County Workforce Center. She spoke at a county commissioners' work session that also was attended by Fort Collins Mayor Doug Hutchinson and City Manager Darin Atteberry.

"I think there are many different pieces to the puzzle and different solutions that we are working on," she said. "If we start doing some planning we can pull a lot of these pieces together and start working more cooperatively as a community."

The number of people living in poverty in Larimer County increased 54 percent between 2000 and 2006, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The causes of the county's growing poverty are many, said Robert Moore, executive editor of the Coloradoan.

The loss of high-tech jobs, reduced household incomes, a growing number of immigrants and increases in the number of single-parent households are among the factors, Moore said.

In 2006 the federal poverty level for a family of three, such as a single mother raising two children, was $16,600. The self-sufficiency level for the county - the income a household needs to cover its basic needs without government assistance - was $44,000 for that same family.

"For every person living in poverty as defined by the federal government, there's probably at least one more person living in Larimer County above poverty but below self-sufficiency," Moore said. "The challenges we face as community are immense."

The county offers a variety of services aimed at helping low-income residents through several different departments, said Ginny Riley, director of Larimer County Human Services. Programs include financial assistance, education and job training.

But changes are needed at many different levels, including public policy at the local, state and federal levels, to turn the tide on increasing poverty.

"These services are not enough," Riley said. "If you look at the problem as, really, low wages, and growth in single-parent families, this is not something we're going to solve with the programs we have right now."