New anti-panhandling ordinance passed in Seattle

The Seattle City Council passed an ordinance that aggressively limits panhandling. The ordinance prevents the homeless from asking for money near ATMs or banks, it also claims to restrict aggressive or intimidating panhandling. Advocates for the homeless claim that the bill goes too far, and the language defining aggressive panhandling is to vague.

The ordinance faces a certain legal challenge from the NAACP and ACLU. The city's mayor says he will veto the ordinance if his veto cannot be overridden.

From KOMO, we find out more about the ordinance that Seattle's City council voted on last night.

The idea behind the ordinance is to curb aggressive panhandling by regulating just how and where you can do it. In addition to steering clear of ATMs and pay parking stations, panhandlers also cannot threaten people, swear at them, or block them as they walk down the street.

Supporters have argued the ordinance is aimed at restoring a sense of safety in downtown Seattle.

"The whole ordinance is designed to change behavior on our streets, to make our streets and sidewalks safe for everyone, including the homeless," said council member Tim Burgess at Monday's meeting.

"It is not OK for a person to use menacing and threatening gestures to intimidate someone into giving them money," saud George Allen of the Chamber of Commerce.

Opponents, however, have claimed the rule is too vaguely written and therefore, is susceptible to abuse.

"The idea that we criminalize people because they're poor is very scary to all of our people who are out there, doing the service," said Rev. Monica Corsaro. "We believe in a collaborative way."

A violation of the ordinance is a civil infraction that could result in a $50 fine.

Changing state law wording to "at-hope"

This is a news story that George Carlin would have taken great interest in. A Washington state lawmaker wants to change state law wording in regards to poor children. Children used to be called "poor" but we decided that it was to harsh, then they lightened it up to "disadvantaged" but no, that is still to mean, so let change it to "at-risk." State Senator Rosa Franklin's idea it to further change the term to be "at-hope"

From KSTU in Utah, this Associated Press story introduces us to the bill and what our linguist friends at Lake Superior State University think of it.

Democratic State Sen. Rosa Franklin says negative labels are hurting kids' chances for success and she's not a bit concerned that people will be confused by her proposed rewrite of the 54 places in state law where words like "at risk" and "disadvantaged" are used.

The bill has gotten a warm welcome among fellow lawmakers, state officials and advocacy groups.

"We really put too many negatives on our kids," says Franklin, who is the state Senate's president pro tem. "We need to come up with positive terms."

Republican Rep. Glenn Anderson disagrees, saying the potential cost of getting the bill from idea to printing — an average of $3,500 — is too much. And besides, he says, he is insulted more by the idea of the bill than what he called the political correctness it represents.

"It's not the label, it's the people who show up to help (children) that make the difference," he says. "What helps is a smart, well structured program, that has funding and credibility."
...

But there's one group that's glad about the possibility of getting rid of the phrase "children at-risk." The people who publish the annual humorous List of Banished Words banned "at-risk" in 2000, calling it an overused and misused phrase.

But the idea of changing state statutes to say "at hope" instead drew a giggle from Tom Pink, a spokesman for Lake Superior State University. Pink's office also banished "politically correct" in 1994 along with politically correct words and phrases.

"While I respect what the legislator wants to do, I think we can all agree that changing the words doesn't change the problem," Pink says, adding "it maybe even takes attention away from what perhaps should really be happening."

New payday loan laws in Washington state

New laws in Washington state have been put in place to limit the amount of money people can borrow from payday loan companies.

The payday loans are very short term, very high interest loans that can be borrowed against your next pay check. The borrower often writes a post dated check to the lender that they cash on the date of the borrowers next paycheck.

Some people get caught in a trap of going to these lenders repeatedly, or borrow such a large amount that their next paycheck cannot cover the high interest. So the news laws hope to ease these problems.

From The Olympian, Associated Press writer Manuel Valdes interviews a payday loan business owner.

The new law limits the size of a payday loan to 30 percent of a person's monthly income, or $700, whichever is less. It also bars people from having multiple loans from different lenders, limits the number of loans a person can take out to eight per 12 months, and sets up a database to track the number of loans taken out by people.

"I think it's going to affect (them) pretty dramatically," said (Ken) Weaver, whose Apple Valley Check Cashing stores are in Moses Lake and Wenatchee. "We don't know if we're gonna be open in six months."

The limit on how many loans people will be able to take out is what will cut into his stores' revenue, Weaver said, echoing one of the arguments from the payday industry on how the new law will cut into its business model.

But for consumer advocates who lobbied for the new law, the regulations being put in place are a step toward protecting people from falling into debt. For years, they have argued that payday lending leaves people paying off loans for a long time, often using other payday loans, and paying heavy interest.

Washington state's Kids Count says 40,000 children slip into poverty

The annual Kids Count survey for Washington state says that 40,000 children will into poverty by 2010. The numbers will wipe out any gains the state has made in fighting poverty since 1975.

From The Spokesman Review, writer Shawn Vestal talks to a Kids Count director and also cites an additional survey.

When Lori Pfingst considers the statistics that will tell the tale of this recession, she isn’t thinking about GDP or unemployment.

She’s thinking about teen pregnancy. Low birthweight babies. WASL scores and college enrollments.

As the recession swells the ranks of the impoverished, it takes a particular, long-term toll on children, experts say. In Washington state alone, nearly 40,000 children are expected to slip into poverty by 2010; nationwide, an additional 800,000 kids entered poverty between 2007 and 2008, before the recession really hit.

And however quickly the economy begins its official recovery, the consequences for kids living in poverty are wide-ranging. Children who grow up in poor households tend to do worse in school and end up in trouble with the law. They’re less likely to go to college and more likely to get pregnant at a young age. They’re more likely to commit crimes or become victims of crimes, and more likely to grow up and live in poverty themselves.

“The impact of this really can’t be overstated,” said Pfingst, assistant director of Washington KidsCount, an annual statistical survey of children’s well-being. “When children are born into poverty, it affects every single outcome of their lives.”

A new report from Duke University asserts that the recession will undo decades of progress for children and families. Duke’s Child and Youth Well-Being Index measures a range of categories; it estimates that all progress made in “family economic well-being” since 1975 will be wiped out by this recession.

The Duke index predicts that families will suffer from the expected kinds of effects, such as joblessness, lower incomes or homelessness. But it also suggests that children will pay other prices, in greater obesity and health problems, because families will be more likely to rely on low-cost fast food; on social relationships and stability, as families are forced to move; and on increased behavioral problems and crime, with young people as both victims and perpetrators.

“The impact of the current recession on children will be dramatic,” the Duke report concludes.

Asking a city council why it's a crime to be poor

A homeless coalition for a small city of Washington state filled a City Council meeting. The Puyallup Homeless Coalition wanted to talk to the council about the "crime" of being poor.

Homeless people have complained of police smashing their tents and telling them to leave city parks, and are increasingly running out of places to stay. A church allowed homeless people to park their cars in their driveway overnight, but that was even stopped due to complaints of neighbors.

From Puyallup's The Herald, writer Neil Pierson attended the meeting.

Scott was just one of numerous homeless persons who filled the Puyallup City Council chambers on Sept. 1. For more than an hour, the group besieged officials to help them find solutions. Many said they simply needed a roof over their heads while they tackled other problems but are finding that task impossible because police officers have been destroying their tents and evicting them from public property.

Ted Brackman, co-founder of the Puyallup Homeless Coalition, said bringing the homeless to a council meeting was a necessary step in helping officials understand the problem’s scope. The coalition was formed nine years and has since grown to include Open Hearth Ministries and the Freezing Nights program, which offers temporary housing during cold weather.

“There’s little change in terms of the official policy in Puyallup towards homeless people,” Brackman said. “So we’re at a crossroads and we wanted the city council to face that.”

Puyallup doesn’t have a dedicated shelter for homeless residents, relying instead on a network of churches and non-profit groups to temporarily provide relief. The homeless say there’s a perpetual cycle: They can’t get a job without an address or phone number and they can’t get those things because they have no money.

Bev Cascio, volunteer coordinator for Open Hearth Ministries, said problems in East Pierce County are growing. Her organization provides temporary relief for the homeless at motels, but there simply aren’t any vacancies these days. The issue affects all age groups: At the end of the last school year, Cascio said, 318 children attending Puyallup schools were considered homeless.

“We are facing a crisis here in Puyallup and we know that as leaders of our community you want to know what’s happening,” Cascio told the council. “Many of the families I’ve been meeting with in recent weeks have hit a wall. They don’t want to be homeless. They are vulnerable and at risk. They are pregnant women and small children and very young parents. They are grandmothers with children.”

Peter Andrews, coordinator of the Puyallup Homeless Coalition, said the city had been donating $5,000 per year to Open Hearth Ministries. This year, in a national recession, the amount dropped to $2,500. Meanwhile, a recent report showed the city spent $860,000 in the past five years to maintain Woodbine Cemetery. Andrews wondered why volunteer groups such as the Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts couldn’t take up such a cause.

Creating Chalk Art for World Vision

As a fundraiser for World Vision, students from Mariner High School in Everett, Washington created art to show faces of poverty. The students created chalk drawings that shows to fellow students the plight of children in the under developed world.

From the Herald, writer Eric Stevick watched the students create the artwork.

The images of children from Third World countries stare up from the concrete sidewalks in front of Mariner High School.

Drawn in chalk in bright shades of yellow, red and blue, they will fade with the next rainfall.

In some ways, the fleeting dust portraits are an apt medium to tell stories of children from Sudan, Rwanda, Cambodia and other countries ravaged by conflict, hunger and subsistence living. Chances are they, too, will have short lives.

"We are trying to get through to them that poverty exists well beyond the U.S. borders," said Clayte Huber, a Mariner social studies teacher.

The project, which has been done over one day each spring for the last three years, teams up senior social studies students who do research with fine arts students who craft the drawings on their hands and knees. Mariner also is collecting money this week that will be donated to World Vision, an international relief organization.

Armed with blueprints and grids, Tana McKenna, Lia Sagun, Liliya Leonchyk and Brittaney Rizzo re-created a photo of a 6-year-old Cambodian girl who helps her family scavenge for food.

Minutes of reflection turned to hours hunched over their portraits.

McKenna, a senior, said she hopes it will make her schoolmates pause.

"When you look down, it's a good opportunity to think about others," she said.

Microcredit conference held at Seattle Pacific University

Seattle Pacific University held a Microcredit conference last weekend. The event featured speakers from Kiva and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Microcredit lenders had booths to display some of the projects they funded, and there were small group sessions to discuss big topics concerning microcredit.

From the Student newspaper at SPU The Falcon, writer Melissa Stefan will tell us more.

"Microcredit is a way to make loans and repayments, so it's more sustainable (than traditional charity)," said Kenman Wong, professor of business and economics, who helped plan the event. "I would even argue that it's more dignified, because people are actually participating, hopefully creating small businesses to help them earn their way out of poverty."

Though the concept is relatively new, interest in microfinance is growing. The conference, which began as an offhand suggestion, attracted participants from as far away as New Hampshire, Florida, Ohio, Oklahoma and North Carolina. The event sold out and nearly 100 people were on the waiting list, Wong said.

"The massive attendance is a testament to the interest in microfinance and those living in poverty. Microfinance itself is a testament to the power of people recognizing the importance of community in a connected world," said SPU alumnus Jeff Keenan, who served on the conference leadership committee and opened the conference on Friday evening.

"We thought maybe people would drive over from Ballard -- maybe -- and that was our optimistic guess," Wong said. "So we really feel blessed, because there was a lot of hard work, but we never had to push."

Wong partnered with senior Kristin McGunnigle and Brad Stave, who works with VisionFund, to plan the event four months ago. Originally, the event was geared toward businesses and entrepreneurs, though the spectrum was ultimately broadened to focus on the community at hand.

"We thought, 'There's so much interest in Seattle in poverty and global issues ... .' We wanted to educate them and mobilize them to act," Wong said.

A great show of charity: gloves for an entire school

Here is a great showing of the Christmas spirit. A woman from Washington state bought gloves for all of the children who attend the poorest school in the area. We found the details from this Associated Press article found at KNDO.

A woman who saw children Monday with no mittens bought 300 pairs of gloves and donated them Tuesday to Stanley Elementary School in Tacoma.

Serena Smith told The Tacoma News Tribune she chose the school at the recommendation of grocery store bagger. Eighty percent of the students there meet federal poverty guidelines for free or reduced meals.

The principal of the school on 17th Street, Cindy Tone-Johnson, called it the "Miracle on 17th Street."

The 54-year-old Smith has two grown sons and works at the Frank Tobey Jones retirement community where co-workers helped her expenses.

A new homeless shelter in Washington state

A new homeless shelter has opened in Washington state. It's opening is just in time too, as the temperatures there are getting cold. Dan Schreiber of Lewis County Washington introduces the public to the new shelter.

Ten people gathered at an impromptu homeless shelter on Tower Avenue in downtown Centralia Monday night at about 9 p.m., as temperatures were plummeting far below freezing.

Carl Bohlin was the lone volunteer running the outreach center across the street from the Destiny Christian Center, which provided space starting earlier this month. As far as Bohlin knew, that was the only place available in town for homeless people to go.

“There are people sleeping in garages and under bridges tonight. It’s hard to come here sometimes, and give up your pride,” Bohlin said. “We need more things like this. We’ve got to give them hope.”

Bohlin said the need is much greater than the 16 sleeping spots set up in the shelter, and people could use more help if any other churches were willing to offer it. The shelter is set to remain open every night the temperature falls below 36 degrees.

“Some people in the community say ‘It’s your fault,’ and it’s hard. I’ve been there,” Bohlin said. “But with this economy the way it is, you make one bad choice and you’re out.”

A 35-year-old homeless woman named Michelle said there are plenty of people whose bad decisions lead them into homelessness, but most who use the shelters are grateful, and simply looking for a safe place to sleep.

Survey: Many Wash. farmworkers indigenous Mexicans

from the Wichita Eagle

A quarter of the farmhands in Washington state are Mexicans according to a new survey. Many came to the states because their small farms could not compete with the bigger ones up north.

By MANUEL VALDES

The survey - "A Sustainable Bounty: Investing in Our Agricultural Future" - was conducted by the Washington State Farmworker Housing Trust and released last week. More than 2,800 farmworkers in 14 Washington counties were interviewed for the survey in 2006.

The number of indigenous workers "shows the dire economic situation for indigenous people in Latin America," said Rosalinda Guillen, one of the survey coordinators.

She echoed an argument suggesting that an overflow of American goods - specifically corn - drove the indigenous from their lands after many could not compete with cheap goods from the north. Many were self-sustainable farmers, working small plots of land.

The survey also found that nearly half of the workers say they don't know if they'll continue working the fields, citing sub-par housing conditions plagued by mice, cockroaches and lack of electricity or water.

Moreover, workers have an average annual household income of around $17,500 - below the federal poverty line. Nearly 6 percent of the 2,800 workers described themselves as homeless, living in cars or sheds. That figure jumps to 15 percent for those workers who migrate from community to community in search of work.

"Recruiting and retaining a stable and skilled work force is becoming increasingly difficult," said Brien Thane, trust executive director. "The survey makes it clear housing is a key factor in stabilizing and sustaining that work force."

For the state's key crops - such as apples and cherries - a lack of hands to pick would mean lost harvests. The state has already seen periodic labor shortages.

The survey reports 91 percent of those questioned said better housing would encourage them to continue working in the fields. They also detailed problems with current housing: 32 percent live in overcrowded units, 23 percent reported rodent infestation and others reported lack of heat and poor water quality.

The issue of farmworker housing is contentious. Some farmers and local government officials want the state to relax housing regulations. The state, meanwhile, has to inspect hundreds of housing units and respond to calls of unlicensed camps.

In Douglas County, more than 350 cherry pickers live in military-type tents in a field next to the airport in East Wenatchee.

Link to full article. May expire in future.

UW hosts key players in global health effort

from the Seattle Post Intelligencer

The goal is better coordination

By TOM PAULSON

Not that long ago, Christopher Murray was mostly considered a troublesome "bomb thrower" in the field of global health and development.

Now, Murray and his colleagues at the University of Washington's new Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation are welcoming hundreds of key players in international health and development to Seattle for a two-day research conference aimed at trying to bring order to the still relatively chaotic and uncoordinated collection of projects aimed at fighting disease and improving health worldwide.

"There's a lot of good work being done out there, but it's being done by many groups who don't talk to each other ... and who often use different yardsticks to assess their efforts," said Murray, director of the institute, which was created last year in large part thanks to a $105 million donation to the UW from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Murray's bombs are made of numbers -- statistical analyses of things such as mortality rates, incidence of diseases and the relative effectiveness of health programs. People often don't like his conclusions, because they sometimes challenge working assumptions and conventional wisdom -- not to mention funding priorities and established agendas.

"I remember the first time I met Chris, in 1984, when he came into my office and told me everything I had written about Africa was wrong," said Alan Lopez, a world-renowned expert on international health at the University of Queensland, Australia. "He was indeed a bit of a bomb thrower back then."

Despite this abrupt first encounter, Murray and Lopez soon became collaborators on a project that led to the creation of an entirely new way of evaluating the global burden of disease. They started it on their own time, initially with headquarters in a converted barn in Maine owned by Murray.

Murray, who was then at Harvard University, and Lopez, who worked for the World Health Organization, believed that the standard measures in health -- especially in poor countries -- were wildly unreliable. To begin with, separating mortality rates from nonfatal disease rates seriously skewed the picture. All these government agencies, donor organizations and others working in global health were basically flying blind, Murray and Lopez maintained.

"A good example even today is malaria," Lopez said. "We still don't really know how many people die every year from malaria" -- most estimates range between 1 million and 2 million -- "or if it's increasing or decreasing. We're still quite ignorant about the health conditions of the developing world, but I'd say we're a little less ignorant than we were 15 years ago."

One reason for that improvement is the project Murray and Lopez started in the barn, now known as the Global Burden of Disease. One of this project's creations was a new health metric known as the "disability adjusted life year," or DALY, a method that combines mortality and morbidity rates to provide a more accurate picture of the effect of a disease.

Malaria, for example, doesn't always kill. It disables and weakens many hundreds of millions more people every year, increasing poverty and weakening communities in ways not simply measured by death rates.

"When we came out with this, we were further ostracized and even called unethical," Lopez said. Some complained that their basic numbers assessing how many were afflicted were wrong, he said, while others said it was unacceptable for them to try to quantify -- using the DALY -- the relative value of a life.

"It's still controversial," Murray said. Many of these organizations believe they are doing good and serving the interests of the poor, he said, and so any potential downgrading of a problem's numbers is seen as harming the cause. On the more cynical side, Murray noted, a change in the numbers also can cause a change in funding.

"But we're now well past the era where you can just declare your own numbers," he said. With today's explosion of interest by donors and governments in global health, Murray said, there is also a much greater need for accurate monitoring and assessment of these programs.

Imagine the financial market if companies did not have to report profits and losses or function according to a standard set of rules. That's basically how the field of global health operates today, Murray contended.

After the UW institute's first board meeting and a reception on Wednesday, about 300 participants from all over the globe -- including a former chief of the WHO, the current head of the United Nations AIDS program, World Bank officials, health ministers and experts from Africa, India and others -- will convene to launch the next phase of this work that Murray and Lopez began in the barn in Maine. The British medical journal The Lancet is a co-sponsor of the meeting.

Beyond trying to improve the measurement of disease rates and effects, the next phase of the Global Burden of Disease project aims to establish better methods for assessing disease trends, setting health priorities, determining the effectiveness of disease-fighting programs and judging health care delivery and quality.

"The center for U.S. efforts in global health is now unquestionably in Seattle," Lopez, the Australian, said. "It's great for me, because the flight's much shorter than when I had to go to the East Coast."

Poverty rate low, but does it tell the whole story?

from The Herald

In our area, self-sufficiency requires making more than poverty-level wages, a UW professor says.

By Krista J. Kapralos
Herald Writer

Six children.

Young parents, both working.

A rented house in Marysville.

The Mansfield family is all-American: blended, and struggling to make ends meet.

Danny Mansfield, 32, took a job about 10 months ago at Boeing, where he was trained to be a wire assembler. He makes $13.22 an hour.

"I think they really start the employees off a lot lower than they should be," he said. "It's OK if you're able to stick it out and you don't have a family, then it's not that bad. But when you're providing for you, your wife, your kids, your pay really is not enough to get by."

For the Mansfield family, he said, life is "definitely check-by-check."

The U.S. Census Bureau announced this month that though the poverty rate has risen in Washington state, Snohomish County has the second-lowest number of families -- just 8.8 percent -- living below the poverty line in the state. Only Island County has fewer people -- 8 percent of its population -- living in poverty. The bureau used data from 2001 through 2005.

Yet experts say those numbers don't measure real life.

"We get numbers, but the numbers don't reflect our reality," said Diana Pearce, a social welfare professor at the University of Washington. "We're living in this schizophrenic world."

The federal poverty threshold was developed in the 1960s and hasn't been adequately updated, Pearce said.

Under the 2007 federal guideline, the poverty threshold for a family of four is $20,650. The threshold for a single person is $10,210. For two people, children or adults, it's $13,690.

Those amounts may be fine for some parts of the country, but the cost of living in Snohomish County is very different than, say, in upstate New York.

That's why Pearce developed the Self-Sufficiency Standard, an alternative to the flat federal poverty guideline.

Her scale accounts for child-care costs, cost-of-living variations between regions, and ages of a family's children.

Under Pearce's scale, for example, one adult living in east or north King County needs just over $21,000 to be self-sufficient. If that adult has a preschool-age child, the annual income needed nearly doubles, to $40,000. In Yakima County, one adult needs about $16,000, and one adult with a young child needs more than $26,000.

Most federal and state assistance programs base eligibility on recipients' having an income that is a certain percentage of the federal poverty guideline.

For the 2007-2008 school year, students must come from households earning no more than 130 percent of the federal poverty threshold to qualify for free lunch.

To qualify for food assistance through the WIC Program, families must live on less than 185 percent of the federal poverty threshold.

It's unlikely that the federal poverty guideline will change to better reflect reality anytime soon, said Jennifer Romich, a professor of social work at UW.

"Can you imagine the politician who wants to raise the poverty line and have poverty go up on his or her watch?" she said.

The fact that the federal guidelines have remained stagnant while the poverty rate climbs is an indicator that people in Washington state aren't doing well at all, Romich said.

And while just 8.8 percent of Snohomish County's residents live below the poverty line, there are many more struggling to get by.

According to Pearce's Self-Sufficiency Standard, between 16 and 21 percent of the county's residents are living paycheck to paycheck.

That makes the county one of the more financially successful in the state, compared with Walla Walla County, where 30 percent or more are struggling, and even Island County, where more than 22 percent face hardship.

Still, the cost of living in Snohomish County, for some, is just too high.

Paul Gant, at $13.32 an hour, makes $17,500 more than he needs to meet his basic needs for a healthy lifestyle, according to the federal determination for living above poverty level.

But he rents a room from a family member in Renton. He said that's the only way he can make ends meet through his job at Boeing's Everett plant.

"I just about break even," he said. "I don't have much left over for anything. I cannot foresee moving up from where I'm at to something better, and I can't afford a better vehicle or another place to live."

"I'm pretty much stuck right now."

The economy improved in 2004 and 2005, but that doesn't mean low-income people benefited, said Tony Lee, advocacy director at the Statewide Poverty Action Network in Seattle.

"You can have a lot of jobs in biotech and high-tech fields, but low-income people can't get those jobs," Lee said. "It's things like being a wire assembler at Boeing that's an accessible job."

When, for some families, those jobs pay a poverty-level wage, people begin to feel the pinch as they're priced out of areas considered to be thriving economically.

"The rising tide doesn't lift all boats," Lee said. "In our state, one out of five working families don't make enough to meet their basic needs."

Report: Poverty on rise in Washington

from The Bellingham Herald

The number of Washington residents living in poverty is up sharply since 2001, with increases in every county except Garfield, according to new figures from the U.S. Census Bureau.

The agency reported this week that 12 percent of the people in the state were living in poverty in 2005, the latest year for which figures are available. In 2001, just 9.9 percent of the state's population was in poverty.

The state had 732,049 people living in poverty in 2005, compared with 586,456 people in 2001, the bureau said. The federal poverty line in 2005 was $19,350 for a family of four.

The number of people in poverty rose even as the median household income in the state climbed from $46,284 in 2001 to $49,372 in 2005, according to Census Bureau numbers analyzed by The Associated Press.

The increase in poverty might surprise some residents, thanks to Washington's general image as a state with low unemployment, high income and steady job growth. But Tony Lee of the Statewide Poverty Action Network in Seattle was not surprised, because Washington has lots of low-paid workers.

"Low-income people sometimes don't benefit from overall economic expansion," Lee said. "They are the last to be hired and first to be fired."

While much attention is focused on good-paying high-tech and aerospace jobs, the reality is that the biggest job categories in the state tend to be less glamorous work in places like stores, restaurants or the service sector.

"Most pay less than $13 per hour," Lee said.

Rod Wieber, director of community services for Second Harvest Inland Northwest in Spokane, likewise wasn't surprised by the poverty findings. The network of 21 food banks in Spokane County serves more than 15,000 people each month.

A survey last year found that 41 percent of the households it helped had at least one person working full or part time, Wieber said.

The Census Bureau has changed methodology in compiling the statistics in 2001 and 2005, so direct comparison of the numbers is not completely accurate. The agency used the Current Population Survey prior to 2005, and used the American Community Survey for 2005 and after.

The ACS is an annual mail survey that covers 3 million households, from every county in the nation. The old Current Population Survey method covered 100,000 households in 40 percent of the nation's counties, and had a higher margin of error, the Census Bureau said.

But the trend toward rising poverty was verified by separate numbers generated by state demographers, which also showed an increase of about 2 percentage points. Harold Nelson, of the state Office of Financial Management in Olympia, said that office's data show that most of the increase occurred between 2001-03.

The increase is something of a puzzle because the state has seen declining welfare levels, a rising minimum wage and a declining unemployment rate, Nelson said.

The federal poverty level percentage rose in every county except tiny Garfield, where it remained the same at 14.3 percent.

The largest county, King, had the largest number of poor people at 167,720 in 2005. That amounted to 9.6 percent of the population, up from 7.5 percent in 2001.

The highest percentage of people living in poverty was in Whitman County, at 26.6 percent. Whitman County's numbers are skewed because nearly half the county's population is made up of students at Washington State University.

Among metropolitan areas, Yakima County had the highest percentage living in poverty at 21.5 percent. Yakima County is home to a large population of immigrants from Mexico, many of whom work in the seasonal farm economy.

The Puget Sound-area counties, where much of the state's population and prosperity is centered, had relatively low poverty rates. In addition to King at 9.6 percent, Kitsap was 9 percent and Snohomish was 8.8 percent.

Among other major population centers, Pierce County (Tacoma) was at 11.3 percent, Spokane County was 14.6 percent and Clark County (Vancouver) was 11.5 percent.

The lowest percentage of poor people was in Island County, at 8 percent.

In addition to Whitman and Yakima, counties that hit or topped 20 percent were Ferry, Kittitas and Okanogan.

Median household income rose in every county from 2001 to 2005.

The highest median income was in King County, $58,351 in 2005. Other high-income areas included Snohomish County ($54,897) where many Boeing jobs are located; Kitsap ($53,127); Benton ($52,683), home to high-paying jobs on the Hanford nuclear reservation; and Clark ($51,124)

Among metro areas, the lowest pay was in Yakima County ($35,333).

The lowest median income in the state was in Whitman County ($31,672); Okanogan County was second at $32,052.

CBC speaker says poverty accepted only because people are dehumanized

from the Tri City Herald

Joe Chapman, Herald staff writer

Spending her honeymoon in a cherry field outside of Wenatchee didn't exactly put Donna Beegle on the path to success in life, she told an audience Friday at Columbia Basin College in Pasco.

Beegle, who grew up in a migrant labor family, dropped out of high school at 15 to get married. By 25, she had two children and no husband.

Still, Beegle went on to earn her GED and eventually a doctorate from Portland State University. Now she's president of a consulting firm and CEO of a nonprofit organization, through which she works to improve communication and the lives of people in poverty.


She visited CBC on Friday to talk about generational poverty and reshaping how people view the problem.

Like another lasting problem, war, poverty encourages people to dehumanize one another, she said.

"Otherwise, a human being couldn't walk by another human being on the streets. You couldn't," Beegle, 46, told the audience of about 150 people.

"Only can you do that if you've dehumanized them. If you've bought into the stereotypes about the causes of poverty being their personalities, their choices."

The words people use contribute to their understanding or lack of understanding, she said.

People often blame the ones in poverty for their situation, she said. When the media uses the label "the homeless," it carries connotations of people who are dirty, lazy drunks, she said.

But saying "people without homes" humanizes the problem and allows you to consider the possibility they may have lost their jobs or lost their homes to fire, she said.

Beegle doesn't see drug addiction and domestic violence as poverty issues, because those are problems the rich and famous experience, too.

"The capacity to deal with those issues is the poverty issue," she said.

She talked about education as the key to escaping poverty. But the people who need it may not pursue it because they don't have other people in their lives who have done it before them.

"I never heard the word college. No one I knew had a career. So it wasn't even part of my thoughts," Beegle said in a video clip she played. "I wanted to be a mom. I wanted to be a good mom who would play with them and sing to them, and we'd find a way to get by. That's all I knew."

Her audience Friday included students, service agency employees, foster parents, child care providers and the general public.

Some of them knew the topic from their own personal experiences, said Judi Yearout, literacy coach for the Pasco School District.

"This is how I grew up, going from racetrack to racetrack, cleaning the stalls of horses," she said.

It's a drop in the bucket, but it matters

from The Columbian

GREGG HERRINGTON Columbian staff writer

The odds seem to be against Josh Seim, a Clark College student who has only a few more months to achieve his goal of almost imperceptibly changing the lives of campus coffee drinkers in order to help end world poverty, hunger and social injustice.

Given that goal, you'd think Josh is a bit naive, and perhaps he is. Then again, there's a fine line between naivete and idealism. I could be wrong, but I think he's on the idealism side of the line.

Seim, a sociology major and member of the campus Club for Social Action, expects to transfer to Gonzaga University in Spokane or Western Washington University in Bellingham next fall. That doesn't give him much time to conduct and win a campaign to get Fair Trade Certified coffee in at least one campus coffee shop.

Fair Trade for Dummies

My own down-and-dirty Fair-Trade-for-Dummies definition goes about like this: The typical isolated rural coffee grower in Latin America, Africa or Southeast Asia is getting only a few pennies for each $1.50 we plunk down for a 12-ounce cup of brew or $3-plus for something with milk, flavoring and a half-dozen words in its name. The Fair Trade Certified movement is about getting more for the little guy in the mountains who grows the beans but has a devil of a time feeding his family.

To be Fair Trade Certified means coffee has been grown with as little damage to the environment as possible and that the farmer gets a decent return for his efforts. That is, a decent return by third-world coffee-farmer standards.

According to Oxfam America (oxfamamerica.org), "While the price of coffee fluctuates, more than 25 million coffee-growing families in over 60 developing countries struggle to make a living. When the price drops, poor, small-scale farmers are especially vulnerable. And when the price rises, farmers don't have the market information, political representation, access to credit, and other resources to take full advantage of the increases."

Take the discussion to the next level on the idealism/naivete continuum and the Fair Trade Certified coffee message suggests something far more cosmic: If the world's impoverished people had more economic opportunities in their own countries, those countries would be more politically stable and their young men would be less inclined to enter this country illegally in search of work.

The Fair Trade Certified coffee effort got a boost last year with the release of the documentary film "Black Gold," although its distribution has been limited. The movie takes a close look at the Ethiopian coffee scene, where some 15 million people depend on bean farming.

The Seattle Times called the movie "a mesmerizing documentary illuminating the human element in one corner of modern global trade."

Finding Fair Trade Certified coffee beans by the pound is getting easier, with several stores selling them as well as bistros such as the Java House downtown and Starbucks. But finding it by the cup, already brewed, is not so easy. The Vancouver-based Burgerville USA chain is a glorious and civic-minded exception, selling Fair Trade Certified coffee supplied by Kobos Coffee of Portland.

There are other organizations pursuing lofty goals via coffee beans. The Rain Forest Alliance is one. Just last week, Washington State University Vancouver added RFA coffee as a cafeteria option, thanks to the efforts of students Peter Sterr and Brianna Robinson.

Rain Forest Alliance isn't exactly like Fair Trade Certified. It isn't as concerned with the economic payback to growers as it is about protecting the environment. Still, it is another outfit that, as Sterr suggests on his e-mails, brings to mind the Margaret Mead quote, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

Back on the Clark College campus, Josh Seim is plugging away at the cause by lobbying food service personnel and trying to stir student interest. He's not sure any community college in the state offers Fair Trade Certified coffee, but says, if that's the case, "Let Clark be the first."

Gregg Herrington's column of personal opinion appears on the Other Opinions page each Friday. Reach him at gregg.herrington@columbian.com.

CAP-ful of ideas on fighting poverty

from The Daily News Longview, Washington

Ilona Kerby, the leader of one of the area's largest social service organizations, cites a sobering statistic about poverty in the United States: About 37 million Americans lead a hand-to-mouth existence.

"That's one in 12. Those are huge numbers," said Kerby, who then adds with enthusiasm: "We're excited to be able to provide safety nets for some of those people. We are changing the face of poverty."

Since becoming executive director of the Lower Columbia Community Action Council (CAP) in September last year, Kerby also has also been trying to change the 42-year-old organization, which runs 20 assistance programs to help feed and shelter the needy. They include Help Warehouse, Meals on Wheels, energy assistance, helf-help housing and community jobs programs.

It's been a "whirlwind" first year on the job, said Kerby, whose main goal since taking over has been to reduce CAP's dependence on unstable government funding.

"We need to model the behavior we want from our clients," Kerby said. "We want them to move toward self-sufficiency, and we should, too."

CAP, housed in the old Sears building on Commerce Avenue, is a private organization that applies for competitive grants and funding. The agency receives about $3.7 million, or 64 percent of its revenue, from government grants and contracts.

"The biggest misconception I face is that people think CAP is a government agency," Kerby said. "We are a nonprofit, and I'm excited that we are learning ways to serve our mission and generate revenue." In March, CAP took a major step to wean itself from government support by appointing Alan Rose as the agency's first-ever community relations and development director. Rose, who had been CAP's director of community services since 1999, now oversees grant-writing, coordinates fundraising activities, and acts as staff to the CAP Foundation.

The purpose of the CAP Foundation, formed three years ago, is to raise endowment funds for future financial security. Interest from the funds can support underfunded CAP programs. It has grown in the last year from five to 13 active members, most of them businesspeople who are soliciting funds for the endowment.

"The CAP Foundation is energized with new leadership and members," Kerby said.

Another new avenue for income -- still in the idea stage -- is to create "enterprise ventures." Such businesses. also called "social enterprises," generate revenue while also being a training program for unemployed clients to learn skills to begin a career, Kerby said.

"Once in the workforce, 85 percent of those who started at minimum wage are still working after three years and have higher than minimum-wage incomes," she said.

Kerby said CAP also wants to start up "asset-building" programs to help people learn banking skills and establish savings accounts. CAP also wants to expand its self-help housing project, in which participants help build their homes in exchange for mortgage assistance.

"We are always looking for creative ways to move people out of poverty," she said.

Making Rose the development director was the right move, Kerby said, but it left her acting as both executive director and community services director, forcing her to run day-to-day operations of CAP's myriad assistance programs. "We hope to fill that position soon," Kerby said of Rose's old slot. "That will allow me more time to focus on the big picture."

Kerby worked for CAP from 1986 to 1991, helping people 55 years and older find work. She then worked for Lower Columbia College and spent 10 years heading up offender services programs for Cowlitz County before returning to CAP.

When she become CAP's executive director, she said people told her it would take three years for her to feel like she had a handle on the large organization.

"At the time, I didn't think it would take me that long," Kerby said. "But it's been a wild first year. I'm feeling a lot more confident, but there is always something else to learn."

New name for CAP?
There's long been a disconnect between Lower Columbia Community Action Council and its common name -- CAP. But that might change.
CAP, which stands for "Community Action Program," is a generic name for thousands of community agencies across the country. The Lower Columbia Community Action Council is one of 31 CAPs in Washington.
The confusion may be ending soon, though, because CAP Executive Director Ilona Kerby said the agency in January will launch a community-wide competition for a new name.
"We want one name that the community will recognize," Kerby said.