Report predicts more suburbanites will fall into poverty
Mary Ellen Durbin said there's an easy way to see how the recession has affected people in the suburbs - just look at her parking lot.
"We had to hire a parking attendant," said Durbin, executive director of the People's Resource Center in Wheaton. "That's how busy we are. We've seen an astronomical increase in the numbers of people who need help."
The center, which provides emergency assistance, food and other services to people in need, served roughly 2,400 families in the month of March, Durbin said. It was the second-busiest month in the center's 34-year history.
When Durbin joined the center in 1995, it served roughly 300 families a month.
"A lot of the people coming to us now are new clients, people who have never been in this position before," she said.
Durbin's observations are backed up in a new report about poverty in the Chicago area. The report, released today, was written by the Heartland Alliance, a Chicago-based research and advocacy group.
According to the report, more than 253,000 people in the city and suburbs, including 87,000 children, could fall into poverty as a result of the current recession. That projected increase would amount to a 27 percent jump in the number of people living in poverty since 2007.
"We've never seen that kind of increase before. It would be staggering," said Amy Rynell, a Heartland director who helped write the report.
A family of four is defined as "poor" by the federal government if it earns less than $22,050 annually. A family defined as "extremely poor" makes less than half that amount.
A good chunk of the new poor would live in the suburbs. Rynell said the suburbs now account for 41 percent of the Chicago area's poor. In 1980, the suburbs accounted for just 24 percent.
"Poverty is not limited to specific areas of our state," Rynell said.
The report found that in Cook County, the number of people turning to food pantries rose by 33 percent in 2008. The increase ranged from 23 percent to 52 percent in the other suburban counties, with McHenry County showing the biggest hike.
More suburbanites used food stamps in 2008 as well, the report found. The number of households receiving them jumped by more than 10 percent in DuPage, Kane, Lake and McHenry counties. In Cook County, the number jumped by 8 percent.
Liz Eakins, associate director of Lazarus House in St. Charles, said her group has noticed a "major increase" in the number of people seeking emergency help. Many of them inquire about Lazarus House's emergency assistance program, which provides cash to eligible residents who can't pay their rent, mortgage or utility bill. The program is funded by a grant from the Illinois Department of Human Services.
"The heartbreaking thing is that to qualify, people have to prove that this is a temporary problem, that they can handle things on their own in the future," Eakins said. "These days, with so many people out of work, they can't offer that proof."
Heartland Alliance officials said that while the outlook is grim, it's not inevitable. State leaders can reverse the descent into poverty through judicious use of federal stimulus package money and by overhauling Illinois' revenue system so that it sustains anti-poverty programs, Rynell said.
Durbin said stimulus aid would surely help, but not necessarily for the long term.
"People in trouble need two things to get back on track for good: a job and affordable housing," she said. "Those are things you can't get from a stimulus package."
The Heartland report is available at heartlandalliance.org/research.