Long way from Home
Rising cost of living, low wages leave many in our diocese struggling to break out of poverty
By Scott Alessi
Staff Writer
Pamela, a single mother of five teenage children, just wants a place to call home.
Since losing her job six months ago, Pamela and her children have been staying at the Ozanam Family Shelter in Edison. “I got laid off from my job and my rent was very high,” she said. “I had no income and had to collect unemployment. With the rent, the car, the insurance, it was just all coming at me at once.”
Pamela and her children are just one example of the hundreds of individuals and families in the Diocese of Metuchen without a permanent home. Although she has aspirations of continuing her education to get a better-paying job to provide for her family, the reality of poverty and homelessness combined with the need to take care of her children has left her unable to achieve her goals.
“It can be kind of tough, but it is like a waiting process,” she said. “In the meantime, I just want to work.”
While Pamela spends each day trying to find a job that will enable her to move into a home of her own, many other shelter residents are working full-time jobs — and in some cases, multiple jobs — yet they return from a hard day’s work to spend the night in the homeless shelter.
“I’m sure you’ve heard the myth that the homeless are bums or drunks,” said Wesley Moore, division director of housing and social concerns for Catholic Charities, Diocese of Metuchen. “That is not necessarily true. They come to us from all different walks of life.”
Moore, who oversees the operations of both the family shelter and the Ozanam Inn Men’s Shelter, New Brunswick, stated that a recent count identified 830 homeless people in Middlesex County alone, an increase from 700 in 2005. This count, said Moore, does not include those individuals living in welfare hotels or other temporary housing and thus is lower than the actual number of homeless in the county.
Based on the most recent U.S. Census reports, 7.8 percent of those living in Middlesex County are below the federal government’s established poverty line. Although this number is lower than the state’s poverty level of 8.69 percent, it is the largest in the diocese.
According to Moore, the problem of homelessness is centered in the urban area of New Brunswick, with other homeless individuals scattered in areas such as Perth Amboy, Edison, South River and Piscataway. The problem, however, is not confined to Middlesex County.
Warren County, with a poverty rate of 4.7 percent, has the second largest number of poor and homeless people in the diocese. According to Sister of Mercy Michaelita Popovice, program director of the Warren Basic Material Needs service, 46 percent of the poor in Warren are concentrated in the urban area of Phillipsburg, where Catholic Charities operates a social service center and thrift store. The remaining areas of poverty in the county are concentrated in large towns such as Washington and Hackettstown.
Sister Michaelita reported that last year 2,390 individuals were served by the social service center, many of whom returned monthly for continued assistance to supplement their income. Much like the homeless in Middlesex County, many have full-time jobs but cannot afford the high cost of living.
“Our largest category [of clients] would be the working poor,” said Sister Michaelita. “They just cannot make it on what they bring home.”
Income disparity
New Jersey is one of the wealthiest states in the nation and one of the most expensive in which to live. The state also has one of the largest income inequality rates, which is growing at a faster rate than the national average.
Moore stated that there are several reasons why so many individuals are struggling to stay above the poverty line. “It is a combination of factors,” he said. “Unemployment, underemployment and lack of affordable housing would always be at the top of the list.”
The median annual income in the counties which are part of the diocese ranges from $60,825 in Warren to $93,342 in Hunterdon, the largest in the state. As a result, the cost of living in these areas is also extremely high.
The federal government’s established poverty line is $20,000 for a family of four. The Legal Services of New Jersey Poverty Research Institute in a recent report estimated that the true cost of living for a family of three ranges from $43,319 per year in Warren to $54,435 in Somerset. For those working minimum wage jobs, the real poverty line becomes almost unreachable.
“The outrageous cost of housing has made the potential of homelessness a reality for a growing number of our neighbors,” Moore said. The excessive costs of living have endangered many in the state who are barely able to sustain themselves at the poverty line. “Most of us are one paycheck away from being homeless,” he said.
The National Low Income Housing Coalition reports that the fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Middlesex County in $1,187 a month, requiring an annual income of $47,480 to support the cost of living. A person earning the minimum wage of $7.15 per hour would be required to work 148 hours a week to cover this expense, and a wage of $22.83 per hour would be needed to afford this rent on a 40-hour per week schedule.
In Warren, clients of the social service center who do have housing are still living in poverty because the cost of maintaining an apartment is so high that they cannot afford basic necessities like food and clothing.
“They’re spending almost all of their money on high rent,” explained Sister Michaelita, who stated that many of the jobs available to the poor are in retail, which often pays only the minimum wage. “They can’t survive on those wages. It is just impossible.
“They’re making a lot of choices,” she continued. “They’re choosing between food and the rent, food and paying utilities, or between food and having transportation to go to work.”
Moore stated that those living in the shelters face a similar conundrum. “We have mothers who would love to go to work, have good qualifications, but where are they going to put their kids?
“It is important for them to go to work,” he said, “but it is also important for her to take care of the child. Which one is she going to do?”
No place to go
For most who are homeless in the diocese, the lack of affordable housing leaves them with few options for finding a permanent home.
According to Moore, most of the single men living in the Ozanam Inn cannot afford to move directly into an apartment and instead will opt to find a single room, which can still cost $500 or more per month. Affordable rooms are also hard to come by, said Moore, leaving many waiting for months in the shelter.
“We have men [at the shelter] who are ready to move on to find a room, but they can’t find any place to go,” Moore said. The shelter requires all of its clients to save 50 to 60 percent of their income in escrow, which in turn can be used to pay their first month’s rent and security deposit. Even with the savings, many are unable to find a place to move into when they are ready to leave the shelter.
The Section 8 program developed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development (HUD), designed to assist low-income families by providing vouchers that will help make up the difference between the cost of rent and what they are able to afford, has failed to get many of the homeless into permanent housing.
“We can’t transition our people living in homeless shelters into apartments because they can’t sustain themselves,” said Marianne Majewski, director of Catholic Charities, Diocese of Metuchen. “If you try to look for Section 8, there isn’t any Section 8. You wait on a waiting list for years and years, and you’re not meant to live in a homeless shelter for years. You’re meant to transition.”
During her stay at the family shelter, Pamela has also been waiting for a low-income housing opportunity to open up. “Right now I am on a waiting list,” she said. “But I don’t want to depend on them because I don’t know how long it will be.”
In Phillipsburg, Sister Michaelita reports that there are 300 families on the waiting list for Section 8 housing, with applications no longer being accepted due to the lack of available apartments. In Warren County as a whole, the waiting list extends to 600.
Without a shelter in Warren, the homeless are put up in motels or rooming houses. Hunterdon County, which has a smaller number of homeless residents, also accepts homeless from Warren into their interfaith hospitality program in which various churches will take turns housing homeless individuals.
*The attached/referenced article was originally published in The Catholic Spirit, the official newspaper of the Diocese of Metuchen, and is protected under U.S. and international copyright law