By:Elizabeth Sagarin
O'side outreach part of study showing hardships of working poor
When Anna Sirianni started to notice more people asking for assistance after the welfare reform bill of 1996 was passed, the coordinator of St. Anthony's Parish Outreach in Oceanside began to doubt the law's effectiveness.
To confirm suspicions she and peers had, a study of outreach clients was initiated in 1998 by the Public Policy Education Network at Catholic Charities, Diocese of Rockville Centre, in conjunction with graduate students from the Adelphi University School of Social Work.
St. Anthony's was one of 22 parishes in Nassau and Suffolk counties chosen to participate in the study, because, according to the task force created to select centers to survey, it served a significant number of poor and working poor clients. Two food and nutrition centers were also surveyed.
After writing questionnaires and training students to administer them, 349 total clients were interviewed between February and June 1999. The data was analyzed, interpreted and condensed into a final report, which substantiates Sirianni's belief that the welfare reform bill was misnamed.
It didn't necessarily mean people were doing any better, said Sirianni, who has been at St. Anthony's since December 1993. According to the study, the objective of the bill to move welfare recipients toward work fell short of its goal as a remedy for poverty.
Our study of parish outreach clients confirms other studies that found the working poor to actually be worse off than are people still on welfare. Findings were derived from comparing the percentage of working clients who said meeting basic needs was harder than it was six months earlier, to the percentage of welfare recipients answering likewise. Basic needs was said to include buying food, paying rent, paying bills, getting child care and finding transportation.
One reason for the findings, according to the study, was due to the new welfare regulations making it harder for working people to access such supports as food stamps and Medicaid.
Another reason for the findings, said Sirianni, a certified social worker, is that many people receiving welfare are qualified only to take jobs that pay minimum or slightly higher wage. Such jobs, even if worked by two people in a household, don't meet the $36,000 the study's researchers designated as necessary for a family of four to live a life of minimum dignity on Long Island.
A job that pays the minimum $5.15 an hour yields an annual salary of $10, 712. That means that if two people work, the family's combined income is only $21,424, barely more than half of the study's stated need, which assumes the family has medical insurance through jobs and the cost of utilities is included in rent. It also doesn't leave any room to spare for recreation and vacations or visits to a restaurant or movie. That was the case for most of the clients surveyed.
While two-thirds of them had a high school education, and 45 percent were working, almost all earned less than $20,000 a year, the study says.
So it didn't surprise the survey takers when 31 percent of the outreach clients interviewed said they went without food for a day or more in the previous month.
That's where a parish outreach like St. Anthony's comes in. According to Sirianni, the center gives food to approximately 100 Oceanside families per month. The center allows families to access the food and clothing rooms twice a month. If families aren't getting from the government, Sirianni said, they're coming to the outreach centers. So, she said, the same constituents who supported the welfare reform bill are being asked, in some manner, to help out the poor, because parish pantries rely on donations from parishioners. The same people who were on welfare are going to be asking for food and other help, she said.
Although St. Anthony's parishioners are extremely generous, according to Sirianni, the church is using particulars from the study, which was published in April 2001, to help poor people in a more comprehensive way: through governmental change.
Included in the church's June 24 mailing to parishioners were two form letters asking for certain items in the 2001 state budget to be passed, among them a raise in minimum wage to $6.75. The letters, which were accompanied by the addresses of state representatives, also asked for an increase in the stock of affordable housing, an increase in child-care subsidies, a raise in the income-eligibility standard for child care and money to retain a qualified child-care workforce.
If such initiatives were passed, Sirianni said, they would go a long way toward helping the people she serves. We have to think in terms of the bigger picture.
However, overcoming poverty on Long Island is a particularly bleak picture, according to the Catholic Charities study and a recently published study by the Washington, D.C.-based, nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute called Hardships in America: The Real Story of Working Families. Housing is the primary obstacle.
The Economic Policy Institute study cites Long Island as the most expensive place to live in the United States. It did so by developing over 400 budgets covering the needs of six family types in every community in the country.
For a family with two parents and one child to live in Nassau or Suffolk County, according to the study, it would need to make an after-tax salary of $46,088 a year. And that's really bare bones, said Bethney Gundersen, a researcher at the EPI. And, she said, This is if nothing goes wrong.
Which explains why a woman who comes to St. Anthony's for food and clothing isn't always able to cover all of her family's needs, even though her household has an income close to $45,000 a year and medical insurance through her husband's job.
It's almost virtually impossible to get ahead, said the woman, who asked that her name not be published.
But families aren't the only ones suffering. The elderly, whose retirement funding hasn't caught up with the cost of living, are among those most in need, Sirianni said. Nor is poverty limited to minorities. Sirianni estimated she serves whites and non-whites in equal numbers in Oceanside.
Poverty is different in the city than out here, she said. It's hidden behind nice homes and manicured lawns.
