Colorado's working poor: 'Suddenly, I'm living below the poverty line'
Gary Younge in Fort Collins, Colorado
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 16 October 2012 16.04 BST
"There's been a real difference, not only in the number of people that we serve in recent years," explains Amy Pezzani, the food bank's executive director. "But also in the kind of people we serve. People think that if they're not living in poverty then they're middle class. But the official poverty level is such an unrealistic indicator of economic status. Most of the people who use the food bank are working people. These used to be referred to as 'emergency food pantries', but now it's like people are having an emergency every day. It's really just a way to exist."
Last year the census bureau released a new measurement of poverty, which takes regional cost of living, medical payments and other expenses into account and found a third of Americans are either in poverty or desperately close to it. Half are married, almost half are suburban. "These numbers are higher than we anticipated," Trudi Renwick, the bureau's head poverty statistician, told the New York Times. "There are more people struggling than the official numbers show."
Mark Weaver, 54, the former chairman of nearby Loveland chamber of commerce, tried to avoid the gaze of acquaintances he'd met when he attended the food bank's galas. "It was very humiliating," he says. "I used to take clients to their events, and all of a sudden I'm living below the poverty line."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/16/colorado-working-poor-elections-2012
Obama-land.
Gary Younge in Fort Collins, Colorado
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 16 October 2012 16.04 BST
"There's been a real difference, not only in the number of people that we serve in recent years," explains Amy Pezzani, the food bank's executive director. "But also in the kind of people we serve. People think that if they're not living in poverty then they're middle class. But the official poverty level is such an unrealistic indicator of economic status. Most of the people who use the food bank are working people. These used to be referred to as 'emergency food pantries', but now it's like people are having an emergency every day. It's really just a way to exist."
Last year the census bureau released a new measurement of poverty, which takes regional cost of living, medical payments and other expenses into account and found a third of Americans are either in poverty or desperately close to it. Half are married, almost half are suburban. "These numbers are higher than we anticipated," Trudi Renwick, the bureau's head poverty statistician, told the New York Times. "There are more people struggling than the official numbers show."
Mark Weaver, 54, the former chairman of nearby Loveland chamber of commerce, tried to avoid the gaze of acquaintances he'd met when he attended the food bank's galas. "It was very humiliating," he says. "I used to take clients to their events, and all of a sudden I'm living below the poverty line."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/16/colorado-working-poor-elections-2012
Obama-land.
