Daily Herald
April 30, 2009
According to Heartland Alliance’s 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.
From Daily Herald:
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.