In McKeesport, poverty talk goes over ‘benefits cliff’
Efforts to fight poverty in Pennsylvania have long focused narrowly on getting people into jobs, but that won’t work if it also pushes people off a proverbial financial cliff, officials said Friday in McKeesport at the presentation of a report on deprivation in the state.
McKeesport Mayor Michael Cherepko told two state senators and a dozen other attendees that he knows residents who take lowwage jobs and promptly see their public housing rents jump from $25 to $400 a month, not to mention the child care costs they then face. “That person may be going to work for $2 to $3 an hour” after those costs are factored in, he said.
“I’ve seen people so excited about getting to work,” said Mr. Cherepko. “One month later, it’s like, bing! They fall off the cliff.”
In some cases, a low-wage job actually costs a person money because of elimination of housing subsidies, food aid, utility breaks and cash assistance — a situation sometimes called the “benefits cliff,” according to Sen. Art Haywood, D-Philadelphia, who came to McKeesport to amplify the late October release of his Poverty Listening Tour report.
Addressing the benefits cliff is one of the 20 recommendations in his report, and it may be among the most complex. Some eligibility rules are controlled by the state, others by the federal government.
Nonetheless, Mr. Haywood said he has asked Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration to study “what could be done to gradually make the transition [from benefits to employment], instead of a cliff, which is immediate.” His report notes that the
National Conference of State Legislatures has assembled case studies of states that have sought to address the benefits cliff.
In late October, Mr. Haywood issued the 66-page report stemming from his spring tour, which took him to McKeesport, Philadelphia, Lock Haven, Erie and Scranton.
He concluded that low pay, inadequate transportation, inaccessible child care and unaffordable housing trap people in poverty. Eliminate those barriers, he hypothesized, and the state could see lower juvenile delinquency, improved health, and an unleashing of the human potential of people who are now just scrambling to get by.
His Friday stop in McKeesport, and returns to the other tour sites, were meant to “spread the word about the importance of addressing poverty” in advance of the introduction of legislation, he said.
The latest U.S. Census Bureau estimates place 12% of Pennsylvanians below the poverty line, including 17% of the state’s children. Allegheny County’s poverty rate is 12% of residents, including 15% of kids. While cities including Philadelphia and Pittsburgh feature the highest poverty rates in the state, rural counties including Fayette, McKean and Forest are not much lower.
And McKeesport? According to latest census estimates, the city of 19,488 has an adult poverty rate of 33%, and among kids 53% are growing up below the line. Household income is half that of the Pittsburgh region as a whole, while home values and the prevalence of college degrees are both around a third of the regional average.
The lack of opportunity fuels the city’s crime problem, said Sen. James Brewster, D-McKeesport. Conversely, addressing poverty would cut crime, he said.
“When people have money of their own, they don’t have to worry about taking it from somebody else,” he said.
The senators also noted that Pennsylvania has not followed the lead of bordering states that have raised their minimum wages above the federal floor of $7.25.
“Getting a job is not the solution if the job pays $7.50, $8 or $8.50,” Mr. Haywood said. His report recommends movement toward a $15 an hour minimum wage.
Among other things, Mr. Haywood’s report recommended creation of an Office of Economic Opportunity, marketing to reduce the stigma associated with poverty and to persuade people to apply for federally funded benefits for which they qualify, enhanced funding for child care for low-income families, and creation of a pilot program to help struggling single mothers to enter the workforce.
Some of the report’s recommendations could be enacted by the administration of Mr. Wolf, a Democrat, while others would require action by the Republicancontrolled state Legislature.
Pennsylvania is one of a handful of states in which concentrated child poverty is worsening, according to a recent report.
“We’re failing,” said Mr. Haywood, citing the unchanged minimum wage, higher education cuts and modest funding for low-income housing among the reasons.
“We’ve made some choices which are not working.”