Don’t look up, state may be collapsing

Is the sky falling? The bruised skies over Connecticut seem like they’ve been sprinkling trouble on residents for a while. This isn’t the stuff of fairy tales, cartoons or summer disaster, but more pedestrian matters such as pension debt, eroding infrastructure and business growth.

Things are still sunny for some residents. There are, after all, two extremes to the wealth gap, which happens to be one of the broadest in the United States.

A new report from Quinnipiac University and the Urban League of Southern Connecticut is more of a reminder than a news bulletin. We’ve been documenting the impact of the gap since the recession hit more than a decade ago. And the United Way’s ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained and Employed) data has underscored in recent years how the rich and the poor in Connecticut do not walk common ground.

But we applaud the Quinnipiac effort for probing deeper at a time it’s become too easy for people to shrug off the fate of those living below the poverty line.

They reached beyond statistics by conducting 70

focus group participant interviews with people from New Haven, Bridgeport, Danbury, Stamford, Norwalk, Hartford and Waterbury. The “State of Urban Connecticut,” was prepared by 10 Quinnipiac faculty members and four outside consultants.

Of note is that the researchers circled five logical areas of concern at the launch of the project — employment, education, income, affordable housing and health disparities — but eventually refined their focus to transportation, immigration and re-entry after incarceration.

Those big three topics might appear to be distinct from the original categories, but this is how research works. The academics isolated the most pressing problems.

There are a lot of details here for lawmakers to ponder. They will likely be drawn to trends involving low-wage jobs (those paying $15 or less). While such positions tend to be held by people of color, they were an area of growth in recent years. That’s not a good thing. Mid-range jobs dropped and an increasing reliance on automation is expected to result in job loss.

These jobs offer few benefits and often require workers to travel long distances. Tolls would be just one more burden for this population. Even among so many problems falling from the skies, there is an urgency to some of them. One is the shortage of opportunities, something Gov. Ned Lamont has recognized. Perhaps more frustrating is the affordable housing shortage, which is deemed a “crisis situation” in the report.

The evidence suggests that is no exaggeration. The New Haven housing authority, for example, has 10,000 families on a wait list for affordable housing or vouchers. To satisfy every family would take a quarter of a century, the report estimates.

“There is some real suffering going on in this state,” said Robert Brown III, the study’s project manager.

Is the sky falling? Just ask the people who can see what’s coming because they can’t afford a roof.

We applaud the Quinnipiac effort for probing deeper at a time it’s become too easy for people to shrug off the fate of those living below the poverty line.