Social service agencies struggle with growing need

By JESON INGRAHAM
Special to Essex County Newspapers

"We're a lot busier this year," says Donna Sylvester, a caseworker for Community Action, Inc., in Amesbury, which runs a free clothing bank and helps connect low-income people with jobs and proper day care.

But like most social service agencies, Community Action has been forced to do more with less. While state legislators declare welfare reform a success, says Sylvester, people who are losing their benefits can't pay their bills and need more help from nonprofit agencies to survive.

Coupled with the changes in the welfare system, leaders of local social service agencies stress that the economy, of all things, is making it harder for people to overcome poverty.

The construction boom has turned out to be a bust for those struggling to get by, as new condominiums supplant affordable housing. Rising costs for the most modest housing have pushed almost every shelter in the state to near capacity.

Known for its prosperity, the Essex County average income was $2,500 above the $41,571 state average in 1995. In 1990, median household incomes were as high as $64,000 in places like Topsfield.

But just three towns south, statistics point to what social workers call "pockets of poverty." In Salem, 29 percent of households earned less than $20,000 in 1996. The percentage of people below the poverty line in Essex County was almost 10 percent in 1995, and the number of people accessing food pantries and soup kitchens has increased 5 percent in the last two years.

But statistics can't tell the whole story. Poverty lines don't measure the day-to-day troubles caused by the region's high cost of living. With rents starting at $550 per month, demand for the 139 apartments run by Salem Harbor Community Development Corp. in Salem far exceeds supply.

Created more than 20 years ago to convert substandard housing into affordable housing, the United Way-funded organization was forced to close its waiting list when it grew to 80 families at the beginning of this summer. There are no more than 25 openings in any given year.

Executive Director Jim Haskell says the changing economy has forced the organization to find new ways to help its residents adapt to the increasing living costs. In the last five years, Salem Harbor CDC started an English As A Second Language program as well as first-time home buyer and business classes.

"(With) the way that the economy is evolving, or devolving, I don't know which way it is," says Elizabeth Hogan, North Shore Community Action Programs' executive director, "people are poor who are working 40 hours a week. ... You really, really cannot win."

Located in Peabody, NSCAP's mission is to "eliminate poverty in the midst of plenty" in the 22 municipalities it serves.

In Gloucester, high-paying blue-collar jobs have gone the way of the sinking fishing industry. Marian Linden, assistant director of Wellspring in Gloucester, says all that is left for unskilled workers are $8 per hour jobs. Yet, she says, women with children, the largest low-income group in Massachusetts, need to earn as much as $18 per hour to pay for housing and added costs like child care.

Wellspring runs a seven-family shelter and offers some educational and micro-enterprise programs.

"We're finding that people really do need education, people really do need training in order to become self-sufficient," says Nancy Sullivan, deputy director of NSCAP. "But with the new welfare reform laws, it's difficult for people, if they are in school, to stay in school and get the training they need."

Under the law, full-time students must work or do community service 20 hours a week, a nearly impossible feat for mothers caring for children and attending classes.

In fighting poverty, NSCAP, which offers job training, one-on-one advocacy and a variety of housing-related programs, also must overcome the community's incorrect perceptions about poverty on the North Shore. On the North Shore "it's harder for people to see and recognize and even acknowledge (poverty)," says Hogan.

Capt. Ricardo Castillo of the Salvation Army in Salem and Beverly agrees. "We tend to forget that there's a lot of people suffering." In his work, he encounters a lot of folks who debate whether they should pay the bills or buy food from week to week.

"It's easier to fund food than a $200 or $300 electric bill," says Castillo. "We can help by giving people a bag of groceries every so often." Last year, more than 1,000 households received bags of food from his organization.