Lois Giles of The Shepherd’s Staff, a Westminster-based Christian outreach and support center that helps the needy with everything from emergency and f inancial assistance and a soup kitchen to school supplies and money for prescription medication.
Written By: David Greisman, Photos By: Walter Calahan
The faces of poverty are not the just homeless who gather within familiar blocks on Westminster’s Main Street.
Poverty is the senior whose income has been cemented for years, while the cost of living rises to heights so frightening that he has to make choices he never expected to have to make: Should I pay the gas bill or buy food? Can I skip any medications to cut back my on costs?
Poverty in Carroll County is often generational – two, three, even four generations of family members who never learned basic life skills that most people take for granted.
Poverty manifests itself as the unemployed who are deemed as unemployable because of a criminal record, an addiction or an illness.
Poverty even envelops those who work but do not make enough to pay their bills.
As of July, Carroll’s unemployment rate was 5.8 percent, with about 90,150 people employed and approximately 5,560 seeking work, according to the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation. That was lower than the state unemployment rate of 6.5 percent. And it was the fifth-lowest in the entire state, with only Frederick, Howard, Montgomery, and Queen Anne’s counties ranked lower.
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Carroll’s poverty rate in 2012 was 6.3 percent, well below the state rate of 10.4 percent and the national rate of 15.9 percent, according to a report published earlier this year by Progressive Maryland Education Fund and the Maryland Center on Economic Policy. Only two other counties were as good or better: Anne Arundel County at 6.3 percent and Howard County at 5.3 percent. The county’s median household income as of 2012 was $79,304, the eighth-highest in Maryland and about $8,000 more than that of the state as a whole.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t people struggling and in need of assistance.
“We’ve had an increase in clients in the last few years,” said Cindy Parr, executive director of Human Services Programs (HSP) of Carroll County. “When I came to work here in August 2011, we were serving under 9,000 clients. At the end of fiscal year 2013 going into 2014, we’re serving well over 12,000 clients now.”
The statistical increase may be misleading. It doesn’t necessarily signify that the economy is getting worse in Carroll County, but simply that more people are seeking help.
“When the recession hit nationwide, I think it hit us a little bit later,” said Kathi Green, supervisor of pupil personnel and student support programs for Carroll County Public Schools. “Some of our bumps in numbers didn’t come very early on when we were hearing about all the job loss in the country. We can only go off what’s reported to us. If a family chooses not to apply for free and reduced meals, we have no way of knowing what their financial status is and if they are struggling.
“People try to exhaust all of their resources before they ask for help, and even then some are very reluctant to ask because there can be a stigma or embarrassment associated with poverty,” Green said. “They are as self-reliant as can be.”
For the thousands who are taking steps toward self-reliance and making that slow climb from poverty to a sustainable comfort level, Carroll County has a wide web of resources manned by compassionate people who work collaboratively to assist the poor and the homeless, the struggling and the recovering.
That web of resources includes government agencies, the school system (see sidebar, p. 51), nonprofits, religious institutions and more, bolstered as well by the efforts of volunteers.
The hub of for these resources is the Circle of Caring Homelessness Board, which includes nearly 60 agencies, nonprofits and civic organizations.
“Public/private partnerships are a way for us to be more successful,” said Madeline Morey, director of Carroll County’s Department of Citizen Services. “Government has strengths in a lot of things we’re able to do. The private sector has more flexibility and can do things pretty quickly. That’s going to increase our success in helping people in poverty.”
Among the dozens of members of the Circle of Caring is The Shepherd’s Staff, a Westminster-based Christian outreach and support center that helps the needy with everything from emergency financial assistance and a soup kitchen to school supplies and money for prescription medication.
“We can help keep them in their homes,” said Lois Giles, who has worked for the center for more than two decades. “They don’t have to spend money for their paper towels and cleaning supplies and shampoo. They can put that money toward their bills.”
The number of people seeking assistance from The Shepherd’s Staff has risen dramatically. In 2013, there were 163 families that were either new clients or hadn’t sought help for at least five years. Through July 2014, that number was 464 — with five months left in the year. A total of 3,976 households came through the center’s doors in 2013. The number for 2014 through of the end of July was 2,525 households.
“There is an ever-increasing need,” Giles said. “They’re probably your neighbors. They may have a job, but it’s probably not something they can save money for. If their car breaks down, they have to make a choice: ÔDo I pay the rent or get the car fixed so I can go to work?’ They’re working. Their kids are going to school. They’re basically underemployed or they need second jobs. Something happens in their budget, so they end up here for help.”
In 2012, the Maryland Community Action Partnership released a report regarding self-sufficiency standards around the state, listing how much income different compositions of families would need to meet their basic needs, depending on where they live.
Carroll County is the 11th-most-expensive out of Maryland’s 23 counties and Baltimore City. A single adult could meet his or her basic needs here at wages of $13.09 an hour, which equals $2,304 a month or $27,651 a year. A single parent of a preschooler would need to earn $23.09 an hour, which is $4,064 a month or $48,769 a year. Two adults with a preschooler and a school-aged child would each need to earn $15.81 an hour, combining for $5,567 a month or $66,801 a year.
The wages for a single adult to meet basic needs in Carroll are more than twice that of the federal poverty level. Once a child enters the equation, the necessary salary approaches and then surpasses three times the federal poverty level.
The cost of living has increased dramatically in Carroll and several other counties in Maryland. Here, though, the situation is also compounded by there being far more single-family homes than there are multi-family buildings. Carroll has by far the lowest number of apartment and condominium buildings, at 12.7 percent of the housing stock, followed next by Harford, which is at 18.9 percent.
“There’s not a lot of affordable housing in Carroll County,” Parr said.
Housing/homelessness is ranked as the No. 1 human service need in Carroll County, according to a strategic plan released in February by the Department of Citizen Services.
“One of the biggest struggles for those that are in poverty in Carroll County is to try to find a way out,” Morey said. “You need to be able to find gainful employment and to try and find housing. That can be challenging. There also are folks that are struggling with issues such as addiction or psychiatric diagnoses. And there are people who simply don’t have the resources to be able to afford any kind of even an apartment.
“I think we have a very good shelter system in Carroll County, but that shelter system has a time limit,” Morey said. “If someone is unable to find permanent housing and they’ve expired their time to use the shelter, then they may end up back in homelessness.”
“Susan” arrived in Carroll County in May with her 4-year-old son and another child due to be born later in the year.
“I was scared, mostly for my son,” she said. “I didn’t want him on the streets. It was a very tough time for him. I was scared of what he was experiencing, what he was dealing with, not having food for him, scared of Child Protective Services taking him. What if I couldn’t get a room or stay with somebody the next night? I didn’t want him out in the weather, sleeping under a bridge or in the woods somewhere.”
Susan’s climb from poverty is not over, but fueled by her desire for a better, independent life and with the help of many of the county’s web resources she is rising.
“I felt like it was hopeless, and now I’m so overwhelmed with joy,” she said on her last night in a county shelter on a August night. “It’s just a big relief. All those months of worrying and stressing and wondering if anything was ever going to work out. É When we came here, we literally were living on what we could carry on our backs from one place to another. We’ve gone from facing sleeping under a bridge to having our own place.
“Tomorrow night I’m going to be sleeping under my own roof and in my own place,” she said. “All the hard work paid off,” she said. “With a lot of help.”
Poverty and homelessness in the classroom….
Adults are not the only ones contending with poverty and homelessness. Part of the partnership in helping those in need in Carroll County includes providing assistance to kids.
Children not yet in school get help from various agencies, organizations and religious groups. Once they’re old enough to be in the classroom, the Carroll County Public Schools also plays an integral role.
“For the school-aged children, we’re doing what we can within our limitations of public education, and then working with local agencies and nonprofits to partner together to meet the children’s needs,” said Kathi Green, the school system’s supervisor of pupil personnel and student support programs.
That includes academic assistance, school supplies, counseling services and even help paying fees for field trips and college entrance exams.
“Sometimes if we see a health concern, we may be able to help with that, whether it’s glasses for a student or assistance getting to a doctor,” Green said.
Carroll County has four Title I schools, all elementary schools, that qualify for federal money that helps address the needs of poverty with children. And then there’s the federal Free and Reduced Price Meals program, which is based on income criteria. Families apply for their kids to enter the program.
A household of four with annual income of $31,005 or less qualifies kids for free meals. A household of four with a maximum annual income of $44,123 qualifies students to receive breakfast for 30 cents and lunch for 40 cents.
The percentage of students receiving free or reduced meals has been rising in recent years, from 15.6 percent in the 2010-11 school year to about 19.3 percent in 2013-14. That equates to 4,311 students receiving free meals and 756 receiving reduced-price meals out of a total of 26,294 students, according to the Maryland State Department of Education. Only Howard County is lower, at about 19.2 percent.
Carroll County Public Schools also has food pantries in 19 schools to provide further assistance.
There were 168 students in the county identified as homeless during the last school year. About half of them, or 88 in total, were “doubled-up,” which means they are living with other relatives, friends or others. Another 31 were living in hotels, while 36 were in shelters, and 13 were listed as unsheltered. Of the 168, there are 23 “unaccompanied youth” who are not living with their parents or legal guardians.
Under federal law, school systems are required to transport homeless students to their original schools until the end of the academic year. That was done at a cost of $80,803 in 2013-14, a jump from $55,561 during the previous school year.
“We’re able to do it a majority of the time. We do have to consider the length of travel,” Green said. “We can have a family become homeless and end up in Baltimore County staying with a relative. We collaborate with other school systems; we wouldn’t put a young child on a one-way bus ride for two hours. It’s not good for kids. In that case, we would work with the other school system to get them enrolled there.”
Green said the school system has often seen families who are down on their luck for a period of time end up back on their feet. The school system’s role, part of the countywide collaboration, is “good for kids and the right thing to do,” she said.
“If we have a student who is struggling and the contributing factor is poverty, we can help to alleviate the poverty in some way and get the student back on track academically,” Green said. “We all benefit from that: the student, the classroom, the school and the community. Well-educated young people contribute back to society.” ¥
