By Michelle Martin
STAFF WRITER

The poor will always be with us, Jesus said. But most people probably never thought they would be with us more than ever in booming economic times.

That, however, has been the experience of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago, which has seen the number of people asking for basic human needs—perhaps a bag of groceries, or a little money to cover the rent—increase by 47 percent from fiscal year 1998 to fiscal year 2000.

“Surviving Poverty: The Persistence of Poverty in Times of Plenty,” a Catholic Charities white paper on the problem, will be distributed at the agency’s annual meeting Nov. 6.

According to the paper, the agency received more than 65,000 requests for help obtaining food, clothing, shelter, medical assistance, rent and utilities from July 1999 to June 2000, up from fewer than 45,000 requests two years earlier.

“This past year, we’ve had such a phenomenal increase in the number of people who just are not making it,” said Catholic Charities administrator Father Michael Boland.

And the increase has happened during the longest peacetime economic boom in U.S. history, a time of record low unemployment rates, rising incomes and the lowest poverty rate since 1979.

Part of the answer lies in the numbers themselves. To be considered poor by the government, a family of four must have an annual household income of less than $17,000 a year. But many families who make more than that find they can’t make ends meet, particularly in the face of medical bills, car repairs or other unexpected expenses.

At the same time, families have lost more than cash assistance as they have been moved from the welfare rolls into mostly low-wage jobs, Boland said.

“A lot of people think that if someone is working, they’re doing all right,” Boland said.

But 74 percent of all new jobs don’t pay a living wage, according to the white paper, and minimum wage earners can expect to spend more than three-quarters of the paychecks for two-bedroom apartments at fair market rent.

At the same time, many people who leave welfare for work lose access to food stamps and medical care, Boland said.

“Before, even if people were working, there were a lot of ways we could get them help,” Boland said. “It just becomes more and more difficult.”

For example, many new jobs are in the suburbs, and not easily accessible by public transportation. But a low-wage earner who has a car to get to and from his or her job often will be turned down for food stamps because the car is considered an asset, Boland said, and owning that asset makes the worker too “wealthy” to qualify for food assistance. But in order to get a job at all, they need a car.

“For many of the poor, these are some of the profound difficulties they face,” Boland said. “The rules can be severely illogical.”

In addition to distributing the white paper to Catholic Charities board members at the annual meeting, Boland expects to release it to the media, to politicians and to other not-for-profit agencies.

He hopes they take to heart a list of recommendations to increase the minimum wage, update rules for food stamps, add funding for affordable housing and increasing both state and federal funding for social service agencies.

Last year, Catholic Charities found itself with a $3.5 million deficit after the state of Illinois gave it and all private social service agencies only a 2.5 percent cost-of-living increase, not keeping pace with the cost of salaries and benefits for the staff to run the programs.