Between 2007 and 2009, the number of area residents living in poverty grew nearly twice as fast as the national average, according to a report the U.S. Census Bureau released this week.
One local social services director, reacting to the poverty report, said he’s seen a corresponding increase in the number of people visiting his office for help and in some of the services his agency has had to provide.
“People are under a great amount of stress,” said Tom Casteel, director of the Washington County (Va.) Department of Social Services. “They’re really, really struggling and that concerns me.”
In 2009, 18 percent of the Kingsport-Bristol-Bristol metropolitan area’s residents earned incomes below the federal poverty threshold of $10,956 a year for an individual, or $21,954 a year for a family of four, according to the census bureau’s American Community Survey.
That’s 2.3 percentage points higher than the number of people in the local metropolitan area, which includes Bristol, Va., Scott County, Va., Sullivan County, Tenn., and Washington County, Va., who were living in poverty during 2005 according to the survey, which the bureau released Tuesday.
The national poverty rate grew 1.3 percentage points during that three-year period, going from 13.0 percent in 2007 to 14.3 percent in 2009. Virginia’s poverty rate went up from 9.9 percent in 2007 to 10.5 percent in 2009, while Tennessee’s went up from 15.9 percent to 17.1 percent.
The survey’s findings also show that while the region’s median household income fell slightly during those three years – from $36,458 in 2007 to $36,257 in 2009 – its monthly housing costs increased significantly. The region’s median mortgage payment went up from $880 a month in 2007 to $931 in 2009, according to the survey, while median rent went from $481 a month to $585 a month.
Casteel said the increase in housing prices combined with increasing food, gas and utility costs has led to a previously unheard of number of people coming by his office asking about food stamps and other public assistance programs.
“Every day, all day long, the lobby in my office is full of people,” Casteel said, adding that on average his office gets 104 visitors a day. The office’s staff helped 5,352 people in August and 4,460 people in July, he said.
Casteel said many of the people he sees are on a fixed income and can no longer continue to pay their bills while others have either lost jobs or exhausted unemployment benefits.
Being in this type of a situation has had a great impact on peoples’ personal lives, Casteel said, because many who have been seeking assistance have never done so before and never thought they would need it.
It’s also having an impact on their family lives, the social services director said.
While he doesn’t have direct evidence linking it to the current economic situation, Casteel said, his office has seen an unprecedented number of child abuse cases, neglect cases and foster home placements in the same few years it’s seen the increase in requests for public assistance.
gmclean@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2518
BY THE NUMBERS
Between 2007 and 2009, the Kingsport-Bristol-Bristol metropolitan area’s poverty rate grew faster than the national poverty rate and the rates for Virginia and Tennessee. By area, the percentage of people living in poverty for the past three years was:
Year Local area U.S. Virginia Tennessee
2009 18.0 14.3 10.5 17.1
2008 16.6 13.2 10.2 15.5
2007 15.9 13.0 9.9 15.9
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