Fund helps those whose pay falls short

Organizers of The Christmas Fund and Bureau hope to raise a half-million dollars by the end of December to help make Christmas brighter for the area’s needy.

But some worry even that won’t be enough.

“We recently had a meeting of program directors, and what I heard at the table is that our phones are ringing off the hook in every program for emergency needs – meeting rent, food donations, assistance with medical bills,” said Loreen McFaul, development director for Catholic Charities. “When you talk with the working poor, they need diapers, warm clothes, food vouchers, fuel, money for utility bills.”

Much more than the homeless population, it is the working poor who come to the Christmas Bureau for toys for their children and food vouchers. “People need to keep in mind that having a job may not be enough anymore,” McFaul said.

The Christmas Bureau, paid for by generous donations to The Spokesman-Review Christmas Fund, opens in just eight days at the Spokane Fair and Expo Center. Organizers expect 30,000 to 35,000 needy people to be given the fixings of Christmas at the Bureau – toys for every child, food vouchers for holiday dinner for every family, a bag of Christmas candy.

The goal for the Christmas Fund this year is again $500,000, set jointly by the agencies that partner in the effort: The Spokesman-Review, Catholic Charities, Volunteers of America and the Salvation Army. Thanks to donations sent throughout the year, the fund already has $8,647.56.

While organizers set a fund-raising goal that they thought was realistic, they are not confident it will be enough to cover expenses at the bureau if the number of recipients increases. And the number could grow, according to some who work at the participating agencies.

“Working poor means you are making minimum wage or slightly higher,” said Scott Cooper, director of parish social ministries at Catholic Charities. “Washington state has the highest minimum wage in the country, yet even at full-time minimum wage, you are below the federal poverty line.”

Pay falls short

The U.S. Department of Human and Health Services set the federal poverty level for a family of four this year at $18,850 in the contiguous 48 states. HHS estimates a full-time worker in that family must be paid $9.06 an hour, or have an income of about $1,571 a month, to reach that $18,850 level. Washington’s minimum wage is $7.16 an hour.

After the Christmas Bureau closed last year, volunteer Director Bruce Butler ran a report showing the average monthly income of needy families that came to the charity, grouped by ZIP code.

The 130 families from the Airway Heights ZIP code, for example, had an average income of $767 a month.

The 1,135 families from the 99202 ZIP code in Spokane averaged $823 a month; the 1,004 families from 99205 area averaged $972 a month; and the 1,858 families living in the 99207 ZIP code averaged $876 a month.

So few families came from North Idaho communities – only 53 of nearly 10,000 – that a statistical average of income was not possible. The two Idaho communities with the most Christmas Bureau recipients were Hauser and Post Falls, each with six. Those 12 families averaged $842 a month in income.

The bureau gave Christmas goodies to 9,834 families last year, totaling 32,047 people, of whom nearly 16,000 were children. The families came from 90 communities across the Inland Northwest.

Those numbers are consistent with the number of people served by the Christmas Bureau in 2002.

“The predominant trend I have seen is not that the needs have increased, it is that the resources that addressed them have decreased,” said Cooper, who’s worked for Catholic Charities for about four years and Second Harvest food bank and for St. Vincent De Paul before that.

“The agencies that traditionally tried to put themselves between a family and homelessness no longer have the resources to respond in a meaningful way to that family that is otherwise scraping by,” Cooper said.

Marilee Roloff, executive director of Volunteers of America, agreed.

“Even though the economy has improved, we still see great need among the seniors on fixed incomes, the very poor with disabilities and the working poor,” she said. “It used to be if two people were working in a household they could make ends meet. That is getting more and more difficult.”

Social service agencies are struggling to respond to this new reality, Cooper said. The poverty line is based on spending in the 1950s, he said. “It is no longer an accurate reflection of what it costs to not rely on any government programs.”

Even with full-time minimum-wage jobs, families still have to go to food banks, their children still qualify for free or reduced-price lunches at school, and they still qualify for basic health care from the state and for the three-year waiting list for subsidized housing, Cooper said.

“The working poor live one paycheck away from homelessness,” said McFaul, of Catholic Charities, “and usually there is no money for things that food stamps don’t buy, no money for anything extra.”

Those extras often include toys for children at Christmas and goodies for the holiday dinner. This is where the Christmas Fund comes in. Donations to the fund will enable to bureau to provide Christmas for about 10,000 poor families.