Mon, Nov 23 2009
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Foreclosed! County’s low-end housing suffers in subprime mess By CARL E. FEATHER - Lifestyle Editor - cfeather@starbeacon.comStar Beacon However, many of the Catholic Charities and Samaritan House clients don’t begin to earn that kind of money. Earn is the keyword here — Zalewski says we’re not talking about unemployed, drifting people, but working poor. Fifty-four percent of the clients who received housing assistance from the agency in 2006 were below the federal poverty level; for First Step and emergency assistance, the percentages were even higher: 87 percent. These are people who are making less than $10,000 annually, or about $192 a week.
“It all goes back to what they make,” she says. “If it takes $12 a hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment and you are making minimum wage, how does that work?” Sargent says people often show up at Samaritan House following the loss of a job. In 2007, the shelter served 202 persons, up from 168 the previous year and the highest number in the past decade. “It’s almost always economic,” Sargent says. “People don’t have sufficient income; they are under-employed. The amount of money coming in is insufficient to take care of rent or the mortgage payment, utilities, gasoline and everything else that needs to be paid.” As of early January, Samaritan House was filled to capacity (14 persons) and was referring applicants to other community resources. Among the residents was a family of five — father, mother and three elementary-aged children — who were evicted from their housing following a job loss. Sargent worked with the family to help the father find employment in Geneva. But with that job paying only $10 an hour, getting the family into a house or apartment was going to require concessions from a landlord. “There are not a lot of jobs available out there, and the ones that are out there often do not pay the amount of money it takes to care of a family,” Sargent says. “Ten dollars an hour; that is very difficult to take care of a family of five with. It’s very hard, but these are the types of situations we see all the time.” Sargent says his 17 years with the shelter have shown him that homelessness defies stereotyping. “The average homeless person looks like you and I. That’s the one constant I have seen since I’ve been here.” The other constant is that any person can become homeless. “The longer I stay here, the more I realize it could happen to me,” he says. 
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