From the Community Action Association of Pennsylvania (http://www.thecaap.org):
We have good news and bad news to share.
- The good news: Poverty in Pennsylvania is down. Household median income is up. More people have access to health care.
- The bad news: More than a million Pennsylvanians still face double jeopardy in today’s economy. They live below the poverty line, and they face high costs in areas such as rent, food, child care and predatory lending.
These are among the findings of a groundbreaking report, The High Cost of Being Poor in Pennsylvania, released by the Coalition on Human Needs and the Community Action Association of Pennsylvania.
We found many ways in which it is expensive to be poor if you are one of the 1.6 million adults and children in Pennsylvania who live at or below the poverty line. Consider:
Rents eat up huge proportions of income. The poor pay higher food prices because of lack of access to markets. They pay late fees for unpaid rent and face evictions. Poor housing conditions lead to health issues, which in turn lead to missed days of school or work. They often don’t get paid sick days or paid leave. And they sometimes are exploited by predatory lending practices such as pay day lending.
And yet: for every expense the poor encounter, policy solutions could exist to alleviate the plight of struggling Americans including:
- Increasing federal funding for housing and child care subsidies
- Expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit
- Increasing SNAP benefits and improving child nutrition programs while reauthorizing them
- A strong rule finalized from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop predatory lending
- Raising the federal minimum wage and helping workers get more paid hours through paid sick leave and more predictable hours.
So what can you do? First, get angry. And then, take action.
Read the complete report here, then share it widely. Additionally, check out our social media toolkit and infographics.
Tweeting the report to your Members of Congress is a quick and easy way to make sure they see that representatives in your state care and are paying attention! You can find twitter handles for your state representative here.
Here are a few sample tweets from our social media toolkit:
- Check out @CAAPNews report for solutions that (Insert member of Congress twitter handle) can use to further reduce poverty in PA #TalkPoverty #PovertyCosts http://bit.ly/2cHPxX0
- Tell (Insert member of Congress twitter handle), we must expand – not cut – programs that prevent and eliminate poverty #TalkPoverty #HumanNeeds http://bit.ly/2cHPxX0
- #Census2016 data shows it’s time to raise the wage & expand programs that work #PovertyCosts #TalkPoverty (Insert member of Congress twitter handle) http://bit.ly/2cHPxX0
- 19.4% of children in PA live in poverty. (Insert member of Congress twitter handle) – It’s time to #InvestinKids #TalkPoverty http://bit.ly/2cHPxX0
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