Poverty is a pervasive problem that affects people in nearly every neighborhood of the Twin Cities. In fact, United Way has identified the growing poverty gap as our community's most critical issue, affecting our quality of life today and in the future. That's why we're uniting our community to create pathways out of poverty.

When families move up and out of poverty, the benefits ripple across the entire community. Solving poverty can't be done by one person or organization, but working together, we can make our community better for everyone.

poverty is in our backyard

• Some 580,000 people in the metro area are living in or at the edge of poverty—an annual income of $44,100 or below for a family of four. Some 32 percent are children.
• Nearly 350,000 households in the nine-county region use a food shelf.
• United Way 2-1-1—our community resource and referral line—made over 400,000 referrals to people in need last year. Nearly one-half of all calls were for basic needs.

Our research and planning department put together the map below to illustrate poverty in our community. As you can see, poverty is not just concentrated in urban areas, but spreads out into rural areas as well.

What is 200% of poverty?  It's the measure used by many (including government and sliding-scale programs) as a more accurate reflection of how much money it takes to meet basic needs. The figure is used because federal poverty guidelines have not been updated to reflect current consumption patterns, including increased costs for housing, healthcare, childcare and transportation.

For a more in-depth definition of poverty, read this post from our blog.

poverty defined

United Way is focused on helping the 1 in 5 families in our community who are living in, or at the edge of, poverty.

That means, for example, a family with two working adults and two children who earn less than $44,100 anually. How far does $44,100 a year go? Not far, according to this:

For families living in poverty, it's a matter of choices: dinner that evening could mean no electricity the next day; warm weather clothes may trump an insurance premium.

*SOURCE: The Cost of Living in Minnesota Wage & Budget Calculator (2008 data).  Jobs Now Coalition. 

an agenda against poverty

United Way is working to attacks poverty's underlying causes through 10 community goals to create long-term pathways out of poverty.  This Agenda for Lasting Change works to:

Stabilize people in crisis by providing food, shelter and other essential services.
Since December 2008, United Way and its partners have made $1.2 million in emergency grants to help local food shelves, food banks and on-site meal programs meet increased needs.

Strengthen families for future success by focusing on income, education and health.
Claim It! A Community-wide Partnership helps families improve their financial stability by claiming the tax credits they have earned. Claim It! brought an additional $28 million into our local economy last year.

Streamline systems and solutions to find new ways of doing things.
United Way convened the Twin Cities Hunger Initiative—a collaboration of local hunger relief agencies—to find a way to end hunger in the Greater Twin Cities by 2013. As a result, food banks have increased distribution by up to 25 percent over last year, and 25 local food shelves have increased their capacity and distribution of nutritious food.

Our work is focused in three areas to achieve this:

• Basic Needs
• Education
• Health

Resources

• Our Community Information page has links to our quarterly Economic Pulse (created in partnership with Wilder Research), monthly State of the Economy reports and other current information about community conditions.
• Subscribe to our blog at www.liveunitedblog.org to read thoughtful posts about poverty and our community by Dr. Liz Peterson, director of research and planning at United Way.
• For more news about the community, follow us on Twitter: @UnitedWayTC.