Last week, on November 16th, the South King County Human Services Council and the United Way coalesced over 70 community members that included electeds, fire chiefs, nonprofit agency executives, and other community leaders to begin a dialogue regarding human services, state budget cuts and its impact, and what can be done collectively for communities in need.
I spoke at the event on the impact of budget cuts on economic services for the most vulnerable. I concentrated on a theme that the WA State Budget and Policy Center has asked throughout their work of “is this the kind of state we want to live in?” The premise of that question is the impact of budgetary decisions on our communities, and how they are changing the quality of life in Washington State. I focused on that theme within the economic services provided by the state, and the numbers were difficult to digest for the audience.
Text from the speech:
Are we okay with an increasing child poverty rate? Right now, one in 12 children in our Head Start and other preschool programs is homeless. And our total child poverty rate is over 20%.
Are we okay with the majority of families on an economic fault line? 900,000 people in our state are in poverty, making less than $23k for a family of four – and unfortunately, 45% of those families are making less than $12k a year. Imagine if the poverty rate was not a figure created in 1963 primarily around food needs, and it was a true poverty threshold like the self-sufficiency standard that claims that a family of three needs $56k a year just to cover basic needs in King County. That number would be even scarier. Another unfortunate statistic shows that 21% of families in our state are in asset poverty and almost 20% remain unbanked. By asset poverty, I mean a family that has enough assets to stay afloat if they lose their income for three months.
Are we okay with inaccessible higher education opportunities with tuition rising at unprecented levels? Are we okay with reducing funding by 50% that helps equalize school funding across wealthier and poorer districts even when income inequality is at its largest gap ever?
Are we okay with rising food insecurities, and addressing it by eliminating the basic food state assistance plan for 13,000 individuals? Or eliminating health care for 35,000 more working people?
At a time of a 9% unemployment rate – even higher in communities of color, immigrant and refugee families, youth and our veterans – populations highly concentrated in our SKC community – we have allowed drastic cuts to work supports and employment services totaling $485 million in the last two biennium’s – and now more cuts have been proposed by our Governor to address the $2 billion shortfall.
That was some of the text from my speech (more scary text of that speech is available via email) — as you can tell, I basically required everyone to get a prescription for depression and anxiety after I was finished. But the meeting still ended up positive — there were great leaders in the room that were energized to make positive change, partner with non-traditional stakeholders, and continue the work already being done in the local community. This meeting was the first of two conversations focused on initiating cross-sector response for addressing Health & Human Services in South King County. Tentatively, the larger second event is planned for early 2012. As we hope you will on this blog, we also hope you will engage and take part in these future conversations and events.
You can find more about the South King County Human Services Council here: http://skchs.org