Services to help poor in Oklahoma in demand as number living in poverty remains high

Source: Tulsa World, Okla.儲存Sept. 20--Waiting in the lobby of a food pantry west of downtown Tulsa, Patricia Bradford said the canned food and chicken thighs she's picking up will help her family make it through another difficult month.Bradford, 62, said just knowing she can come to the Neighbors Along the Line pantry a few miles from her home is a relief from her worries.Bradford's daughter and her daughter's fiance lost their jobs about eight months ago and had to move back home with their two children."Jobs are getting harder to find. You have your children come back to live with you. My husband over there is a disabled vet," Bradford said, waving at her husband, Bennie Joe Bradford, across the room. "It really puts a lot of stress on you. This place -- we come here, and we know we are going to get help."The number of families such as Bradford's living in poverty in the Tulsa area increased from 2011 to 2012, according to Census Bureau data released Thursday.The poverty threshold in 2012 for a family of four with two children younger than 18 is $23,283 in annual income, according to the Census Bureau. The poverty level for an individual adult younger than 65 is just below $12,000 per year.In the city of Tulsa, the poverty rate among families increased from 15.4 percent of families to 17.5 percent from 2011 to 2012, a Tulsa World analysis shows. The poverty rate among families in all of Tulsa County followed the same trend, increasing from 11.3 percent to 13 percent during the same period.Meanwhile, the number of individuals in poverty statewide remained stable, according to the Census Bureau data.An estimated 637,429 Oklahomans, 17.2 percent of the state population, had incomes below the poverty level in 2012.The state poverty rate among families increased from 12.8 percent to 13.1 percent, but the change is not considered statistically different due to sampling error.The data show wide variations among different demographic groups, with blacks and Hispanics twice as likely as whites to live below the poverty level. In Tulsa, that disparity was wider, with one in three black Tulsans living in poverty.Bradford said she and her husband are "right on the borderline" of the poverty level, living on his veterans benefits. During months when utility bills are high, the family couldn't get by without the food provided by the Neighbors Along the Line pantry at 5000 Charles Page Blvd., she said."We've just come to an understanding that the rent and utilities have to come first because we don't want to be on the street," she said.Shannon Chambers, assistant director of Neighbors Along the Line, said he's not surprised by Census Bureau data showing that the poverty rate has increased among Tulsa families. He's seen a steady increase in the number of people coming to the nonprofit agency's monthly food pantry, medical clinic and other services offered to low-income people in the area.The number of meals provided and people served by Neighbors Along the Line increased about 60 percent between 2008 and 2012, he said. During that time, the organization went from spending $5,000 per year on food to a budgeted $20,000 this year."We did deci迷你倉e since we had a slight budget excess last year to offer milk, bread and eggs, at least through the end of this year," said Mindy Tiner, executive director.Chambers said many of the families who turn to food pantries and other social services are in transition due to a job loss or other challenges."A lot of them are working. A lot of them want to find work but they can't. ... These are people who have aspirations. They've just fallen on a hard time," he said.Nicole Birdsell, 33, waited for her turn to select from the food pantry's list of canned vegetables, beans, fruit and other staples on Thursday night.Three months ago, the apartment where she lived with her husband and four children caught fire, and they lost most of their belongings. The family had to move to a west Tulsa motel, which costs nearly $900 a month.The family lives on her husband's salary as a fast food worker, and there's little left over at the end of the month, she said.Birdsell is optimistic about the future, though. Her husband will soon start working at a higher-paying job, and with her children back in school, she is looking for work, too.She shakes her head when she recalls the social worker who once advised her that if she didn't work, she could qualify for more public assistance.For now, the family receives about $575 per month in food stamps and food from the pantry. But that's not how Birdsell wants to live."We don't want to depend on it," she said. "I thought the goal was to get everybody off of that."Census Bureau poverty numbersThe U.S. Census Bureau released national statistics Thursday that include demographic breakdowns of income in 2012. Here are selected numbers from the release:-- Oklahoma blacks and Hispanics were twice as likely as whites to live below the poverty level. The poverty level was 14.6 percent among whites, 29.8 percent among blacks and 28.8 percent among Hispanics.-- The poverty rate for American Indians in Oklahoma was 22.8 percent.-- Similar poverty disparities among races could be found in the city of Tulsa, only at higher levels.One in three, or 33.9 percent, of the black population in Tulsa was living below the poverty level.About the same percent of Tulsa Hispanics, 32.8 percent, were living below the poverty threshold in Tulsa, whereas an estimated 15.7 percent of the white population lived below the poverty level.One in four American Indians in Tulsa lived below the poverty level in 2012.-- When examined by marital status, married couple families in the state were among the least likely to be living below the poverty threshold, at 6.7 percent.Meanwhile, an estimated 45 percent of Oklahoma single mothers with children younger than 18 lived below the poverty level.Hispanic single-parent female householder families had one of the highest poverty rates, with 56.6 percent statewide below the poverty level and 63.6 percent in Tulsa below the poverty level.Ziva Branstetter 918-581-8306 Curtis Killman 918-581-8471ziva.branstetter@tulsaworld.com curtis.killman@tulsaworld.comCopyright: ___ (c)2013 Tulsa World (Tulsa, Okla.) 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