Report illuminates poverty in Lincoln

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By KENDRA WALTKE / Lincoln Journal Star

Poverty can hide in Lincoln.

It does not show itself in the form of extensive slums or hordes of homeless people begging on the street.

Here, it mostly hides inside chilly homes and in the form of late payments, and it’s masked by a variety of community solutions.

How poverty affects Lincoln,  and how each person could help,  isn’t an issue that begs for an answer here.

But Lincoln Action Program is looking for one anyway, and it is challenging the public to help.

On Thursday, LAP rolled out its part in a nationwide campaign titled “Rooting Out Poverty.”

With it, agency leaders hope to raise awareness of need in Lincoln, where they said more than 33,000 people live below the federal poverty line.

“Convincing this community that there is poverty in Lincoln is a tough job,” said Executive Director Sue Hinrichs.

Many Lincoln agencies work together to target poverty — The Center for People in Need, The Food Bank and LAP among them — but poverty remains pervasive.

“What we hope to do through ‘Rooting Out Poverty’ is identify the gaps in what isn’t being provided here,” said Rebecca Christensen, director of grants and communications for Lincoln Action Program.

“We would like people to tell us, ‘What kind of impact could you have? What can you do?’”

The campaign will involve “a lot of one-on-one, sit-down time with key people ... key community leaders and key funders,” she said.

“The short-term plan in the next two months is to make a lot of phone calls and visits.”

The “Rooting Out Poverty” report incorporated input from more than a thousand community action programs nationwide. It gives general strategies, to be modified at the local level, toward five main goals:

* Maximize participation to ensure those in need are informed and involved in available programs.

* Build an economy that works for everyone, ensuring that each community provides a wide range of jobs.

* Invest in the future, providing training to develop the knowledge and skills of workers and children.

* Maximize equality of opportunity, providing equal access to chances for personal and professional growth and advancement.

* Ensure healthy people and places, providing access to adequate health care and weatherizing homes to prevent high heating and cooling costs.

“This gives us a piece of material that we can take into the community and see what they can do,” Christensen said.

Although the campaign will focus on contact with civic leaders, community groups and businesses, individuals also will be challenged to get involved.

“This means involving everyone in the community, rich, poor and in between,”  Hinrichs said.

In Lincoln, 12.7 percent of residents live in poverty, according to the Community Services Initiative, which was developed by a collaboration of human services agencies,

That means 33,926 people live at or below the federal poverty line, which in 2007 was $10,210 for a one-person home, $20,650 for a household of four.

Fifty-three percent of those rely on food stamps, Christensen said.

Other studies have shown a person in Lincoln must earn at least $11.81 per hour to afford a modest two-bedroom rental — “much more than the minimum wage,” Christensen noted.

LAP offers 20 programs that target poverty and offers referrals to other agencies.

It provides career training, computer classes, GED and youth development courses, early childhood programs, refugee and immigrant services, utility assistance, neighborhood revitalitization and more.

It helps people like Nabil Shokai, a Sudanese refugee who came to Lincoln in 2005 and took career training at LAP. Today, he is an Americorps volunteer, getting work experience while helping other refugees with paperwork and resettlement.

“For 10 years I had no job, no work, when I was in the jungle  (as a refugee). This was a way for me to get back to work,” he said.

Shokai said he sees needy people who overcome one obstacle, such as transportation to a job, only to be set back by another, such as an inability to afford child care.

“When people start to help themselves, they get blocked by one thing and are back at the beginning. We have to find solutions to stop the cycle,” he said.

Hinrichs and Christensen hope the campaign will help produce some of those solutions.

“We’re putting out the call in 2008 to really take a realistic approach,” Hinrichs said. “A meaningful approach that comes up with solutions to solve the problem of poverty.”

Reach Kendra Waltke at 473-7303 or kwaltke@journalstar.com.