Rise stresses assistance agencies

By Tim Krohn

MANKATO — A dramatic increase in the poverty rate is bringing an onslaught of new people seeking assistance.

“The number of people we’re seeing is increasing 15 or 20 percent in the nine counties,” said John Woodwick, executive director of Minnesota Valley Action Council. The agency expects to record more than 200,000 contacts at its nine county offices this year.

According to data released last week by the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 9,000 people in Blue Earth County were living in poverty in 2008 — an increase of nearly 30 percent from the previous year.

Nearly one in six county residents lived below the poverty line.

In the nine-county area, the number of people living in poverty grew by 14.5 percent last year — to more than 24,400.

With unemployment rising through 2009, those numbers are likely to increase.

The federal poverty threshhold for a family of four is just over $21,000 a year in income.

With a $19 million budget, MVAC provides a wide array of services, including fuel, job, transportation, food and job training assistance.

The biggest surge has been in the number of people seeking job retraining. In October of 2008, 1,214 people sought training from MVAC while the number more than doubled this October.

“People are looking for the training because of the lack of jobs,” Woodwick said.

MVAC is a partner with the Workforce Center, helping displaced workers.

“Clothing and financial management classes are another huge increase,” he said. “We offer classes in how to make your money stretch, and that’s shot up.”

And help with car repairs for low-income people is growing. “If you’re lucky enough to have a job and your car breaks down, you need to get it fixed quick,” Woodwick said.

MVAC gets more than 60 percent of its funding from the federal government, and some 15 percent from the state. The federal funding has been increasing some in recent years, most recently from stimulus spending, but state funding is dropping.

With the state facing a nearly $5 billion shortfall in the next biennium, Woodwick said nonprofits aren’t hopeful about future funding there. “What I keep hearing is there’s no money. No money,” he said.

“When more and more people are in need of assistance, the resources decline and there aren’t things to help them. That’s just out of sync.”

MVAC has filled some of the state funding drop with revenues from its six-year-old Thrift and More store in Mankato, which has about $365,000 in annual sales.

MVAC just opened a second store in New Ulm.

“More people are turning to thrift stores, so sales have been going up each year,” he said. “And the number of volunteers to work in the stores has been going up, too.”