Poverty rate growing in N.J.'s working-class towns, census data shows

Thursday, November 03, 2011
By Star-Ledger Staff

A man walks past the old Majestic Theater on Roosevelt Avenue in Carteret. The theater has been closed for years and there is no movie theater in the borough. According to census data, the poverty rate is growing in New Jersey's working-class communities.

CARTERET ? Danny Bryant has lived in solidly blue-collar Carteret for 46 of his 47 years.

During that time, just about everybody worked. Jobs weren?t glamorous, but they put food on the table. The houses were modest, tidy and well-kept.

Now Bryant, a former pool supply worker, survives on the $600 his girlfriend brings home every other week from her fast-food job and $200 a month in food stamps after being laid off last year.

And his section of Carteret is not the town it used to be.
There are a lot of Danny Bryants there now.

"If you live here and are poverty stricken, it's hard to get help," Bryant said. "There's a big line between being middle class and being poor. Everybody is struggling."

More than one in four of the residents in Bryant?s neighborhood in the Middlesex County borough now live below the poverty line.

A study released today by the Brookings Institution shows the poverty rate in New Jersey?s working-class communities like Carteret, Union Township and Garfield has grown substantially in the last decade.

The study paints a stark portrait of the nation?s haves and have-nots at a time when unemployment remains persistently high. In all, the numbers underscore the breadth and scope by which the downturn has reached further into mainstream America.

And while the poverty rate in the northern part of Carteret has grown substantially in the last decade, it is nowhere near the poorest parcel of land in the state. In parts of Newark and Paterson, for example, the poverty rate is more than 40 percent.
The ranks of America?s poor have climbed to 15 percent of the population, spread widely across metropolitan areas as the housing bust pushed many inner-city poor into suburbs and other outlying places and shriveled jobs and income.

"There now really is no unaffected group, except maybe the very top income earners," said Robert Moffitt, a professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. "Recessions are supposed to be temporary and when it?s over, everything returns to where it was before. But the worry now is that the downturn ? which will end eventually ? will have long-lasting effects on families who lose jobs, become worse off and can?t recover."

The Brookings study compared the number and percentage of people living in poverty ? or those making less than $22,314 a year as a family of four ? from the 2000 Census to five-year American Community Survey estimates from 2005 to 2009.

While the study found the number of people living in poverty declined in Newark and New York City in the last decade, the number of poor grew by nearly 180,000 in surrounding communities in northern New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania and parts of New York state.

"We lost ground against concentrated poverty in the 2000s," said Elizabeth Kneebone, a senior research associate and lead author of the report. "More people are living in areas that are extremely poor, and concentrated poverty now affects a greater swath of communities than in the past."

In parts of Paterson, Carteret and Garfield, the poverty rate rose by more than 10 percent in the last decade. And pockets of many other towns, like Union Township, Springfield and Woodbridge, saw increases of between 5 percent and 10 percent.

"When you?re looking at the impact of the recession, those with the highest education levels have been hurt the least," said James Hughes, the dean of Rutgers University?s Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. "The communities (where poverty is growing) are not the white collar communities. Within New Jersey, manufacturing and construction jobs have been particularly hard hit and those communities house a lot of former construction and manufacturing workers."

Officials in Woodbridge and Union questioned the Census data.
Port Reading was one of several sections of Woodbridge Township where the poverty rate grew by more than 5 percent over the decade. Mayor John McCormac said the area of Port Reading where Census data showed that poverty had increased by 8.4 percent over the decade bordered a part of Carteret that has been in decline.

"Port Reading is a great section of town. It?s a middle class, blue collar town just like the rest of the township," McCormac said. "The census tract data is complete nonsense."

Kathleen Shaw, Carteret?s director of economic development, also questioned the conclusions of the study, but conceded the fight against poverty is one being waged in her borough and statewide.

"It?s challenging," she said. "There?s less and less resources and more and more problems. I think we have a comprehensive (community development) program for the resources we have, but it?s just been hard all the way around."

To Kneebone, it?s indicative of poverty?s spread from the inner cities to the suburbs.

"These neighborhoods are on the economic margins, last in when times are good, and first out when things get bad. More and more communities are balanced on that knife?s edge," Kneebone said.

In northeastern Carteret, where Bryant lives, for sale signs adorn many of the lawns.

Maritza Menendez, a mother of three, said her husband, a printer, had to take a second job as a security guard to help keep the family?s finances afloat.

"We are definitely experiencing difficulties but I don?t think its due to Carteret, I think it?s due to the overall economy," she said. "I know a lot of people are losing their homes and having to do short sales. We are seeing signs going up everywhere."

By Stephen Stirling and Eric Sagara
Star-Ledger staff writer Eunice Lee and the Associated Press contributed to this report.