The United Way of the Bay Area (UWBA) is pleased to submit comments on the proposed creation of the Modern Poverty Measure to the Subcommittee on Income and Family Support. UWBA is dedicated to improving the lives of children, families and the community in the Bay Area including the counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, Solano, San Francisco, and San Mateo. We work with many business and community leaders, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies to address major Bay Area issues.

UWBA was one of the first funders in California to utilize the California Self Sufficiency Standard in grantmaking.  The Self-Sufficiency Standard is a measure of the basic cost of living calculated on a county by county basis (produced by the Insight Center for Community Economic Development and Wider Opportunities for Women). UWBA decided to use the standard because of the inadequacies of the Federal Poverty Line in measuring the economic needs of families throughout our high-cost Northern California Region.

UWBA strongly supports the creation of an alternative poverty line, such as the Modern Poverty Measure called for in Representative Jim McDermott’s draft proposal of The Measuring American Poverty Act. We would like to specifically encourage that the bill, when introduced, include the following:

·         Localization of Data below the State Level: Because the Federal Poverty Line is the same all over the country, it ignores the realities that different cities/states have different costs of living, and therefore different needs for low income families.  Under the current poverty line, the basic cost of living in San Francisco or Manhattan would be equal to the cost of living in Idaho or South Dakota.

·         Data on Demographic, Geographic and Other Sub Groups of Families:  In order to create public policy that accurately addresses the needs of low income people, this type of data is necessary.

·         Inclusion of Childcare as a Cost Measurement (Sec. 1150A Sub.B Sub.1): In our experience of using the California Self Sufficiency Standard, we have seen that child care is consistently one of the highest costs in family budgets.  However, the proposed Modern Poverty Measure appears to only include the costs of food, clothing and shelter.

·         Inclusion of Multiple Family Sizes: The implementation of the measure should ensure that  multiple family sizes are calculated, particularly single parent households. This is important in order to utilize this measure as a client eligibility criteria for social service programs.

The United Way of the Bay Area also recommends that the Subcommittee consider using the Family Self Sufficiency Standard and Elder Economic Security Index Standards (Produced by Wider Opportunities for Women) as models to include the cost for younger families as well as those over the age of 65 (see www.wowonline.org).

In September of 2004, United Way of the Bay Area published a report entitled The Bottom Line:  Setting the Real Standard for Bay Area Working Families.  In that report, we found that 1 in 4 Bay Area families have incomes too low  to make ends meet (http://www.uwba.org/helplink/reports/BottomLine.pdf).  We produced and released this report to show just how significant the issue of accurately measuring poverty is, and how severe the conditions are for low-wage working people in our region. UWBA appreciates the opportunity to offer our comments to the Subcommittee in regards to this issue, and we look forward to a continued dialogue on poverty in our communities. It is our hope that this bill will serve as a building block for future policy efforts to address the needs of working families throughout the country.