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She lost her factory job. Someone – in an apparently random act – set her van on fire. She got divorced.
Now, she’s homeless.
Jeanette Turnpaugh figures she’s about due for a break.
Statistics show Turnpaugh shouldn’t feel alone in her financial woes: A report this month found that 28 percent of Indiana’s working families are low-income, an increase of 2 percentage points from a comparable 2004 study.
Two percent might not seem like much, but it equates to 17,000 more families earning less than 200 percent of the poverty level, the report said – more than 1 in 4 families in the state.
In 2006, when the data for the report was compiled, the poverty level was $20,614 for a family of four. That means the threshold to be classified as low-income for a family of four was $41,228; today, it’d be $42,400.
Knowing her situation isn’t uncommon doesn’t make it any easier for Turnpaugh, 32, to accept, especially because she has been homeless before and always hoped it would be the last time.
“It’s kind of humiliating,” she said. “Embarrassing.”
The report, Working Poor Families Project, is part of a national initiative to examine the conditions of America’s working families. It was funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Joyce Foundation and the C.S. Mott Foundation.
The report makes suggestions for improving Indiana’s ranking of 25th in the nation for the percentage of low-income working families that represents a drop of five places in the national ranking since the 2004 report.
The most recent report was based on 2006 figures, during a period of economic expansion. That means it’s likely the number of working families considered low-income will continue to grow during the current economic downturn, the report’s authors said.
In Turnpaugh’s case, her divorce contributed to poor performance that led to her being fired from her factory job. She pulled herself together and thought the tide might be changing when she got a job at a liquor store a month and a half ago, after job-searching and temping since December.
But with five kids between the ages of 4 and 10, a minimum-wage job doesn’t make ends meet. Last month, someone set her van on fire, one of four apparently random vehicle arsons on Hazelwood Avenue, she said.
Her hair slicked back into a tight ponytail, face bare of makeup, Turnpaugh fiddles with the strap of her purse as she talks. Her eyes light up when she talks about her kids.
Churches, members of the Interfaith Hospitality Network, are providing her family with temporary shelter. The family has been hosted by three churches in the past couple of weeks, and she struggles to recall the name of the current one.
She’s grateful for the help, but the moves are hard on her kids.
“By the time they are about adjusted, we go to another one,” she said.
Jane Avery, executive director of the Community Harvest Food Bank, hears bad-luck stories like Turnpaugh’s on a daily basis.
“It’s a reflection of what I’ve been seeing,” Avery said.
It’s also a reflection of Indiana’s job market, according to the Working Poor Families Project. A quarter of Indiana’s jobs are in occupations that generate an income below the federal poverty level for a family of four, the group said.
Such low-paying jobs leave little wiggle room for people when it comes to paying for staples such as bread, eggs and milk – which cost 12 percent to 25 percent more than a year ago – and monthly bills such as car payments, mortgages and utilities, Avery said.
Anyone with $2,000 or more in a retirement or savings account doesn’t qualify for food stamps, so those people might dip into their savings or rack up debt to put food on the table, Avery said.
It’s especially worrisome for the aging baby-boomer population – people who are going to need those retirement savings in a few years and will have a difficult time climbing out of a financial hole.
“They’re going to have to keep going deeper in debt,” she said.
Avery believes one of the most frustrating things for the working poor is that they are trying to do everything right. Some even continue at their minimum-wage jobs when it’s costing them almost as much in gas money to get to and from work as they earn, just to show their kids the importance of holding down a job.
“They work, they pay taxes,” she said. “The thing, I think, that’s scary for a lot of people is that the higher-paying job they’ve lost is being replaced with a lower-paying job.”
The report by the Working Poor Families Project isn’t without its silver linings.
Investing in job-training programs, increasing the minimum wage above the federal standard and initiatives such as paid parent leave for family and medical needs resulted in some states reducing their number of low-income working families, the report said.
Bill Stanczykiewicz, president and CEO of the Indiana Youth Institute, hopes Hoosiers will take the report as a call to support educational programs and other youth initiatives such as tutoring and mentoring programs.
“This report is yet another reminder of the important message we need to get across to our children and youth, and that is, ‘education pays,’ ” he said.
Stanczykiewicz is fond of telling kids they’re getting paid to go to school – but that the payment won’t come through until kids reach adulthood and enter the workforce. Any sort of postsecondary education – a college degree, an apprenticeship program, vocational training – will likely increase the size of their paycheck, he said.
As Indiana’s traditional high-paying manufacturing and agricultural jobs dry up and are replaced by lower-paying jobs, Hoosiers are finding that a high school diploma just isn’t enough anymore, Stanczykiewicz said.
Timothy Holcomb, director of the Four County Area Vocational Cooperative, believes Hoosiers are starting to get the message. Adult-education programs at the center, which serves DeKalb, LaGrange, Noble and Steuben counties, have grown tenfold in the past 11 years. Holcomb credits the increasing value of a well-educated workforce, both for employees and employers.
Holcomb would welcome more money for adult education, a recommendation of the Working Poor Families Project. The center’s state funding has remained level during that time, causing the cooperative to rely on private and foundation dollars, he said.
If there’s good news, Community Harvest Food Bank’s Avery says, it’s that Hoosiers don’t yet seem jaded about helping those in need. What’s more, most of the working poor she has seen are confident they can claw their way back above poverty level.
“They have a can-do spirit that is so admirable,” she said. “There’s still an optimistic attitude that accompanies so many of these statistics.”
Turnpaugh is one, because, she said, what does she have except hope?
A high school graduate, she wants to go to college for nursing, and she keeps a picture in her mind of where she sees herself a year from now.
“In my own place, hopefully in college,” she said. “Able to breathe again.”
aturner@jg.net
