ALICE Program Highlights the Poor and “Working Poor” in Our County

By Claire Donovan

The LWV-LC would like to thank Liz Welch, Anne Rennie and Amy Johnston for the educational evening we spent together on Jan. 17 learning about poverty in our county. We learned that a quarter of our local residents have serious financial struggles and fall within federal poverty guidelines or are considered “working poor.”

The ALICE program highlighted the financial struggles that some of our local residents deal with daily. ALICE stands for Asset-Limited, Income-Constrained, Employed. 

We also learned about the United Way and the Human Services Collaborative Body.

The League  would encourage our membership to review the slides and program information from this presentation, and to check out the one-hour video recording of this program on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKZa4pNiFZ4. You will see Livingston County through a different lens.

Why Do So Many Households Struggle?

In 2019,  the Federal Poverty Level, where some level of government assistance is available, was $12,490 for a single adult and $25,750 for a family of four.

A Household Survival Budget is calculated to reflects the bare minimum cost to live and work in the modern economy and includes housing, child care, food, transportation, health care, technology (a smartphone plan), and taxes. It does not include savings for emergencies or future goals like college or retirement. 

The Household Survival Budget for Livingston County in 2019  was calculated to be $25,344 for a single adult and $59448  for a family of four.  

See the Data

Resource links:
Hunger Fact Sheet:
https://www.livgov.com/hscb/Documents/Fact%20Sheet%20Hunger.pdf

Homeless Continuum Fact Sheet:
https://www.livgov.com/hscb/Documents/Housing%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf

Financial Fact Sheet:
https://www.livgov.com/hscb/Documents/Fact%20Sheet.Financial%20Stability.pdf

Human Services Collaborative Body (HSCB) Annual Report:
https://www.livgov.com/hscb/Documents/2021%20HSCB%20Annual%20Report.pdf

HSCB Resource Box (right side):
https://www.livgov.com/hscb/

Emergency Shelter guide:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/12A-xHwZZtMIcMKgPUtJAfMocqrtsdrdI/view

Shelter Resources:
https://www.livgov.com/hscb/Documents/Shelter%20Resources%202022.pdf

 ALICE Research Center:
http://neuepro.com/county-profiles/michigan

Ann Arbor Spark Economic Benchmarking Report for LivCo:
https://a2spark.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/2022-LivCo-Benchmarking-Report-Final.pdf