Posted on 09/27/2011 3:02:59 PM PDT by Cardhu
READING, Pa. — The exhausted mothers who come to the Second Street Learning Center here — a day care provider for mostly low-income families — speak of low wages, hard jobs and an economy gone bad.
Ashley Kelleher supports her family on the $900 a month she earns as a waitress at an International House of Pancakes. Louri Williams packs cakes and pies all night for $8 an hour, takes morning classes, and picks up her children in the afternoon. Teresa Santiago takes complaints from building supply customers for $10 an hour, not enough to cover her $1,900 in monthly bills.
These are common stories in Reading, a struggling city of 88,000 that has earned the unwelcome distinction of having the largest share of its residents living in poverty, barely edging out Flint, Mich., according to new Census Bureau data. The count includes only cities with populations of 65,000 or more, and has a margin of error that makes it difficult to declare a winner — or, perhaps more to the point, a loser.
Reading began the last decade at No. 32. But it broke into the top 10 in 2007, joining other places known for their high rates of poverty like Flint, Camden, N.J., and Brownsville, Tex., according to an analysis of the data for The New York Times by Andrew A. Beveridge, a demographer at Queens College.
Now it is No. 1, a ranking that the mothers at the day care center here say does not surprise them, given their first-hand knowledge of poverty-line wages, which for a parent and two children is now $18,530.
The city had been limping for most of the past decade, since the plants that sustained it — including Lucent Technologies and the Dana Corporation, a car parts manufacturer — withered.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Uhhh...
Did you miss the “plants closed” part?
The unions drove the decent-paying jobs out of the area so all that’s left are the low paying ones.
Reading PA. Just another sad story out of the Rust Belt.
My hometown is 25 miles south of Youngstown OH which was the big city to us, much nicer than Pittsburgh. The steel mills were booming and the men in our family were welders, machinists or steelworkers. Solid working class folks with money in the bank. Churchgoers, lodge members, fishermen & hunters, parents, all solid and respectable.
That’s all gone now, and so is once-booming Youngstown. But you can’t go home again. That’s why I live in South Carolina. Made a daily wage until I retired.
“Why should I travel? I’m already here.”
“a parent and two children”....You made your bed, honey.
That explains all the bad motel reviews I was reading on line yesterday. I was looking to reserve a room in the Reading, PA area for a trip in November and have never come across such awful customer reviews. I ended up making a reservation in West Chester, PA.
What the hell are you talking about.
“What the hell are you talking about.”
Back at ya - What the hell are you talking about.
Still waiting.
What the hell are you talking about.
Well said sir.
I got out of Cleveland shortly after Mayor Kucinich took her into bankruptcy.
I’ve visited some of those areas in eastern Pa. A lot of the buildings look like they hasn’t changed since the 1930s.
There’s nothing in my FR history showing that I posted anything to you. I also checked my Safari history, and there’s not a thing showing a reply to you. So I’m puzzled by your post.
I’m thinking there might be a hacker who got into FR.
What did I alledgedly say to you? Give me an exact time, please. I can do some back-tracking.
You have mail.
teresa has 4 kids(4 baby daddys btw),she doesn’t count the two older ones since she cant make money off them now.most of the $1900 is for “gettin’ my hair did,nails,da club,etc
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