ISSAQUAH — Kim Nieves has modest goals for improving her new apartment in this suburb 20 miles east of Seattle. She dreams of sitting at a table to share a meal with her 13-year-old son, but extra money for furniture for her sparsely decorated home is something this single mother just doesn’t have.
Nieves, a freelance translator and student at Bellevue College, is a whiz at budgeting, her son brags. But Nieves says that every time she saves up a few dollars, she ends up spending it on an emergency such as car repairs.
“It’s extremely frustrating, but we do with what we have,” Nieves said.
Times have always been tough for single moms, but a new study from the University of Washington says times have never been tougher than now.
As wages have stagnated and unemployment doubled during the recession, the cost of housing, food, health care and other basic needs have continued to grow, putting an economic squeeze on families, said Diana Pearce, author of the report on the self-sufficiency standard for Washington, which was released earlier this week.
East King County, where Nieves lives to be close to college and job opportunities, has the highest self-sufficiency standard in the state, requiring $65,690 for a family with one parent, one preschooler and one school-age child, Pearce’s study found. That’s a 14 percent increase from two years ago.
But Western Washington is not the only part of the state seeing big jumps in the cost to meet the needs of a small family. The same size family living in southwest Washington’s Wahkiakum County, which has the lowest self-sufficiency standard in the state, saw its expenses increase by 13 percent during the past two years, to $32,997.
The report measures how much a family needs for housing, food, child care, health care, transportation, taxes and other basic necessities without public assistance or help from family and friends.
Nieves says she couldn’t meet her basic needs without extra help. She gets some of the family’s food from a food bank, and rents her apartment from the YWCA’s affordable housing program, which lets her pay about half the going rate for a small two-bedroom home. Extras such as a computer for homework and finding translator jobs come from friends and family.
Child support from Ruben’s dad is minimal and inconsistent, she said.
She emphasized that just getting by for her does not include some expenses many families who live in her new, economically diverse suburban development consider essential.
Pearce says the cost increases for basic needs are not due to inflation. Apartment and house rental prices have been rising as rental demand has gone up, she said.
“This isn’t about people making bad choices or not budgeting well,” Pearce said. As wages go down, and food, health care and housing costs go up, regular people are getting squeezed.
Pearce expressed concern that most of the government programs to help families survive – such as food stamps and basic health – are only available to the lowest income people. Middle class people hit by unemployment or unexpected expenses don’t have anywhere to turn, she said.
Kim Stohler, a PTA mom in Bellevue, said she’s seen the impact of the economy on the cost of family life during her volunteer work at her kids’ schools. For those who don’t qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, the cost of buying lunch at school has gone up at least a dollar over the past few years, Stohler said. Parents are also being asked to help cover a big increase in school supplies costs this year.
Pearce says the problem involves both wages and expenses. The program she directs – the Center for Women’s Welfare at the UW School of Social Work – has been calculating a self-sufficiency standard for each of Washington’s 39 counties every two years for the past 14.
Each county is given a figure equal to the amount of hourly wages a parent would need to earn for their family to be self-sufficient. The numbers range from more than $27 for a single parent of two kids in the Seattle area to nearly $18 for a single parent of two kids in Yakima. According to the self-sufficiency standard, only adults living alone can afford to get by on minimum wage, and only in some counties.
The extremes
Most expensive self-sufficiency standards for a Washington single-parent family with one preschooler and one school-age child per year:
East King County: $65,690
North King County: $61,774
South King County: $57,569
West Snohomish County: $57,390
Seattle: $56,904
Tacoma and other West Pierce County cities: $52,167
Pierce without Tacoma: $50,701
Bainbridge Island: $49,198
Clark County: $48,580
San Juan County: $48,096
Least expensive self-sufficiency standards for the same kind of family per year:
Wahkiakum County: $32,997
Okanogan County: $33,363
Garfield County: $33,456
Lincoln County: $33,466
Asotin County: $34,300
Pacific County: $34,066
Adams County: $34,073
Pend Oreille County: $34,481
Ferry County: $35,532
Chelan County: $36,473
The Associated Press
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