Beneath a picturesque image of white walls and decorative lampposts hide four lives coping with extreme poverty.
Amanda Rutter, 27, and her family have lived for five years within an often-forgotten world in The Plains. Their modest home is situated in a low-income housing complex with an attractive name — Evergreen Estates.
But according to Rutter, it isn’t attractive at all.
“I’ve had my son go outside to play and found heroin needles before,” she said. “But we can’t afford to live anywhere else.”
The family pays $95 rent each month, but that amount will soon jump to more than $300 a month when Rutter’s husband of less than a year and their 1-year-old son are added to the lease.
Rutter and her family are four of the 15,000 Athens County residents who receive some form of assistance from Athens County Job and Family Services. They are also members of the 32 percent of Athens County residents who live in poverty.
They make between $15,000 and $20,000 a year, including welfare and food stamps, Rutter said, and it is a struggle to get by.
“You have to ask your family for help,” she said. “You have to go ask for donations when you normally wouldn’t. We live paycheck to paycheck.”
Rutter also has a 5-year-old son diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. When her 1-year-old son was born, Rutter quit the two minimum-wage jobs she was working to care for her family. Her husband works about 40 hours per week at a supermarket in Logan, making $8 per hour.
“We probably spend more on gas (getting him there) than he makes,” Rutter said with a laugh.
When she quit her jobs, Rutter filed for disability for her son. Social Security granted her claim, but the welfare office cut her monthly food stamps from $500 a month to $100 a month, she said.
She also stopped receiving welfare payments because she received the maximum amount available during the past five years.
“I can’t wait to get back to work,” Rutter said. “I hate sitting at home doing nothing. But if I go back to work, I know they’ll take away (my son’s) disability and all our food stamps.
“Poverty is not a good life,” she added.
In Athens County, some try to combat this.
“In the last three years, we’ve lost more than $4 million in funding through state and federal budget cuts,” said Nick Claussen, community relations coordinator for Athens County Job and Family Services. “At the same time, we are seeing our case loads continue to increase.”
Claussen said Job and Family Services tries to help as many people as possible, but, because of budget cuts, the welfare office has lost almost 40 percent of its employees since 2009.
Jobs and Family Services gives food stamps to an average of 11,114 Athens County residents each month, Claussen said.
“The funding is still there for food assistance, cash assistance, Medicaid and other programs — which is good,” Claussen said. “(But) we didn’t provide enough food or cash assistance before the cuts, and we are advocating for increasing the amount of assistance we can provide to local families. Just to be clear, though, the funding is there to fill the claims.”
For Rutter, however, welfare, social security or any other form of government assistance cannot help her improve the lives of her children, which is most important to her.
“I go without before my kids do,” she said. “These kids ain’t going to have a chance in hell for nothing. I mean, I can’t give them anything.”
dd195710@ohiou.edu
