By By JONATHAN CLAYBORNE
Staff Writer
Sam Fulmer said he saw the needs of the poor grow during the Great Recession — and recently released numbers bear out his contention.
Fulmer is a volunteer with Christians in Action, a church-centered group that, in part, provides furniture to the needy.
The group, known as the CIA, relies on donations of furnishings, which it cleans and reconditions as needed before distributing the items to people who need them, said Fulmer.
“People were getting rid of their stuff at a pretty-average pace, if you will,” he said. “In the last year, people are holding; they’re not upgrading their furniture.”
With its storage facility bare, and demand on the rise, CIA launched an appeal for more donations of furniture.
Donors responded to the appeal with furniture, which was timely and essential, Fulmer said.
“We’re getting people right now that are sleeping on the floor, literally,” he said. “There’s just a tremendous need.”
The region’s struggle with poverty is reflected not only in the comments of aid workers like Fulmer, but in numbers recently released by the Budget &Tax Center, a project of the N.C. Justice Center.
The Justice Center is a Raleigh-based organization whose mission statement commits it to ending poverty in the state.
The center’s poverty/employment fact sheets help the media, government officials and public-policy advocates track issues surrounding poverty and income inequality, a news release indicates.
The numbers show clear signs of economic stress — signs that already have been illuminated in interviews with workers from local food banks, soup kitchens, other charities and job-counseling centers.
The data show that Beaufort County food-stamp participation grew from 6,497 people in September 2008 to 7,456 participants in September of this year, an increase of 959 people.
“I think our biggest increase consistently has been in our food and nutrition” program, or food stamps, said Sonya Toman, director of the Beaufort County Department of Social Services.
DSS began tracking new food-stamp applicants in April, Toman said. In that month, the agency dealt with 62 people who had never applied for food stamps before.
The number of first-time applicants reached 110 for the month of October.
“We’ve been doing some outreach, trying to get people because we suspect there are quite a few people who are eligible who are not applying,” Toman commented.
DSS is trying to process food-stamp applications in a more timely manner, even trying to bring in temporary workers to help handle the work load, said Toman.
In a telephone interview, Meg Gray Wiehe, a policy analyst with the Budget &Tax Center, said, “There’s not a single county (in the state) that has not had an increase in food stamps.”
Among all of the numbers, unemployment and food-stamp figures are the “better indicators of what’s going on on the ground,” she added.
“Clearly, there is a correlation between job losses and unemployment rates and poverty rates,” Wiehe noted.
Beaufort County’s unemployment rate rose from 7.8 percent in August 2008, early in the recession, to 11.3 percent in August 2009, the center’s documents say.
What the numbers don’t show is the work performed by groups like CIA, which partners with DSS and Eagle’s Wings.
CIA accepts referrals from DSS and from Eagle’s Wings, a Washington-based food pantry, according to Fulmer.
In addition to Washington residents, CIA serves people from Aurora, Belhaven, Plymouth, Williamston and elsewhere, he said.
“We have three or four things going on most of the year,” Fulmer related. “The furniture, of course, is all year-round.”
Asked how state and local governments can use the center’s information, Wiehe pointed out the fact that those government units are struggling financially.
Yet, being aware of the problems faced by the needy is a step in the right direction, she suggested, noting that aggressive attention to the increasing call for food stamps is one way to take action.
“People’s incomes have dropped enough that they have qualified for them, or people really have no other choice to be able to provide food for their family,” she said.