2020 Community Needs Assessment

Intro
Our Goals 2020-2021
- Examining the past directs our future
  This three-year examination of the underlying causes and conditions of poverty in our city identifies criticall human services needs and helps to map out a course for positive and sustainable changes.
- - Community Impact
    - United Way's goals for the community
    - COVID-19 stabilization and recovery
The Context
- Understanding the context - start with national perspective
  By analyzing national, state, and local data, we are better able to understand our own community’s unique combination of needs and resources. This provides a framework for identifying services and developing solutions to help address the unmet needs of our most vulnerable residents.
- - National level
    - Social mobility in the 50 largest cities - U.S.
  - State level
    - Poverty rate by age group - Ohio (1980-2018)
  - County level
    - Impact of minimum wage - Cuyahoga County
Dimensions of Poverty
- Myth of the undeserving poor
  Run this interactive exercise to better understand the underlying facts about the community members which have long been referred to as "Underserving"
Poverty by age groups
- - Children
    - Children and poverty
      41,526 families living in poverty - Cuyahoga County
      Single-parent households and poverty
      Families are forced to make tough choices every day
  - Working age adults
    - Working-age adults and poverty
    - A living wage
      Wage gaps mean tough choices
      Racial Disparities in Tough Choices
      Working at minimum wage cannot support a family of three
      Minimum wage - Interactive exercise - Ohio
      The workplace wage gap - Cuyahoga County
      How wage gaps affect Black households
    - Education attainment
      Higher educational attainment often means higher earnings potential
      Educational attainment's connection to labor force
      Educational attainment and racial disparities - Cuyahoga County
    - Access to quality housing
      Point-in-time homeless count - Cuyahoga County (2019)
      Homelessness and untreated behavioral health go together
    - Impact of mental health and substance abuse
      ACES' impact on adult life
      Deaths by despair
      Overdose deaths during the opioid epidemic
  - Seniors
    - Seniors and poverty
  - Comprehensive data shines a spotlight on the challenges that children, working-age adults, and senior citizens in our community face every day. The findings serve as the foundation of our community's work going forward.
Covid-19
- Situational Poverty - COVID19, a pandemic case study
  Situational poverty occurs when there is period in time when an individual falls below the poverty line because of a sudden event.
  
  Right now in Greater Cleveland, many people are falling into poverty due to effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Conclusion
- Poverty isn’t measured accurately
  One flaw of the official poverty measure is that it doesn’t account for government assistance programs that are not income but improve people’s economic situation.
- - - What do we mean?
    - Government programs and interventions improve the health, stability, and economy of our nation
    - Eliminating racial disparities would alleviate poverty
      - Parity in wages
      - Closing the racial wealth gap
    - Investing in populations living in poverty will improve life for us all
Print

Eliminating racial disparities would alleviate poverty

read previous data story

Helping individuals file taxes so they can receive the Earned Income Tax Credit

Cuyahoga County taxpayers received more than $308 million from EITC for tax year 2017. Nearly 1-in-5 Cuyahoga County tax returns claimed EITC, totaling more than 120,000 returns.