What you get when you "Youtube" Danville, IL

"A Glaring Disress Signal for the Danville-area economy."

Poverty on the rise

Institute says Danville area economy in ‘distress’

BY BARBARA GREENBERG

DANVILLE — Vermilion County’s ranking plummeted on a statewide poverty report released today by the Heartland Alliance’s Mid-America Institute on Poverty.

The county fell from watch status in 2007 to warning status for 2008 due to a variety of factors. Officials with Heartland Alliance, a service-based human rights organization, called the county’s new, lower status “a glaring distress signal for the Danville-area economy.”

Iroquois County also appeared on the warning list, while Champaign and Edgar counties were placed on the watch list for the current year. A total of 66 of the state’s 102 counties in the state appear on one of the two lists.The counties were evaluated based on both their poverty rates and indicators that Heartland Alliance termed “well-being factors.” These factors included unemployment rates, teen birth rates and high school graduation rates.

In each of these factors, Vermilion County’s performance reflected what poverty does to individuals, especially the most vulnerable: children.

Twenty-seven percent of Vermilion County residents lived in poverty during 2005, according to the report. Only six other counties in the state had higher poverty rates.

The report looked at more than poverty and income when it determined which category to place Illinois counties. It also viewed housing, health and education.

For all of these, Heartland Alliance compiled statistics from authoritative sources, such as the Illinois State Board of Education.

ISBE reported the 2006-07 high school graduation rate for all Illinois students as 85.9 percent. Vermilion County’s high school graduation rate was at 79.2 percent, the lowest rate in the state for any county but Cook.

The number of low-income students who graduated from county schools in 2006-07 was even lower. Although it rose 10.9 percent from 2005-2006, it remained one of the lowest in the state at 69.7 percent.

When people attempt to move out of poverty, current economic conditions make it difficult. The high debt that many people carry can be one of the main obstacles.

Attempting to pay off that debt all-too-often leads to another trap — using payday lenders, like those that have begun to proliferate in Danville.

Amy Rynell, director of Heartland Alliance, described payday lenders’ customers as “People who’ve fallen behind on their bills and don’t have credit or have poor credit. They might not have a credit card or a bank account.

“They want a short-term loan, but all they can get is one from this kind of (payday) lender,” she said. “They may charge 700 percent annually for a four-month loan.”

A payday loan act recently passed to protect consumers doesn’t cover these four month loans, ac-cording to Rynell. Heartland Alliance, along with other organizations concerned about poverty in the state, wants to improve that act.

Heartland Alliance Research Associate Amy Terpstra said that one payday lending license exists in Illinois for every 160 poor families. In contrast, there is only one McDonald’s for every 442 poor Illinois families.

She termed payday lenders as predatory businesses that follow poverty. According to Terpstra, there are 18 payday loan stores in Danville.

“While there’s growth in the number of families struggling with debt and without assets or a safety net,” Terpstra said, “(these companies) continue to erode a family’s ability to pay off debt.”

The 2008 Report on Illinois Poverty contains recommendations to alleviate the poverty crisis. Those recommendations and the reactions of Vermilion County leaders to the situation will follow in future stories.