$55,500: That's the real poverty line for Long Islanders, Suffolk study says

About 20% of Long Island households are structurally poor, but many earn too much to be counted below the federal government's poverty line, according to a new report by the Suffolk County Legislature's Welfare to Work Commission.

That makes them ineligible for assistance such as food stamps and child care subsidies.

The federal poverty level in New York and most of the U.S. is $27,750 for a family of four, despite cost of living differences. Utilizing the federal metric, only 6% of Long Islanders are poor — about half the national average.

But the Commission’s 120-page report, "Still Struggling in Suburbia: The Unmet Challenges of Poverty in Suffolk County," found the true definition of poverty on Long Island — based on the actual cost of housing, food, transportation and basic necessities — should be $55,500 for a family of four. That formula, experts said, means that about one in five Nassau and Suffolk residents are poor.

"When you use the federal definition of poverty, our reputation for being one of the wealthiest regions in the country, which is true, looks pretty good," said Richard Koubek, chair of the commission and a member of the Huntington Township Housing Coalition during a news conference Wednesday in Hauppauge. "When you use the true definition, our poverty rate jumps to 20%. That's extraordinary."

Roughly 74,000 Suffolk households, the report found, earn between the federal poverty level and $55,000, leaving them ineligible for critical support services to help pay the bills.

"The disparity between the federal poverty level and the true poverty level is vast," said Christine Fellini, deputy commissioner of Suffolk's Department of Social Services. "… Suffolk County households continue to need support."

The commission, comprised largely of local advocates and nonprofit leaders, issued its first poverty report in 2012. A decade later, the group held 11 hours of public hearings, met with four focus groups and heard from 87 witnesses to determine the status of Long Island's poor.

The report found a mixed bag of results.

The good news: poverty has not increased in Suffolk over the past 10 years, with about 94,000 residents meeting the federal standard, the same as in 2011. 

The bad news: tens of thousands of Suffolk residents still cannot lead lives of self-sufficiency, experts said.

$100,000 to cover basic needs

The commission, using a pair of studies that computed Long Island's costs of necessities, found that a family of four needs an income of about $100,000 to pay for their basic needs. Nearly half of Long Island households earn under that amount.

With the extended effect of the COVID-19 pandemic and inflation exceeding 7% nationally, more and more Long Islanders are in need of help, experts said.

Paule Pachter, president and chief executive of Long Island Cares — The Harry Chapin Food Bank, said 228,000 Long Islanders, including 67,000 children, visited emergency food pantries and soup kitchens this year. Nearly three-fourths of those seeking help, Pachter said, are people of color and more than 25% are holding down two or more jobs.

"Our local member agencies — the 510 programs that Long Island Cares supports — are reporting a 35 to 50% increase in the number of people that are visiting their programs for emergency food," he said. "… Last month alone, we saw more than 11,000 people in our five satellite locations."

Structural causes of poverty

The report examined the structural causes of poverty on Long Island, including a lack of affordable housing, disparities in health care, chronically underfunded child care and an immigration system that forces tens of thousands of undocumented workers into an underground economy.

Laura Harding, president and chief executive of Erase Racism in Syosset, said exclusionary zoning policies and patterns of racial steering in the real estate industry, detailed in Newsday's 2019 "Long Island Divided" investigation, trapped generations of Black and Latino residents in poverty.

"We can trace a straight line from exclusionary zoning laws and other codified forms of racial discrimination that trap many children of color into lives of poverty, and [are] now negatively impacting all Long Islanders' access to fair, affordable and inclusive housing, equitable education and a family-sustaining career on Long Island," Harding said.

Rebecca Carbone of Shirley grew up poor in Brentwood, raised by a single mother constantly struggling to put food on the table.

"We moved countless times, around 13 from what we remember, always trying to maintain a sense of stability within the same school district," said Carbone, who now serves as Comprehensive Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention project director at the Economic Opportunity Council of Suffolk. "But it was hard on my mom. I would watch her run from work to school event to pantry to church and then repeat, never really being able to catch a break."

Census data shows that the largest concentrations of Suffolk residents living below the poverty line are in Brentwood, Huntington Station and Central Islip.

"Communities of color … are the places where we have the highest poverty rates," said Martine Hackett, chair of the Department of Population Health at Hofstra University. "That means in Suffolk County, people in poor communities of color have measurably more incidences of mental illness, asthma, premature deaths, COVID and other health conditions."

The report recommends Suffolk train school and library employees to help local residents apply for benefits such as food stamps; create a step-down program where the removal of benefits is gradual as a client's income increases and require county-contracted banks and insurance companies to support affordable housing construction.

By Robert Brodsky

robert.brodsky@newsday.com@BrodskyRobert

Robert Brodsky is a breaking news reporter who has worked at Newsday since 2011. He is a Queens College and American University alum.