How has the economic downturn affected you and your community? Let us know.
-David Miller,
Producer/Director
Market to Market
How Has the Economic Downturn Affected You and Your Community?
- There are no trackbacks for this post yet.
Leave a Reply
sponsor:
Latest Blog Posts
Archives
Categories
sponsor:
I am from West Union, in NE Iowa. Our town of +2000 is a county seat. Without rail or interstate access, our main asset is our labor force. Dura & Lands End were great employers but have left from the economic downturn. Some manufacturing & supply business in the local & adjacent communinies have also, left or cut way back. For a small community the effect is widespread. 1st the job income is gone and the money turning over & over in the local businesses is dimminished. 2nd, the schools show less enrollment. Young families find it hard to choose West Union as there chance of opportunity without jobs to choose from. That also double stings by cutting state school assistance that is based on enrollment. 3rd, those without or under insured in health insurance will go up without the insurance benefit that was part of those lost jobs. 4th, as a bouble whammy, people are going outside our community to spend there money. Partly because of the big store draw & partly because chain stores can buy & sell for less. This brings up the 5th effect, Less sales tax revenue. Less $ spent in the county means less county and school money flow. And finally, but not the last effect, is property tax increases. I am a farmer, land owner and land renter. I purchase most of my imputs locally. My property tax, land rent, and imputs have all gone up from this "Economic Downturn". Our hospital and health care in the community are very good and an important piece of the community puzzle. The town and community development groups are trying to stimulate in various ways. There efforts are needed and also and important part of the puzzle. In the end, though, what we really need are jobs for our work force, which has the best work ethic in the nation.
Collin Jensen
I can certainly empathize with Mr. Jensen. Although I am not involved in farming and do not feel the effects of the economic downturn in the same ways that he does, the downturn has personally affected my life here in Clarinda, Iowa in the form of a lost job. When orders dropped-off at one of Soutwest Iowa’s largest employers in Shenandoah , Iowa, I and other members of my assembly team were laid-off; or in my case - permantly separated from the corporation. This is understandable, but nonetheless it adversely affected my family’s income, medical insurance coverage and sense of security. A curbside recyclying business that my wife and I were trying to start-up prior to my unemployment was unable to get the number of customers which would have allowed us to operate at even a small profit. This too was understandable that families in our area would try to cutback on expenses after seeing job losses in our communities. My family has made the same sort of cutbacks since I lost my job. I’ve done repairs on our home, rather than hire the work out. And we’ve cut back on services such as our telephone. We all have cell phones, so why not drop the home land line? We’ve saved doubly by dropping that service; we don’t get the numerous telephone solicitations for donations that we once did. Although the more than 50% drop in our family income has necessitated cutbacks in the services to which my family subscribes, my loss of a job with Eaton Corporation has not been an entirely negative experience. Eaton Corp is a great organization and I really enjoyed working with my coworkers. But, unemployment has enabled me to return to school as a fulltime student and pursue a dream of mine to become a nurse. And that’s a good thing. I’m hoping that my family and I can squeak by until I am once again able to earn an adequate income in my new profession. Until then, I continue to work part-time as a nurse’s aid in a local nursing home and strive to learn as much as I can in school. It’s an exciting time to be alive! John Smith
I live in Des Moines, Iowa on the East side in what is called the Capitol Heights area. It is a blue collar neighborhood that was already seeing changes before the recession. There was an influx of Hispanic families, a few blacks, and about half of the inhabitants were senior citizens. The recession stopped the changing of the faces. At least there are few new faces and many others who lived there for years have disappeared.
Several houses have been torn down by the city and remaining homes are decaying. There are fewer and fewer children, it seems, each year.
This recession has caused some major changes. Companies shrank or disappeared. These were mainly smaller manufacturing businesses employing less than 500. If they are still in business, they are less than half the size they were five years ago.
There are five or six or more empty houses on each block. Some have sat empty for more than a year. Some were bought by investors or foreclosed on by banks who renovated them. Some have become rental properties and others still sit empty. Half of the rentals that are inhabited are not inhabited by families, but by groups of people, mostly white males sharing expenses and working temporary jobs. There are many more temporary agencies around.
The houses were just redecorated; major repairs are not made. One house on my block has had a blue tarp for a roof for two years.
Middle aged women are disappearing. They are not old enough for Social Security, have no young children to qualify for state aid and cannot find a job. I think that is the biggest change I have noticed. No one knows what happened to them. They are just gone.
I must say also that I notice a lot more people with health problems, from people who must walk with a cane or crutches or that just have very bad teeth.
This recession seems to have split the country into two very separate groups. There is the middle class who do not seem to have been damaged much and there is the working class, the poor, and the minorities, who are continuing to fall deeper and deeper into poverty and desperation. The recovery also seems limited to only the middle class. That is probably because the programs to stimulate the economy seem to be designed only to help the middle class.
Last, but not least, meth is making a comeback. I have smelled it being produced in my neighborhood. I reported it. There was no response.
There is more religiosity appearing, from tent revivals to yard signs advertising spiritual help, savings, weddings, funerals. One house has strange symbols painted on their driveway.
There are some suicides. There are more murder/suicide pacts. There have been some spectacular cases where a desperate father killed his entire family, then himself.
People are sending their adult sons to the missions, not because they have a drinking or drug problem, but because the missions can help find the son a job. Lots of young adults are living at home and working part time jobs. They gave up on going to college.
There are a lot of houses with blue lines painted on the parking by the Water company. They have no running water. There have been a few cases where people were found dead because their furnaces were not working. There has been one fire that killed a small child because the family was using candles for light and there will be more this winter, I am sure.
The old fashioned con men have reappeared. I run into beggars at the grocery store. They pretend to be lost or stranded and ask for cash. They sometimes pretend to be developmentally disabled. When offered gas or a ride, they suddenly become “normal” and refuse it.
I met one man who wanted to trade his EBT food stamp card for gas. He was supposedly stranded. I offered him five gallons of gas and he said, “Naw, never mind.”
I am getting shortchanged at stores much more often. Everyone has to be very careful at the checkout.
Finally, at the checkout, most people are paying for their groceries with an EBT food stamp card or an EPPI unemployment card.
Me, too.