Poverty still a problem in state SERIES OF FORUMS TACKLING ISSUE. In Warren, there are nearly Sunday, October 28, 2007 • BY SARA K. SATULLO • The Express-Times There are 168 hours in a week. But it takes someone in a minimum wage job 153 hours to earn enough money to pay the average rent in northwest New Jersey. It can take someone earning $7.15 an hour up to 38.5 hours of work to pay for one week of childcare. "Just trying to pay the bills you run out of time to sleep or do anything else," said Terry Newhard, executive director of NORWESCAP, a nonprofit group that assists low-income residents in Warren, Hunterdon, Sussex, Somerset and Morris counties. The Northwest New Jersey Community Action Program will host summits on poverty in each county for those who help low-income residents. Organizers hope the meetings will produce new ideas to tackle poverty. "Poverty is not always visible. It can now hit any of us. There are no sure things anymore," said Bill Weightman director of the state Department of Labor's Workforce Investment Board/One-Stop Career Center. "We need to come up with good policy so it's more than just people with big hearts working alone." Warren County will host a meeting Nov. 9 at Centenary College. More than 3,000 invitations to the summits were mailed to members of community and faith-based groups, law enforcement officials, educators and human service, business and health care professionals. "This can't just be the nonprofit world coming together," Newhard said. "Until everybody is working together to solve this issue it won't go away." Newhard is confident that new paths already have been targeted during the first two summits. Attendees of the Sussex County summit are mounting an awareness campaign. A 2003 analysis of IRS figures found in the five counties that NORWESCAP serves there were 157,000 families who were eligible for the credit but did not apply. "If you take just the average (tax) return that is $217 million in the pockets of the poor folks in northwestern New Jersey," Newhard said. It takes an income of about $52,000 a year to make ends meet in Warren County without any public assistance. About 55 percent of the 30,000 people NORWESCAP helps in a year work. On average most earn $15,500 a year. NORWESCAP estimates in its 2006 community assessment there are 14,914 Warren County residents living in poverty. The agency takes the federal poverty standard and doubles it because the federal formula does not take into account region, housing, transportation or childcare costs, Newhard explained. "To determine real poverty in New Jersey they use the same formula as in Alabama," he said. "This does not take into account the high cost of living in the state." Reporter Sara K. Satullo can be reached at 908-475-2174 or by e-mail at ssatullo@express-times.com.