Gettysburg’s Community Needs – and Its Fraying Social Services Net? Part 1

Under the auspices of DFA’s Government Accountability Task Force, we are starting a year-long study of the challenge of poverty in Gettysburg and surrounding Adams County. The working poor are sometimes hidden behind the bright lights of tourists, restaurants, re-enactors, bike weeks, and the other events and institutions associated with the tourist economy, but it is a serious problem.

As regular visitors for 25 years before moving here, we too thought primarily about the battlefield and the other trappings of the tourist experience: the hotels, restaurants, and shops. It’s hard even for a regular visitor to envision Gettysburg as a town where people live, go to work, and raise families. But it is, and many of those families struggle economically.

The story about the working poor and many of the elderly in Adams County is one of multiple minimum wage jobs, unaffordable housing, struggles to avoid homelessness, and constant worries about food and healthcare. It is also sometimes a story of invisibility in plain sight, being there but not being seen.

Characterization of Gettysburg and Adams County

In some ways, Gettysburg is like a beach town, with the “summer people,” seasonal businesses (and jobs), and high rents. It’s also a college town, with all that means: one limited source of relatively good-paying fulltime jobs, the effect on the rental market of student demand for housing, and cultural activities that wouldn’t normally be available in a town this size.

Outside Gettysburg, Adams County is also a major agricultural area, which adds a large immigrant population and a large number of seasonal, piece-work jobs to the economy. But, in some ways, it’s like any other small town, with limited social services, almost no public transportation, and thousands living in a cycle of poverty that is hard to break. 

Many similar sized towns don’t have an iconic historic shrine and tourist attraction, a college, and a sizable medical complex, and local residents get many benefits from having these institutions. But there are also drawbacks; for example, many Adams County boroughs and townships have high taxes because so much park, college, and Wellspan land is off the tax base, and very high rents because of a limited supply of affordable housing.

Job Market

The Adams County job market is so weak that 65% of the workforce leaves the county each day to work somewhere else. Those without a car or otherwise unable to travel face a local job market that is heavily oriented toward minimum wage, seasonal jobs. Almost 8% of Adams County households live in poverty, with half of them at 50% of the poverty level or less. There is almost no income assistance. For those who worry about spending too much money on “welfare,” a total of 319 people in Adams Co. -- yes, 0.3% of the population – receive an average of $403 a month for a family of three. 

Housing

Housing is another obstacle for the poor. Renters confront a tight housing market with low vacancy rates and almost no affordable housing. Nearly half of renters and 25% of mortgage holders pay more than 30% of their income for housing. There is almost no public housing assistance. Almost a quarter of Adams County’s 38,000 families are eligible for housing assistance, but only 818 housing vouchers are available. 

One result of the lack of affordable housing is that poverty is increasingly becoming a rural problem, leaving the impoverished isolated and out of sight.

Nutrition and Hunger

The “third horseman of the Apocalypse” is hunger. More than 40% of students in Adams Co. schools are eligible for Free or Reduced lunch and 7% of the population is eligible for SNAP (food stamps), which provides an average of $3.50 a day to recipients. But the problem goes much deeper than a lack of federal benefits. 

SCCAP calculates that the “bare minimum” (no vacations, no cell phone or cable, etc.) survival budget for a single parent family with a child and infant requires the income from 3.6 minimum wage jobs. The cost of living is high and a total of 27,000 people in Adams and Franklin counties are considered “food insecure.”  

The Safety Net

Adams County has a small safety net including limited county social services and private relief agencies: churches, the Rescue Mission, Survivor (for victims of domestic violence), and the ongoing project to construct Mercy House to deal with drug crises.

At the center is SCCAP, which has been a leading social service delivery agency since the Great Society. SCCAP provides a bewildering network of services: 664 homes weatherized last year; more than 11,000 nights of assistance at the homeless shelter (together with job assistance, rapid rehousing, and rental assistance to 87 families to prevent homelessness); 2300 different people served in food pantries (27,000 total visits); 155,000 pounds of food distributed through the Gleaning Program; 516 women (and their children) assisted through WIC; plus work and life skills programs, scholarships, and other projects. “Having so many services in one place makes it efficient,” said Shreve. “We work hard to coordinate services. We see people transition from homelessness to real jobs and even home ownership, but would like to see more. This is a problem of resources – federal, state, local, and community.” 

Existing funding is severely limited and unstable. This is the third straight year that Trump budget proposals would virtually eliminate all the federal programs that provide assistance to SCCAP, including weatherization, block grants, and housing. At the state level, funding cuts and regional reorganizations make funding sources very unstable. SCCAP is a vital program for working families in Adams County, but it is facing an uncertain future.

Addressing the Problem

Eliminating the structure and causes of poverty in Adams County is considerably easier said than done.  Megan Shreve, executive director of SCCAP, one of the leading agencies working to alleviate the effects of poverty, said, “The problem is breaking the cycle of poverty. People need jobs that pay a living wage, affordable housing, and adequate nutrition. People need life skills, they need to write their own story, and they need a support system that helps with the transition.”

Eliminating the structure and causes of poverty in Adams Country is considerably easier said than done. It involves livable wages, affordable housing, and nutrition. 

The Project

We are just starting on a review of the three key vulnerabilities (job market, affordable housing, and nutrition) in Adams County and the people and organizations that are trying to do something about these problems. We plan to get a baseline of poverty in Adams County (how many, where they live, how many are working poor, numbers receiving TANF, SNAP, social security or social security disability, Medicaid, and other assistance); talk to some people who are trying to pull themselves out of poverty and some people who are trying to help; and try to identify the issues and some possible solutions. We’ll make our results available to SCCAP and the community.

Leon Reed is a retired Congressional aide and defense consultant. Lois Lembo is a retired defense consultant and an author of books and articles on military history.