Britain seeing increase in working poor

HULL, Britain - To her colleagues at the day-care center, Charlotte Burton is an independent woman who works full time and manages just fine. They admire her for biking to work at this time of year, when chilly winds blow and the river Hull swells with rainwater, intermittently swallowing parts of the northeastern city.

Only her mother knows that Burton, 34, and single, bikes because she cannot afford the $4.75 bus fare, that she huddles under a blanket at night to save on heating bills and that she recently started relying on a food bank because by the end of the month she was eating only one meal a day - pasta mostly, or bread, whatever best filled her up.

“I was hungry,” she said in her kitchen one recent morning, fiddling with a piece of paper containing her monthly budget: Rent, gas, electricity, taxes, down payments for the television and the debt she owes her landlord. That leaves about $100 a month for food.

The working poor, long a part of the social landscape inthe United States, are becoming more common across the Atlantic. As their numbers grow, so does hunger - a feeling Burton describes as a nagging sensation, not pain as such, more an obsession that consumes all your thoughts and energy. It is no longer confined to the homeless or those struggling to make ends meet on state benefits in the world’s sixth-richest economy, according to charities, economists and even some members of Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative Party.

In Britain, five years of economic weakness, austerity and rising prices have left a mark. Average hourly earnings have risen a mere 7 percent while the cost of living has gone up almost 20 percent, leaving at least 500,000 people reliant on food aid, three times more than a year ago, according to the TrussellTrust, a Christian charity that runs a network of more than 400 food banks. The trust says the number of people it fed in the eight months since April has risen twentyfold since the onset of the financial crisis in 2008.

Food banks distribute food for free or at heavy discounts to people generally referred to them by government agencies. They have sprung up in unlikely places, from southern commuter towns to Westminster, a stone’s throw from Buckingham Palace. Steve Baker, a Conservative lawmaker, said one in five children in his southern constituency of Wycombe goes to bed hungry, calling the figure a “scandalous indictment of the safety net that is the welfare state.”

The need seems most acute in the struggling, postindustrial north.

Hull once had a thriving fishing industry and bustling harbor. Successive waves of New York-bound Eastern European emigrants stopped through on their way to Liverpool, and some stayed. Today, in per capita terms, it has the greatest number of jobless benefit claimants in the country. More than onein three children there live under the poverty line.

Burton’s food bank is supplied by a charity that until four years ago sent food only to developing countries like Sierra Leone. Today, 80 percent of its work is in Britain.

“I never thought I would be doing this in my own country, in my own town,” said Colin Raine, who is one of the founders of the charity, Real Aid, which got its start in 2001.

Real Aid delivers to half a dozen community centers in Hull but also runs its own food bank in nearby Bridlington. There are some regulars, while others may have fallen victim to exceptional circumstances like illness or an unexpected bill.

Jennifer Scales, 66, has been going every week since June. She picks up food for her daughter Lindsey, a single mother who works as an administrator in a local government office. She recently had her first pay raise in five years, but she still does not make enough to get through the month, Scales said.

“We always thought if you work hard, things will get better,” she said. “It no longer feels that way.”

Front Section, Pages 4 on 01/03/2014

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