I grew up in Erie, PA.

I've described it here as a beach town in the middle of the snow belt.  That's pretty much what it is.  It snows a lot.  A lot a lot.  I think it's something like the twelfth or thirteenth snowiest place in the United States.  But, it has boating and beaches and local legend has it that Erie has the second best sunsets in the entire world.  It's a beautiful town, if you know where to look.  Please click on those last three links, especially if you are from Erie.

My work blocks me from goerie.com, where I used to keep up with the news.  Now I get it from Erie Blogs and a weekly email newsletter that I get sent to my work email because if work doesn't let me keep up with my hometown on company time, dammit, I'm going to find a way to keep up with my hometown on company time, dammit.

Usually they are feel good stories.  Recipes and puppies and first days of school and golden olden time remembery stuff.  Every once in awhile you'll hear of something closing down.  Forges and plants and factories mostly.  Stuff that you knew was going to go.  Places where our dads and grandads worked when we were little.  Restaurants where our moms used to take us or stores where we got squeaky saddle shoes.  Sad, but expected.  That kind of stuff happens in towns that are dying.  Towns that have been dying since before I was born.

I left Erie at 18.  Most educated people do.  Not because they are smarter, but because they need to pay off the student loans.  The ones who stay, the Doctors and Lawyers and Indian Chiefs are a lucky few.  You can have a good life there if you have a good job that makes good money.  There aren't many jobs up there for college graduates.  There aren't many jobs up there for anyone.  Tens of thousands of people have left since I have.  I only have three friends living there now.  One is leaving this summer, moving to the Sandusky area with her boys and her new husband.  It's a better life.
My brother is up there.  Definitely not by choice.  He hates it up there.  Hates his life because he is there.  He is up there to be near his daughter.  A daughter he would rather raise somewhere else.  My mom is there, but I wonder if she stays there long after she retires.  I'll still visit, I think, even if she goes.  But not as often.  Maybe rent a house on the beach once every few years and drive Jake around town and make him go all the places I used to go when I was little.  Once my grandma and aunts and uncles are gone I'll stop visiting.  I can't imagine what it will be like up there in twenty years.  Fifty.

A ghost town.
Something out of the wild west.

When I was little, my grandfather used to say that the phrase "Go west, young man" was penned for Erie.  He was so proud to have grown up there, behind the Hammermill plant.  Back when Erie was something else.  Shipbuilding and railroading and papermaking and forging and metalworking and boilermaking and and and it was all there when he was a kid.  Even when I was little, you could turn over just about anything plastic and it would be stamped with Erie Pa.  Most things metal.  Lots of steel would be mined in Pittsburgh and stamped out in Erie.  It was fun to think that everything was made where I was when I was a girl.  My world view didn't need to be very big. 
I remember once when my dog bit my friend's (the one who is moving to Sandusky) face apart here in Philadelphia, we took her down to the emergency room and her now-ex-husband owned the tool and die shop that made the needle that sewed her nose and eye and lip back together.  We all had a good laugh over that.  Ha ha.  The whole thing was so hilarious.  Not.

***

Today's newsletter was particularly disturbing.  Pat Howard did the piece, and here are some highlights from the article:

One in four city of Erie residents is poor, which adds up to the highest poverty rate of any major metropolitan area in Pennsylvania and one that sharply exceeds the national average.  It scares me to think that the rate of poverty is higher in Erie than it is here.  Of course, the living conditions are probably worse here because there are generations and generations of people used to living in poverty and the houses have been ramshackle for a half a century and there is a culture of violence that pervades through several census tracts and drugs are everywhere and I'm sure that the mental health and physical health levels are worse but gootgotdam.  The highest?  Pennsylvania has always been poorer than the national average.  We are a commonwealth of extremes.  Including extreme urban areas and extreme rural areas.   I don't know which is worse for poverty, I think they are equally bad in their own ways.  Erie is an extremely run down urban area with rural outskirts.  That's a bad combination any way you look at it.

Ever see, like, a thugged out black dude in one of those real expensive leather Nascar jackets and you don't know whether to cross the street in fear or laugh in his face?
That's kinda how Erie is.

17.5 percent of the population (is) receiving food stamps.

Erie County’s percentage of population receiving food stamps is third highest of Pennsylvania's 67 counties.  I'm guessing we're- gah- they're behind Allegheny and Philadelphia counties, but maybe not.  A lot of the farming counties are in trouble too.  And I'm not sure how this is calculated.  Here in Philadelphia, we do foodstamp counts by families.  So I'm not sure if this is 17.5% of the families in Erie, or of adults.  It changes the numbers a bit, even taking into account single parent households and blended homes.  Either way, it's staggering.

Homelessness in the city of Erie has more than doubled in the past 18 months.
Close your eyes and think of a homeless person.  And another word for homeless.
I worked with the homeless years ago.  It was my first job out of grad school.  I was hesitant, but I needed a job.  I thought I would be on the streets with crusty nasty stinky stabby crazy begging bums.
I thought I would be in shelters.  In health clinics.  I worried about lice.
I didn't realize what "homeless" actually meant.
Of course some of them stank to the high heavens.
And crazy?  Child!  You ain't never seen no crazy like I've seen crazy.
And the crust?  There was some.
Not much, but some.
I got ringworm once.
Most of the homeless people I've encountered were people like you and me, but people who didn't have any place to live.  People who's houses burned down.  People who lost their jobs.  Once your home forecloses, you are SOL.  When your sister lost her house first and she got to your mother's house first, there is no room for you and your kids at mom's house.  When your husband dies and he was the one with the job but there was not much life insurance?  The mortgage company doesn't care that you moved across the country because you needed a change of scenery and you don't have any familial support in town.  Or remember the girl who fell off the motorcycle? A friend of mine lived with us for awhile because her roommate died and she couldn't afford the rent by herself.  Another stayed at our house awhile because of a terrible situation at home.  And another because she was pregnant and didn't think that her boyfriend's shoulda-been-condemned house was healthy for her and needed to get some money together to get a place of her own.  Under Philadelphia standards, my friends were defined as homeless.  They had jobs and degrees and clothes and furniture and beds and family and friends and showered every day.  But they were, for all accounts and purposes, homeless.  And lots of my clients were just like them except they didn't have a place to crash.

When I hear that homelessness has doubled in Erie in the last year, who are those people?  Are they my old classmates?  People with whom I spent summers at the YWCA?  Women who were in my ballet classes?  Likely some of them are.  We are all in our thirties now.  How old do you think the average homeless person is?
When I go back, I see people I grew up with and I want to hold them ask them what happened during the last 20 years.  Where did their looks go?  Their teeth?  Their dignity?

Hard living happens up there in that corner of Pennsylvania.  Let me tell you.

Pat goes on to say;

So how do we fight poverty?

I'm told by many welfare officials that jobs, whether bringing back old ones or creating new ones, are a big part of the answer.

I'm also told by some economic experts that the poor need to be more proactive in seeking out work, any work, and not be content with staying home and drawing federal assistance, be it money, food stamps, or both.
Bring back old jobs?
Is GE going to come back?  International paper?  Are we ever going to need ships again?  Giant metal things now that we can do the job with tiny silicone things?  Plastics are on their way out in so many markets.  One robot does the job of fourteen men.  My dad works for Lord, Corp.  He and just about everyone else has been shipped out and down and around the world.  Out of Erie, where it started.  Those companies aren't coming back any sooner than people like me are coming back.
Create new ones.  Possibly.  Like what?  I'm guessing that the biotech market isn't looking to settle in Dreary Erie.  Pharmaceuticals are probably staying where they are, which is not in Erie.  Aerospace Science already moved out.  That whole fiberoptic thing never really panned out anywhere on the east coast.  I guess maybe a new "college" could go up there.  Another beauty school maybe?  Set up another tech school that trains for obsolete jobs and hire professors that can't get hired at "real" universities?  Maybe the mall can expand.  Millcreek Mall, home of tax free shopping, mecca to Canadians and moms from New  York and Ohio!  Another chain restaurant on Upper Peach that the college kids can work at and the locals can eat at?  A third Wal*mart?
There are industries that Erie could steal from another town (auto industry, anyone?), but then what of that other town?  That hardly seems like an answer.
Tourism might work.  It is a fun town to visit.
I don't know the answer.  I really don't.
I gave up hope decades ago, when I resolved to get the eff outta that place as soon as I graduated high school.

"The poor need to be more proactive about seeking out work".
Of course!
Yes!
Perfect!
And the companies need to be more proactive about hiring them.
Set up daycares in all places of business because a lot of poor parents have kids.  And a drop off/pick up service because some of those kids have to go to school and who's job is it to drop off and pick up?  Mommy's!!!  There is a reason that a lot of parents can only work from 9-3.  Because they take care of their children.  Their children are a priority.  Shoot them.
And why are so many parents single?  It's hard to be a single parent!  They should get married!  That will solve all the problems.  Two parent families!  No, sometimes they shouldn't.  Sometimes you get pregnant by the wrong man and he is better out than in the family's life.  This marriage initiative is cute, but it's unreal.  Sometimes a woman doesn't know (or care) who the father is.  Sometimes he is married to someone else.  Or in jail.  Or dead.  It's reality.
And we should overlook the way a person looks/smells/acts.  No teeth?  So what!  Bad hair?  Big deal.  Facial tattoos?  Dirty clothes?  Underarm odor? Mental health issues?  Physical disabilities? Speech impediment? Shouldn't matter.   They are poor/sick.  They can't help it.  Duh.

I've said it a million times here, I'll say it again.
I know about two thousand single mothers who have various mental health/physical health/family situation/education/transportation/housing barriers.  They are dying to work.  Will you hire them?  Most of them don't have a washer or dryer in their house.  Nor do they have a lot of clothing, but they will buy some once they save up some money and take care of more important things.  Most of them have children who have various mental health/physical health/family situation/education/transportation/housing barriers too.  And some of them have their parents living with them, who also have various mental health/physical health/family situation/education/transportation/housing barriers.  They are dying to work.  They are not content staying at home and drawing down funds.  Who are these "economic experts"?  Have they ever taken the time to sit down with someone on welfare and ask them how they feel about all this?  Spend a day with them?  With their children?  In their home?

This is so frustrating.  So sad.  So local.  So global.
What is the answer?

How do you feel about this stuff?  How is it hitting you?  Your town?