XENIA - Beth Rubin knows all too well the realities of the economic decline reflected in new data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
The director of Greene County Job & Family Services has seen an alarming surge in people needing help across her county- especially in Xenia.
In the last two years Rubin has seen the county's cash assistance program, which had been shrinking steadily since the Clinton administration's 1996 welfare reform, grow by 31 percent.
During the same period, the county's food assistance program, which used to be called food stamps, has grown by 34 percent, and Medicaid rolls have increased by 13 percent.
"We are seeing people coming in for assistance who have never needed assistance before," Rubin said. "This is their first time walking in these doors."
New data from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey show that Xenia had the region's largest increase in the poverty rate this decade. The city also had one of the largest drops in median household income, a Dayton Daily News analysis of the data has found.
And that squares exactly with what Rubin, who has been with the county social service agency for 13 years and its director for two, has seen.
While one in every 12 Greene County residents receives food assistance, in Xenia that ratio is one in every five. And while one in every eight county residents receives Medicaid, one out of four Xenia residents is in the government health care program.
In the meantime, Rubin has seen her public assistance budget cut by $2 million during the last two years. That has led to a 19 percent staff reduction, reduced hours of service and unpaid furloughs for all agency employees.
"It's been pretty difficult," she said. "I mean, we are the safety net. Where else are people going to turn to?"
Xenia Community Schools Superintendent Jeff Lewis has also seen evidence of the economic decline.
Last month, the 1,400-student district hit an alltime high with just over half of all students eligible for free or reduced-cost school lunches, Lewis said. That's up from about 40 percent when he started in 2004.
In addition, he said, the school district has just under 100 students who are currently classified as homeless. That includes some who are living with grandparents, which by law classifies them as homeless. But others, he said, live in cars or shelters at times.
All 10 schools in the district now have both breakfast and lunch programs to make sure students are well-fed and can concentrate in class. Still, some students continue to suffer, he said.
"It's an issue that breaks our hearts," Lewis said. "If some student's worried about where they're going to spend the night, we can't very well think about how well they're going to do their math assignments."
Xenia isn't alone in the region in economic suffering, the data show.
All of the 14 cities large enough to be included in the latest data saw either a rise in poverty or a decline in household income. Only two didn't have both.
Kettering, for example, saw more than a $10,000 drop in median household income this decade. The city's median household income in the last decennial census was just over $58,000 when adjusted for inflation to 2008 dollars. But the three-year estimate, taken from surveys in 2006 through 2008, found the median income had dropped to less than $48,000.
Kettering also saw about a 5 percentage point increase in its poverty rate, from 4.6 percent in 1999 to 9.5 percent in the threeyear estimate.
Kettering City Schools Superintendent Jim Schoenlein said his staff is "well aware of our shifting demographics."
In the last 10 years, he said, the free and reducedcost lunch program has increased from about 10 percent of students to 35 percent.
"One of my nine elementaries has gone from 0 percent to 20 percent in the last couple of years," Schoenlein said. "So you can see there are pockets that are shifting more than others."
Kettering City Manager Mark Schwieterman has been critical of census estimates in the past, but he doesn't dispute the economic trend in Kettering.
"Obviously, the last several years of our economy would indicate that wages are down," Schwieterman said. "It's reflected in everything from housing values to flat out what folks can afford to purchase."
As a first-tier suburb, he said, Kettering has a large number of middle-class families.
"The folks who work in Delphi plants throughout this region are the folks with mortgages and kids in schools and maybe a single-income family. So when a plant closes, you can see the economic impact on just one family."
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2393 or kmccall@Dayton DailyNews.com.
