Mobile services making rural poverty a little more bearable

The elderly man shooting the breeze with folks at an Ellicott food and clothing pantry is reluctant to share his full name, but when it comes to discussing his financial situation, he’s an open book.

“I’m poor, lady. I’m very poor,” says the man, who will identify himself only as “Mr. Hughes.”

The 71-year-old former electrician lives with his wife and a caretaker and survives on about $910 a month in Social Security. He talks about having to choose between heat and food, how he sometimes has to go without gas in his car. Even paying for his oxygen can be a struggle.

“And yeah, there’s times I don’t eat,” he says in a gruff voice interrupted by rhythmic puffs from his oxygen tank.

Poverty challenges people no matter where they live. But a hard life is made harder for Hughes and hundreds of other financially strapped people who live on the eastern plains of El Paso County, where unending stretches of two-lane and dirt roads connect one small town with few social services to other small towns with few social services.

A few nonprofit agencies, churches, charitable groups and pantries — including God’s Pantry in Ellicott, where Hughes is this afternoon — are scattered throughout the sprawling area, and there are plenty of services 30 or so miles away in Colorado Springs. But it’s not always easy for people to get to the services on the eastern plains, much less the ones in Colorado Springs, when they’re driving cars that are less than reliable, or a spouse has taken the family’s only car to work, or gas prices continue to rise.

“Poverty is a little more desperate out here,” says Carl Finney, who heads the Pikes Peak Community Action Agency office in Calhan. “There aren’t as many options.”

So a few organizations have started taking their services to the plains, several with help from Community Development Block Grants awarded through El Paso County. A year ago, Peak Vista Community Health Centers launched a rural mobile health program with a $92,000 grant that was used to purchase and equip a van with an exam table, sinks and medical equipment.
In a few weeks, Care and Share will start a mobile food pantry service, using a $45,000 grant to serve Calhan, Ellicott, Hanover and Miami-Yoder, with the goal of beefing up existing food pantries and creating ones where needed.

A third grant, for $13,000, is going to Pikes Peak Library District to take a job training outreach program on the road to rural communities.

“What we’re seeing is an emergence of mobile services, where services traditionally located in the city are going out to the rural areas,” says Tiffany Colvert, community development specialist for El Paso County. “They’re doing some innovative thinking, knowing that often, these residents can’t afford the gas it would take to come into town to, say, get a flu shot. We’re really seeing a unique rise in our providers stepping up to help this population.”

Under the radar
The eastern part of El Paso County does not have a monopoly on poverty. In fact, the census tracts with the highest concentrations of poverty are inside Colorado Springs city limits.

But poverty in rural areas — even those just 30 or 40 minutes from a sizable city — tends to be harsher and more extreme, said Tracey Stewart, family economic security program manager for the Colorado Center on Law and Policy. It’s not uncommon to find people living without indoor plumbing or electricity.

“When you’re poor, you’re really poor,” she says.

Stewart and others familiar with rural poverty also say it’s not as visible as urban poverty.

“People don’t realize there’s such a need out here,” says Teresa McCaffery, a 36-year-old mother of three who is barely making ends meet and relies on God’s Pantry. “It’s not something people see.”

Homelessness even takes on a different look in rural communities. It’s not the tent cities that sprung up in Colorado Springs a few years ago and drew scads of good-hearted people bringing food, clothing and firewood to the campers. It’s not someone sleeping on a bench, grabbing food from a nearby soup kitchen and standing in line for a shower at a downtown social services agency.

“It’s people living in barns, in cars, in run-down trailers,” says Peak Vista physician’s assistant Greg Morris, who heads the nonprofit’s Homeless Medical Clinic and takes its Bridging the Gaps Homeless Medical Outreach van into some of the most underserved areas of the county. “There are trailers out there with no electricity; the floors have collapsed.”

As familiar as Morris is with homelessness and poverty, having worked with Peak Vista for about 17 years, his first year operating the mobile medical service has been an eye-opener on the needs in El Paso County’s rural areas.

“It’s a little worse than I thought,” says Morris, who, with an assistant, takes the van out once a week on a rotating route that includes stops at Antioch Community Church in the Truckton area, God’s Pantry and a mobile home park south of Colorado Springs off Colorado  115. “It’s a desperate situation for some of the people out there, and the thing that sticks out is, the further out you go, the more desperate it is. The sickest of the bunch can’t make it into town.”

Some of the poorest rural residents, in fact, have a hard time making it to agencies in their vicinity.

Pikes Peak Community Action Agency, for example, offers a variety of services from its small office in Calhan, including food distribution, rent and mortgage assistance, education and jobs training and utilities help. But it serves a massive area that encompasses much of eastern El Paso County, from Ramah in the north to the Hanover area in the south, to Rush on the eastern county line.

“For help with utilities, people have to go all the way to Calhan, which is 18 miles from here,” says Carey Adams, who runs the God’s Pantry Ministry operations in Ellicott and Fountain.

Eighteen miles might not seem like a lot, but for people who are living at or near poverty, life comes down to critical choices: Rent or gasoline? Food or heat? One little spike in the price of propane or gasoline might mean no money to repair the car or fill it up.

“Every time gas and propane goes up, these people out here suffer,” Adams says. “If I had gas cards, I could give them away all day long.”

Mobile services fill a gap
The El Paso County Department of Human Services, the official place to get food stamps and other critical assistance, lacks a presence in the eastern communities, and administrator Becky Jacobs knows it’s a hardship.

“It’s a money issue,” she says. “We really want to serve the families out east, and recognize that our location is fairly distant from them. El Paso County is just so big that it’s really challenging to try to figure out how to serve everyone.”

Churches and small charities, such as God’s Pantry, fill some of the gaps by operating food pantries and thrift shops closer to the residents who need them.

“We wouldn’t make it without this pantry,” says Magie Foster, a mother of three from Rush who volunteers at and picks up food from Our Daily Bread pantry at Antioch Community Church. “There’s a lot of families that wouldn’t make it without this pantry. With gas prices $3.50 or more a gallon, they have to choose between a tank of gas and trip to the grocery store. Older people are choosing between fuel and medication.”

And in rural communities, neighbors often come to the rescue of each other.

“We have people that do not have money to get to town or a way to get to town unless somebody takes them,” Foster says. “So people in the community will pick up other people and bring them to the church so they can go to the medical van or food pantry. It’s a community effort.”

But Stewart says homegrown charity can go only so far. Yet, DHS or private nonprofits would need more money to expand their presence in El Paso County’s rural areas, and few are flush with cash. And what money they do have tends to go toward areas where they can serve the greatest number of people, which, in El Paso County, is in Colorado Springs.

So the agencies are going for a next-best solution and trying to be innovative in making their services accessible. For several years, James Dixon of Catholic Charities has been making regular trips to Hanover, Ellicott and the Antioch church to distribute food, furniture, diapers, toys and other necessities. They are grabbed up almost immediately after he opens the back of his delivery truck. And even though gas prices are up, Dixon recently got the OK from Catholic Charities to make more trips to the area.

“I explained to them that it’s getting just that much tougher for folks out there,” Dixon said. “It’s harder for them to come in, so we’re going to double our runs out there.”
DHS has applied for grants to set up kiosks in outlying communities where people can apply for assistance.

With its $13,000 Community Development Block Grant, Pikes Peak Library District staff is buying netbooks and ebooks to tote to rural communities, to set up mobile labs where people can brush up on résumé writing, interviewing skills and searching for jobs.

Care and Share will use its grant to start a short-term mobile food pantry to beef up bricks-and-mortar pantries out east, provide nutrition education and deliver locally grown produce that has been purchased with the grant money.

“It’s all in meeting the needs of the patrons out there,” says Dee Fowler, foundation and development officer with the library district. “We have budget challenges like everyone else, so we’re working hard to leverage what we have.”

Foster, the mother of three from Rush, applauds the expansion of mobile services, particularly the mobile medical van.

“It’s wonderful, because it’s $60 in gas just to go to and from town to see a doctor, and most people out here, they’re working part-time jobs, if they’re working at all,” says Foster, whose family lacks medical insurance and has used the Peak Vista service. “We have families working two, three jobs, and they don’t have medical insurance, and wouldn’t be able to get things like flu shots without it.”

The lure of rural life
It’s a sad irony that many of the people who moved to eastern El Paso County were attracted by the cheaper cost of living, particularly lower home prices and rentals. But the economy tanked. People lost their jobs. Gas prices have been skyrocketing.

McCaffery says she and her husband bought a farm out east at a time when they could afford it.

“It changed in the blink of an eye,” she says as she picks up clothing and other items at God’s Pantry.

At that time, her husband, a truck driver, was receiving some unemployment. She works as a Head Start teacher.

“We make just too much to qualify for assistance, but not enough to pull it together,” she says.

But she and many others in similar straits don’t want to leave. They like the small-town friendliness, the wide-open spaces, the absence of traffic and crime that, to them, is all too prevalent in the city.

“You know what this place has? Peace and tranquility,” says Scott Styles, Mr. Hughes’ caretaker.

And even if they were inclined to move, it’s not always within their budget because they often are required to pay deposits or need to rent a truck, Finney says.

So, at least for the time being, they’ll rely on the kindness of their neighbors, on James Dixon and Catholic Charities, on Care and Share and the Community Action Agency, on Greg Morris and the Peak Vista mobile medical van and — Mr. Hughes’ favorite place — God’s Pantry.

“So many people out here don’t have anything,” Mr. Hughes says. This place is a lifeline.”