Orange Dot Report 6.0

Executive Summary

In the larger Charlottesville region, 14,990 families (22%) do not make enough money to meet their basic needs—housing, child care, food, transportation, health care, miscellaneous expenses (clothing, telephone, household items), and taxes. Rising costs and inflation along with stagnant wages and undervalued labor has made it increasingly difficult for families to be self-sufficient.

To keep up with the rise in the cost of necessities, Orange Dot 6.0 has recalibrated how it determines the annual income required for families to meet their basic needs, using the Self-Sufficiency Standard. The Self-Sufficiency Standard is a project of the Center for Women’s Welfare at the University of Washington’s School of Social Work that defines the real cost of living for working families.

The Self-Sufficiency Standard varies by locality and family size. For the City of Charlottesville, and Albemarle, Fluvanna, Greene, and Nelson counties, the Self-Sufficiency Standard for an average family is an annual income of around $60,000. For Louisa, the annual family income to meet basic needs is roughly $50,000, and for Buckingham, this value is around $45,000. A detailed breakdown of these costs and wages are provided in this report.

While families facing economic insecurity live throughout our region, the likelihood that a family is struggling varies by race and by place. The struggle is not equally shared.

47% of Black families and 35% of Hispanic families do not earn enough to meet their basic needs, compared to 18% of white families. This reflects a persistent gap resulting from past and ongoing policies that suppress investment, opportunity, and wealth creation in minoritized communities.

The percent of families struggling overall is highest in the City of Charlottesville at 27% and in Buckingham County, at 26%, and lowest in Albemarle County, at 18%.

Every locality in our region has areas where over a quarter (25%) of families have less than family-sufficient incomes. The areas with the highest percent of struggling families are in the City of Charlottesville, where the highest is 65%, and in Albemarle County, where despite having the lowest percent overall, has areas where nearly half the families struggle to meet their basic needs.

For a comparison with past reports, there are an estimated 7,330 families (11%) earning below $35,000 in the region. The Orange Dot Report 5.0, published in 2022, found 9,413 families (14%) in this same income range. As the population of the region has grown, the number of families earning under $35k has decreased. So we’ve made some progress as a community toward more economic mobility, but not nearly enough. The cost of living has steadily risen, making the $35,000 threshold less representative of the income required to meet the basic needs of working families.

As noted, our community has seen progress since this work began in 2011, but there are still too many struggling families. For a region as prosperous as ours, we have the means to build programs and enact policy that helps more families become self-sufficient.

Preface

The first Orange Dot Report was released in 2011, and it served both to describe the local income deficit—the gap between what families earn as income and what they need to be self-sufficient—and to develop strategies for creating pathways to self-sufficiency for families in the region. This initial effort launched the innovative Network2Work framework pioneered at Piedmont Virginia Community College, a process that brings together a Job-Seeker Network, an Employer Network, and a Provider Network to match job-seekers to family-sustaining jobs and careers and to connect them to community resources using neighborhood-based volunteers.

As Network2Work has grown, the Orange Dot Report has evolved and expanded, serving as a central resource and important update on the progress of the community. Initially focused on Charlottesville and Albemarle County in Orange Dot Report 2.0 (2015), the report encompassed the entire region (Albemarle, Buckingham, Charlottesville, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa, and Nelson) in Orange Dot Report 3.0 (2018), Orange Dot Report 4.0 (2021), and Orange Dot Report 5.0 (2022).¹ Orange Dot Report 6.0 continues this evolution, incorporating new analysis and building on updated self-sufficiency standards. This report marks the second update completed in partnership between Network2Work@PVCC and The Equity Center at the University of Virginia. The collaboration and resulting analysis represent the continuation of our collective work toward a more equitable and fully thriving region.

Introduction

“When someone works for less pay than she can live on — when, for example, she goes hungry so that you can eat more cheaply and conveniently — then she has made a great sacrifice for you, she has made you a gift of some part of her abilities, her health, and her life. The ‘working poor,’ as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society.” - Barbara Ehrenreich, “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America” (2001)

Recent years have brought our country’s and our community’s ongoing struggles and inequities into stark relief. The housing affordability crisis, inflation and the rising costs of groceries, and the frequency and volatility of climate events have created challenges for all of us. But low-income individuals, especially individuals of color, are suffering disproportionately, both physically and financially.

Despite working hard, too many families struggle to make ends meet, in part because their labor is not valued, and we accept their sacrifice. Many people laboring in positions considered essential to our community do not earn enough to provide for their families. For example, the so-called “caring economy”—childcare workers, home health aides, teachers—provides enormous social value, but is not valued by the market. Changes in the labor market that have increased the number of underemployed part-time workers—those who want more hours or full-time work—add further strain.²

We all seek security and stability: to provide for ourselves and our families, to see our children thrive, to create community with others, to live with dignity. For families experiencing economic insecurity, all of this is jeopardized. When faced daily with financial struggles—to pay for housing, to repair the car that carries you to work, to access needed healthcare, to find and afford a safe environment for your children—it is difficult to be the parent you want to be, the worker you know you could be, or the person you were meant to be. We all deserve a chance to succeed and flourish, but we are not all yet given equal access to that chance. Toward that end, we must seek to build an equitable economy, one intentionally constructed to fulfill America’s promise of opportunity for all.

Our whole community benefits when the families have access to jobs that pay sufficient incomes. The many collective advantages include:

Children do better. Graduating from college continues to be the fastest route to economic security, yet economic insecurity limits access to higher education. As Robert Putnam’s work shows, “a family’s socioeconomic status [has] become even more important than test scores in predicting which eighth graders would graduate from college. High-scoring poor kids are now slightly less likely (29%) to get a college degree than low-scoring rich kids (30%).”³

Local businesses prosper. Employees are also consumers, and increased income among a region’s workers means more spending power, which is better for the economy, especially the local economy.

Taxpayers bear fewer costs. Given the chance, families want to provide for themselves. When they are able to do so, they require less support from others.

People live longer. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the biggest contributor to poor health is low socio-economic status. The Health Inequality Project estimates that a woman in the Charlottesville area in the lowest income quartile has a life expectancy of seven years less than a woman from the highest income quartile; among men in our region, the life expectancy gap is nearly ten years.⁴

The community thrives. A community thrives when its residents thrive. Residents thrive when their capacity as human beings is unleashed. And their capacity as human beings can only be unleashed when their basic needs are met.

Knowing that we can only solve issues we can understand, we provide a snapshot of the families in our community who are struggling. What we have learned since this work began in 2011 is that there are too many struggling families in our community, but not too many to help.

Defining Self-Sufficiency

The goal of the Orange Dot Report is to provide an overview of the families in our region that struggle to afford the basic necessities. To determine what annual income is required for a family in our region to be considered self-sufficient, this year’s report uses the Self-Sufficiency Standard, a project of the Center for Women’s Welfare at the University of Washington’s School of Social Work.⁵

The Self-Sufficiency Standard defines the income working families need to meet their basic necessities without public or private assistance. Basic minimum needs include: housing, child care, food, transportation, health care, miscellaneous expenses (clothing, telephone, household items), as well as the cost of taxes and the impact of tax credits. These expenses are calculated for each US county, taking into account family composition, ages of children, and geographic differences in costs. The values used in this report are specific to the cost of living in our region.⁶

The Standard has been used across the country by government entities, advocates, and service providers. Using this resource in the Orange Dot Report provides a reliable and well-researched measure for determining which families in our community struggle to meet their basic needs. The methods used by the Self-Sufficiency Standard are comparable to methods used in past Orange Dot Reports but include additional categories.⁷

The Self-Sufficiency Standard provides a breakdown of the real cost of all basic needs for over 700 different family compositions for each locality. Family compositions are described by the number of adults, infants, preschoolers, school age children, and teenagers in a family. For each locality in the greater Charlottesville area, we have provided a detailed table of the average costs, and the annual wage required to meet self-sufficiency based on the most common family compositions in this region. For tables of expenses and self-sufficient wages for specific family compositions (i.e. one adult, one infant and one school age child), please see the Appendix of this report.

Families Struggling in Our Region

There are 67,760 families living in the Charlottesville region, defined in this report as the City of Charlottesville and the surrounding counties of Albemarle, Buckingham, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa, and Nelson.⁸ Of these, 14,990 families (22%) do not earn enough to provide for their family’s basic needs.

The table below shows the estimated number of struggling families in each locality and the corresponding percent. The percent of families struggling overall is highest in the City of Charlottesville at 27% and in Buckingham County, at 26%, and lowest in Albemarle County, at 18%. Localities in our region vary in population, so that even though Albemarle has the lowest percent, it has the highest number of families struggling to meet their basic minimum needs, at over 5,000.

Working families in our community need to earn an annual income that meets the Self-Sufficiency Standard to meet the real cost of living in our region. The Self-Sufficiency Standard varies by locality. Housing is less expensive in Buckingham and Louisa. Childcare is more expensive in Albemarle and Charlottesville.

The above table shows the estimated number of struggling families that do not make an annual income that meets self-sufficiency as defined by the Self-Sufficiency Standard for each specific locality. For the City of Charlottesville, and Albemarle, Fluvanna, Greene, and Nelson counties, this is an annual income of around $60,000 for an average family. For Louisa, the annual family income to meet basic needs is roughly $50,000, and for Buckingham, this value is around $45,000. A detailed breakdown of these costs and wages are provided in the Locality Profiles in this report.