Poverty divides New Jersey.
Peter Wise has spent the last eight and one half years fighting the good fight.
As director of the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen since 1998 until his retirement on March 2, he oversaw an expansion of services that has allowed the facility to double the number of patrons it serves and triple the size of its educational program.
The growth, however, is not all positive.
"Oh, it is most unfortunate that we need to do these things, that we need to be growing a soup kitchen to make it larger, that the need for our services continues to grow, that poverty is on the increase in Trenton," he said last week.
And not just in Trenton but throughout the region and the state.
According to a January report from Legal Services of New Jersey, about one in 12 residents of Middlesex and Mercer counties lived below the federal poverty line in 2005. While one in 19 families live in poverty statewide, according to the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development Division of Labor Planning and Analysis, one in six female-headed households and one in 10 black families statewide lived in poverty.
These figures are about half the national average though it is important to note that New Jersey’s cost of living is significantly higher than in other states. Legal Services has calculated what it calls "the real cost of living" at about $45,000 annually for a family of three, or about $3,750 a month. (The numbers vary depending on the age and number of the children and the number of adults in the household.)
The Legal Services report pegs housing costs at between $1,100 and $1,500 a month in Middlesex County, assumes that child care would cost between $650 and $1,300 and food costs at about $500 and $800 a month. That’s $2,250 before health care costs, transportation, taxes and other expenses are figured in.
Legal Services also points out, in a separate study, that poverty rates vary drastically by county, with some like Hunterdon and Somerset having rates among the lowest in the nation and others, like Essex and Camden having among the highest.
In essence, there are two New Jerseys. And the distance between them, in travel time, is relatively small a half hour from South Brunswick to Trenton and about 20 minutes from South Brunswick to New Brunswick, home of the Elijah’s Promise Soup Kitchen, which also has undergone tremendous growth.
"It only takes me 25 minutes to go from Nassau Street in Princeton to the North Ward of Trenton," Mr. Wise says. "But it feels like a universe away."
A drastic re-imagining of our priorities is in order, though large-scale systemic changes will take time. In the meantime, there are a couple of policy changes that could be made that could help lift New Jersey’s residents out of poverty:
Increase the minimum wage again and index it to inflation so that it rises with the cost of living. The current wage of $7.15 per hour translates into $286 a week and $14,872 a year, far below what is needed to live in the state.
Expand the earned-income tax credit and increase the state’s income tax threshold the minimum amount at which a wage-earner begins paying state taxes to cover more low-wage workers. (The governor is proposing both in his 2007 budget.)
And this is just a start.
But it’s the least we can do to bridge the gap between the two New Jerseys.

