When the U.S. government took a statistical snapshot of Central Oregon in 1989, 12.9 percent of families with children lived in poverty.

Ten years later, the numbers have improved, at least by one measure.

Eleven percent of Central Oregon families with children younger than age 18 were living below the poverty level in 1999, according to recently released data from the census long form.

”The national trend is that the poverty rate for the nation dropped from about 15 percent down to about 11 percent,” said Tom Carroll, a professor of economics at Central Oregon Community College (COCC), referring to the period of the early ’90s to 2000. The prosperity of the past decade resonated in Central Oregon as well, he said.

Yet as the percentages crept downward, the overall numbers leapt up. One of those living that trend is Cecil Greenfield. Sitting in his snug wooden shack next to an irrigation canal in Madras, the 54-year-old army veteran says most jobs would not help him earn enough to pay rent.

”I don’t live off the taxpayers,” said Greenfield, who does yard work, maintenance work, whatever he can find, to make money.

In 1989, 1,826 families in the three counties with children younger than 18 lived below the poverty level. In 1999, the number was 2,287. And Central Oregon’s numbers increased the further away people lived from the region’s economic center, Bend.

”The general population is growing faster than your poverty population,” explained Carroll.

Nancy Knoble, the executive director of the Central Oregon Partnership, agreed the discrepancy could probably be explained by the swell of the region’s population.

”It doesn’t change the fact that there is an unacceptably large number in our community that are living in poverty,” said Knoble, whose agency will receive almost $12 million over a 10-year period to fight poverty in the region.

And while many families may earn a wage above the federal poverty guidelines, she said, they still do not earn enough to provide housing, clothing and food.

”They don’t make a living wage,” she said. ”Those are the people we call the working poor.”

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, a family of four, which includes two children, in 1999 had to make less than $16,895 to be considered below the poverty level. Knoble said the federal poverty level has not kept up with inflation.

”You can’t afford rent, utilities and food on $17,000 for a family of four. You’re going without clothing, food, something to make ends meet on that wage.” And the farther families lived from Bend, Redmond and Sisters, the larger percentage of them lived in poverty.

Carroll sees this trend as part of a national pattern.

”Bend has become the center for Central Oregon,” he said, like Portland is the center for the state. ”That’s where a lot of activity is happening.”

In Bend, 11 percent of families with kids younger than age 18 lived below the poverty line in 1999. In La Pine, the number begins to grow, coming in at 15.2 percent.

About 35 miles east in Prineville the percentage bumps up to 15.8 percent. And 40 miles north of Bend in Madras, that number reaches 20.9 percent. Farther out in Warm Springs, 32.3 percent of families were living below the poverty line in 1999.

Holly Hutton, the community services director at the Central Oregon Community Action Agency Network (COCAAN), said poverty has always existed in higher numbers outside of Bend. ”The infrastructure in those communities in terms of jobs and manufacturing isn’t there,” she said.

In Warm Springs, tribal leaders attribute many of the reservation’s economic challenges to a lack of opportunity. But Sal Sahme, business and economic development branch business enterprise director at Warm Springs, said, in his opinion, some tribal welfare programs provide too much economic support.

”With that kind of a disincentive and social safety network we have in our community,” he said, ”it creates a disincentive for work.”

It’s not just families that find themselves in poverty. A number of area seniors live below the poverty level, although the rates have dropped in 10 years.

In La Pine, 11.5 percent of residents over age 65 were living below the poverty level in 1999 compared to 15.2 percent of families with children.

Across the region the percentages of people over age 65 living in poverty were: Madras, 10 percent; Sisters, 10.7 percent; Prineville, 13.1 percent; Warm Springs, 15.9 percent.

Yet 1999 percentages don’t tell the full story. Some of those rates have significantly dropped. In fact, in Warm Springs, the percentage of seniors living below the poverty level fell by 12.4 percentage points from 1989 to 1999.

Bend seniors are doing better overall these days than they were 10 years ago as well. From 1989 to 1999, the percentage dropped almost 6 percentage points.

Carol Maszk, the program manager at Central Oregon Council on Aging, said she was surprised by the decline in the percentage of poor seniors.

”Our agency isn’t seeing any drop,” she said. She guessed that the decrease could be explained by the growing population.

”The same number of people are hungry today,” she said, ”but we have a larger senior population that’s moving in today that’s affluent.”

Translating percentages to hard numbers fleshes out more of the story of poverty in Central Oregon. Even as things improve in Bend, 788 families with children and 5,380 individuals are still poor by government standards.

Trying to reach out to them while identifying the roots of poverty, the Northwest Area Foundation is pumping its resources into seven Central Oregon ”community action teams.”

By the end of the 10 years, the partnership is charged with raising four times the $11.7 million locally and outside the region to help fight poverty.

”I’ll be disappointed if we haven’t raised at least $50 (million),” Knoble said.

Within the partnership’s target population are people like Charles Hellon. The 22-year-old said he has been living with several others in the hills above Madras for about two years.

During the day, he goes into town to ”dollar-up,” to beg for a few bucks for food. At night, he sometimes stays at his aunt’s camp. But her camp has no tents or camping equipment, just a pile of dirty pillows, a dusty tarp, empty beer bottles and tattered stuffed animals. Lines of rocks surround the camp. They were laid out to keep evil spirits away, he said.

The 22-year-old knows he doesn’t want to stay on the streets forever. He has hopes of joining Job Corps or becoming a drafter, something he studied in high school before dropping out after the 10th grade.

If he had a job, he says he’d go back home. But he can’t get a job because he doesn’t have a place to live, and he doesn’t have a phone. His home on a hill doesn’t have an address.

Julia Lyon can be

reached at 541-504-2336

or jlyon@bendbulletin.com.