Morris Workers 'Want to Live With Pride'

The bus at times seemed as if it would not fit between the cars parked on both sides of the narrow Morristown street.

The homes, like the cars, were tightly packed, built on small lots, but neatly kept.

These are the homes of Morris County working families.

The bus was filled with young executives taking the affordable housing tour sponsored by the Housing Alliance of Morris County, an affiliate of the United Way of Northern New Jersey.

"We want people to see where the county's workers live," said Jodi Miciak, director of community impact for income for the Morris office of the United Way. "We try to tell the story by focusing on the people that someone would come in contact with on a normal day." 

The people who would serve your coffee, take in your dry cleaning, teach your children. The librarian, the secretary, the person fixing your street. The people who are essential to making services in Morris County work.

Each day this week, Patch examines the lives of those whose economic truths are hidden by statistics that say Morris County's a place for the rich and comfortable, in "Morris' Working Class."

Blair Schleicher Bravo, executive director of Morris Habitat for Humanity, said her agency is very familiar with the working class.

She said "the folks who apply for a Habitat home are those working in our hospitals, our municipalities as DPW, retail and childcare workers, local corporations and businesses. People who are working in the essential areas of our economy that are important to our everyday lives."

They are a part of the middle class.

The United Way calls them ALICE: Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed.

They are nearly 30 percent of Morris County's population.

In a 2007 study, which has been updated, ALICE is defined as the segment of Morris County's population that earned between $20,000 and $60,000. That's in a county that routinely ranks among the 10 most affluent in the country, with median incomes often approaching $100,000.

And they are a part of the middle class that is perhaps more susceptible to a changing economy.

"ALICE households face many challenges—reduced work hours; loss of healthcare benefits; a physical or mental disability; language barrier; debt; child care; caregiving responsibilities; or an unexpected emergency with transportation, health or housing," the United Way's ALICE report states.

In the terms of the Occupy Wall Street movement, they are the 99 percent. They have seen their wages flatten over the past decade and the cost of housing, transportation, food and many other essentials rise. They have seen Morris County's unemployment rate double in the past three years, from 3.9 percent in January 2008 to 7.9 percent in January 2010, before settling back to 6.8 percent in September.

They have seen the transformation of the county's business sector as the big office park economy of the past 25 years faded as corporations merged or failed; have weathered the cold wind of the housing downturn that scattered foreclosures across the county as housing values fell; and have had to visit soup kitchens and food pantries, maybe for the first time.

"They want to live with pride," Miciak said, "to be contributing."

While Morris is perceived to be a rich county with high incomes and property values, the truth is that the extremely high wages of a small segment of the population skew the data.

While the median income in Morris County in 2010 was $91,469, the average income was $46,726. U.S. Census data show that roughly 30 percent of Morris households earn more than $100,000.

Census figures also show that between 1999 and 2010, the number of persons in Morris County with higher incomes, $100,000 and above, increased, while the number of persons with lower incomes decreased.

In 1999, 31,791 people had incomes of $100,000 to $149,999, and in 2010, the number had increased to 33,587. In 1999, there were 15,281 people with incomes greater than $200,000, and in 2010, 26,102.

Conversely, in 1999, 32,678 people were recorded with incomes of $50,000 to $74,999, and in 2010, 27,277, and in 1999, 26,978 people had incomes between $75,000 and $99,999. In 2010, there were 25,266.

Those figures could be reflected in the changing job market. The state labor department has measured for several years the increases in lower-paying service industry jobs.

The trend will continue, the department says, through 2018. The fastest growing segment of the job market in Morris County will be the service sector, adding 13,300 jobs compared to professional and business services, which are projected to add 4,000 jobs, it says.

A key factor in the lives of this group of workers is the cost of housing.

Between 1990 and 2009, the county planning department reported at an April non-profit conference, the percentage of Morris households who own homes and who were paying more than 30 percent of their income for housing rose from 26.8 percent to 47 percent. The state average in that time rose from 26.7 percent to 40.7 percent.

In that same period, the percentage of renters paying more than 30 percent of their income for housing increased from 38.7 percent to 52.6 percent, while the state average rose from 33.3 percent to 45.4 percent.

Another statistic generated by the county planning department showed how starkly the costs of housing has diverged from incomes.

In 1970, when the median income was $12,758, the median home value was $29,194.

By 1990, that difference had grown. The median income in the county was $56,273, and the median home value was $216,400.

In 2009, the median income had grown to $96,787, but the median home value ballooned to $458,200.