Episode 10: Behind the ALICE Numbers: A conversation with Melanie Hill

More than one in three households in Franklin County is working hard but still struggling to cover the basics. In this episode of So, Let’s Talk Columbus, Melanie Hill of United Way of Central Ohio helps unpack the ALICE data and what it reveals about the hidden financial hardship shaping our community. It’s a powerful conversation about the real cost of living, the people behind the numbers, and what it will take to make Columbus a place where more families can thrive.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Melanie, what's this I hear about you and Wordle?

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Well, I I am addicted to Wordle. I play Wordle faithfully every single day. Um, and I'm pretty good at it. I've gotten Wordle in one three times, which is I'm proud of that stat.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

And so, uh long story short, I I got an email encouraging me to apply for the new Wordle game show that's gonna be coming out some point, I guess, maybe this summer or the fall. And I did apply, so it remains to be seen if they kicked me.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

But who knows and this would be like a nationally televised TV show?

SPEAKER_01 0:46

It's gonna be on, and Savannah Guthrie is the host, and I think Jimmy Fallon is behind it. Oh my gosh. Um, it's gonna be on NBC. We researched it to make sure it was not a scam email. And it's legit, it's really gonna happen. It's really gonna happen.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

So I I will be so excited if they Well, I would be excited to know someone who's on a national game show.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

Well, good luck.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Thanks.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

All right. Well, today uh I want to welcome everybody back to So Let's Talk Columbus. I'm Michael Wilkes, Vice President of Community Engagement at United Way of Central Ohio. Here's a number that might stop you: 37%. That's the share of households in Franklin County. That's more than 204,000 families. Or if we think about individuals, that's just over half a million of Franklin County residents. To put that in perspective, we could fill OSU Stadium to full capacity on a game Saturday five times with the number of people who live in this community who struggle with their monthly bills. Those are people who don't earn enough to cover the basics housing, food, childcare, transportation, health care, the things we all need to just get by. But here's what makes that number complicated. Most of those families aren't in poverty. They don't show up in the official statistics. They're working. Many are working more than one job. They're your neighbors, your co-workers, the person who made your coffee this morning, or have cared for your parents last week. They're doing everything right, and the math just isn't adding up. That's the reality of a new report from United Way brings into sharp focus. It's called the state of Alice. And if you've never heard of Alice, you're not alone. But that's exactly what we're talking about today. Alice stands for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. It's a framework developed to name and measure a population that official poverty statistics have always missed. They're households earning above the poverty line, but below what it actually costs to live in their community. I'm often giving presentations around the community and I ask the audience, what is the earned income that they believe is needed to establish poverty? I'm usually hearing 30,000 or 40,000. And when I tell the audience it's actually 15,500, they usually gasp in awe of that number. Meaning, if you're a single person living in our community and you're earning just $16,000 a year, you are not considered in the federal poverty level. Today's guest is the person who knows this data better than almost anyone in Central Ohio. Melanie Hill is director of data analysis at United Wave Central Ohio and one of the lead architects of the Alice research here in Ohio. She spent years turning numbers into something more powerful, a story about who we are as a community and what it's going to take to make sure growth in this city doesn't leave people behind. We're talking today about the newly released Alice Data for 2024. Melanie, welcome to So Let's Talk Columbus.

SPEAKER_01 3:59

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 4:01

Tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you end up doing this kind of work and what drew you to data as a way to tell stories about people?

SPEAKER_01 4:10

Okay. So I ended up doing this kind of work a little bit by accident. When I graduated from college, I really wasn't sure what I was going to do with my life. So I joined City Year, which, if you're not familiar with it, it's an AmeriCorps program. And you could describe it as the Peace Corps, but in America. So I was doing service in Columbus and I was just going to do it for a year or two. But I really found the work fulfilling and ended up staying in the nonprofit sector as a career choice. And then just doing the work. A lot of it was direct service, but I had some skills and interests in data. And not surprisingly, when you work for a nonprofit, you wear many hats. And so I found myself wearing the data hat. And over some years working at different nonprofits, I found my way to United Way with this opportunity to work pretty exclusively in the data space.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

And where'd you grow up and where'd you go to college?

SPEAKER_01 5:14

Oh, I grew up outside of Cincinnati. So I'm an Ohio native. And I went to Denison University in Granville, Ohio, which is how I ended up here in Columbus, Ohio.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

How long have you been with United Way now?

SPEAKER_01 5:27

United Way, eight plus years.

SPEAKER_00 5:30

Well, thank you for your service.

unknown 5:32

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

Glad your journey ended up coming to United Way. So let's start at the beginning because most people uh listening to the show have never heard of the term Alice. Can you explain what it means and why it matters?

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Yes. Okay, as you said, you said Alice is an acronym and it stands for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. I think the more we talk about Alice today, the more the words behind that acronym will make sense. But historically, the work started as a project pilot for one county in New Jersey back in 2009. That grew to a statewide project in 2012 and it's been growing ever since. So now we're at 40 plus partner states across the nation, plus DC, and the goal is to grow us to all 50 states eventually and have everybody be an Alice partner state. So why does it matter? To me, I think it's important to think about the fact that this started as a pro a pilot project for one county in New Jersey, and it has grown to this national scale. I think that speaks to how much this resonates to audiences in different communities across the whole nation. It's relevant and it addresses a need or a gap or a disconnect, if you will, where we we have the federal poverty level.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

So let's talk about the federal poverty level, which was really established in the 1960s. It was about really acquisition and what it takes to purchase food, but it doesn't really reflect what life actually costs today. Why does it matter for how we understand financial hardship in 2024, which is the data that you're about to talk about?

SPEAKER_01 7:27

Right. Well, we live in a rapidly changing society, and so we need tools that can reflect those changes and that can evolve with the times. The federal poverty level is woefully insufficient in describing financial hardship. We know either from our own lived experience or if you just think about it from a common sense perspective, that $31,000 is not enough for a single adult to survive and thrive in today's society, let alone a family of four, which, as you said earlier, I think is a family of four would would need would be earning $31,000 or $32,000. And if they earned more than that, then they're considered to be above the poverty line. That is just completely out of touch with reality.

SPEAKER_00 8:15

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

Um, and the the Alice data gives us something that is a lot more relevant and it's localized and more in touch with the actual cost of living in today's modern economy.

SPEAKER_00 8:32

I think when people hear the word poverty, uh they often picture something very specific. But Alice tells us the picture is much bigger and broader. Uh, can you help our listeners understand who Alice households actually are?

SPEAKER_01 8:47

Sure. Alice households they're everywhere. So I grabbed some coffee this morning and a couple of donuts, and very likely the cashier who took my order was an Alice household. So Alice is a bus driver, it could be the barista, it could be the personal care aide who's taking care of my mother is in a nursing home. And so there are folks that are working, they're working hard, but they do not earn enough money to make ends meet uh according to the cost of living today in our modern society. So, you know, sometimes you end up having, you can have a household where two people are working, two people are working full-time jobs, and they still are not earning enough to cover the cost of everything. And that's that's Alice.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

We're essentially coming into contact with Alice households every day, all day long, uh, throughout our normal course of life, but may not just be conscious of thinking about what's going on in the person's life that's standing right across from us. Um, you said before that the data doesn't capture people who are unhoused, only people with housing. So, in a sense, Alice represents the floor, not the ceiling of the challenge. Uh, can you talk a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_01 10:09

Sure. Because Alice is focused on the segment of our community that that falls above the federal poverty level. Um, housing is included in those basics. So that is just kind of by definition, we're not really talking about the unhoused community. Um, but we're talking about folks that are working. And if we work to address the needs of Alice households, then I think there will be positive and residual effects on those other populations that might not be explicitly captured in the Alice data, but they're gonna, they're still gonna be positively impacted. I even think about uh helping Alice households as a way to prevent future housing challenges. So, you know, an unhoused person may have gotten in that situation because they couldn't afford to pay their rent. They they may very well have been in Alice household, um, and then you know, they just couldn't make everything work and things fell apart. Um and if we so to me, if we address things through an Alice lens, I think we can indirectly have a positive impact on things like the unhoused and other challenges.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

You know, we're talking about uh 2024 data because that is the most current data that's available. Um, I recently saw a Zillow study that showed that 2024 was the largest increase in rents ever recorded in Franklin County, that we saw a nearly 9% increase in rents that year. And when you look at now the current home price in Franklin County, uh the average home price is $361,000 a year. And so, going back to your examples of people we come into contact with every day, um, you know, very few people see a 9% increase in their annual income on a regular basis. And so I want to talk specifically about Franklin County. Uh the new data uh reveal that 37% of households here, again, 204,000 families, nearly 500,000 people, are below the Alice threshold. I think when we often think of Franklin County, it's a highly educated, uh, lots of jobs are being added to our community. Uh, we seem to be one of the prospering parts of the state. But what does that number mean to you when you see it? 37%.

SPEAKER_01 12:41

37%. When I sit with that number, it's it's pretty astonishing that there's that big a portion of people in our community that are having a hard time. I mean, it's sobering when it when I think about that number. Um, it tells me that I think that there's a lot more folks struggling that I think about and that we're aware about, or that we're aware of uh just as we're going through life on a daily basis. And I think it it it it really says that um we have a lot more people in need of help and support than what we have in place, and and that really worries me.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

So I know when we look at the poverty rate in the county, it's uh what is poverty rate about 13 percent. Um, and that's about 71,000 uh households, but the number of households that are considered Alice is nearly double the number of people that are in poverty, or about 133,000 households. Uh, these are people working but not making enough. Uh, that number of 133,000 households is really actually so much larger than the poverty number. And why is that significant for you?

SPEAKER_01 14:11

It again, it's sobering. Um, it makes me think about the need and how much work is before us and how important it is that this Alice body of research um spreads and that more people become aware of it and adopt it and use it as a framework to drive policy, to inform the work that we do in the nonprofit sector and in our community in general, because there are there are just a lot more people that need help. Uh and the the programs and and maybe the things that we have in place that are geared towards addressing poverty or focused on poverty, it's not enough. We we already know from our lived experience, we if if the things that we have in place through philanthropy and other things were able to fix poverty, uh, I think we would have solved it a long time ago because we've been working on this for a long time. Um, but the problem persists. And I think that the emergence of Alice data, it's eye-opening and it can broaden our awareness of a problem that is a lot bigger and deeper than what we realize as a community and as a society. So I think we have a lot more work to do. And when when we can better identify and quantify the problem and what it looks like, then we have a better opportunity to make an impact on it and have some really effective solutions in place.

SPEAKER_00 15:56

So you and I have worked together now for quite a few years, and you know I love looking at census data. Columbus is a prosperous city, it's a large city, it's the 15th largest U.S. city, uh, but it was the 14th uh fastest growing city in the entire United States for big cities last year as far as gaming people. Um but the number of people that are considered Alice in the city of Columbus is actually uh higher than the county average at 41% of households are below that threshold. Meanwhile, places like New Albany or Dublin or in Upper Arlington will come in much lower. What does that geographic variation tell us?

SPEAKER_01 16:37

Oh, I think it speaks to the fact that hardship and poverty is not equally distributed and it happens in in pockets. Now it's true that there is poverty everywhere and there's hardship everywhere. So there's there's Alice, there are Alice households in New Albany too. So we don't want to ignore that fact. But the fact that it's concentrated in different places, um, I think it it tells us that we need to maybe focus our efforts uh in a targeted way towards the solutions.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

I've heard you describe that um in some suburban communities there may be people that are asset rich, maybe they have paid their home off because they've lived there a long time, so they have net wealth, but they really struggle with the revenue side of things. So that might still be food insecure, even though maybe they own their home. Um and I believe you shared with me that Lyndon has the highest rate of Alice households of any particular neighborhood in the city. Um, but when we now dive in and look at that Alice household survival budget for a family of four, it really comes in at a staggering $81,000 a year. But the federal poverty line for that same family would be, as you said earlier, about $31,000. Actually, I think you said $31,200. I saw in the recent data. Walk us through what's actually inside that budget. Um, how are we counting things, and how would we get to $81,000 for a family of four?

SPEAKER_01 18:14

Right. So there are two pillars of the Alice measures, and that is household costs and income. So the household survival budget, it includes just the basics, and it is comprised of housing costs, childcare, food, transportation, health care, technology, plus taxes. Because remember, we're talking about households where people are working and they're paying taxes. It is a no-frills budget, so there's not there's no savings, there's no vacation, we're not doing extravagant birthday parties and birthday presents. And when you look at the report, uh there's a graphic in there that that shows a bar graph with the household survival budget side by side with the wages of two full-time workers in in one of the most common occupations in um in Ohio. And when you look at those bars, the household survival budget bar is a lot higher than the income bar budget for two full-time workers. And there is a gap that is about $18,000 between the earnings and the actual budget. And then keep in mind, again, emphasizing this is a survival budget, so it's not a thriving budget. This is just it takes a it costs a lot to live and get by in our society today.

SPEAKER_00 19:44

You know, one of the things that really stood out for me as a single person who's not raised children is that it was nearly $1,843 a month for a family with an infant and a preschooler uh with child care costs. Uh, that was even more than the actual housing cost in the survival budget. Um, I just wasn't really thinking about the significance in child care costs. How do child care costs shape what's possible for working families in our region?

SPEAKER_01 20:15

They make they make some things impossible for families in our region. I I have one child. Uh I have uh stepchildren through with my my family were a blended family, but I can think back to when my child was child care age and it was a big decision, number one, to even have a child. Number two, we had to think about how are we gonna make this work? Because the the costs of childcare are more than more than a mortgage.

SPEAKER_00 20:51

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

And and then if you think about having more than one child, I mean, I can't even imagine. And I'll just say this when I was growing up a long time ago, my my parents had three children and all close in age, and both of my parents worked and they were professionals. And even back then, I'm aging myself, but back in the 70s, when I was uh a a childcare age infant and toddler, my mother ended up deciding not to work because the cost of childcare made it it didn't make sense for her to work because it would have taken up all the income. And that was back in the 70s. So it's even the cost of everything has gone up. And so imagine now same problem, but it is exasperated. So people have to make tough choices, and a lot of folks delay having children or they spread them out more than what they maybe would have if they didn't have to consider the cost. It it makes it hard to live.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

You know, you're making me reflect on my own family journey, and that is my sisters and I were all born in the sixties, so I'm a little bit older than you. Uh, and my mother had the ability to be an at-home uh homemaker, and just the flexibility that we had as kids uh because my mother didn't have to be in the workforce at that time, and that's really a vision of the American family that really just doesn't exist anymore. Uh so the data reveal that about 69% of renter households are below the Alice threshold and are rent burden, meaning that they're paying 30% or more of their income on housing, and 42% of renter households are paying more than half. When you start to see those kinds of numbers of how much money people are paying just for housing, what does that leave for everything else?

SPEAKER_01 22:53

It doesn't leave much for everything else, in short. I think that's why we see continued and increasing food insecurity. We know we hear from our funded partners and folks that we work with through our Success by Third Grade work that the food insecurity is not going away. Uh, even you know, there was a spike during the pandemic. And even now, post-pandemic, we're hearing that there's still a strain there because of increased food costs and increased demand. So, I mean, it it's it's squeezing out everything else.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

So earlier we talked about the geographic distribution of Alice households, and while there is Alice located everywhere across Franklin County, um, I want to dive a little deeper into some of the demographic profiles of Alice. Some communities are experiencing hardship at much higher rates. In Ohio, it's actually 56% of black households and 45% of Hispanic households that are below the Alice threshold. Uh, what stories really live inside those numbers for you?

SPEAKER_01 24:09

So, to me, this is something that we don't talk about a lot, especially in today's environment where things are polarized and maybe politicized. So um, but what I do think about with regard to these demographics is I think about a single mom, African-American mom, that I knew from a previous job that I had as an advocate working with young mothers. And this person is now, I think, in her 30s. And she's a single mom, she has two children. She graduated high school and was is and continues to strive to live the American dream and achieve the American dream. So she is someone who has worked ever since she graduated from high school. Um and the American dream is elusive to her. She struggles still. She wants to be a homeowner, but she is a home renter because being a homeowner is is out of reach. And I know that she's uh become a little bit of an entrepreneur. She has an entrepreneurial job on the side, in addition to her main job, to supplement that income. That is that's probably not it's probably typical uh of a lot of Alice households and a lot of um people of color, uh, black people. I think about me as an African American, I I I think about some of the historical um impacts of I don't know, I guess, results of racism ultimately and how that has played out in the black community and other communities of color and just perpetuated some of these disparities.

SPEAKER_00 26:09

When I looked over the uh data for 2024, I was shocked when I saw that it was 71% of single female headed household. Uh families with children are below the threshold. Another uh group and the fastest growing group of Alice households in the state are people over 65. Uh what's driving that and what does it mean for how we think about aging in central Ohio, given how much more expensive it's getting to be in central Ohio?

SPEAKER_01 26:37

Right. I I think a big driver is the aging of the baby boomer generation. So we have an influx of people that are um aging and getting to that age where they're over 65. And then we have it's it's a it's like a convergence of all these different factors where you have increased housing costs, increased cost of living, we have um insufficient housing, so there's greater competition for different types of housing, and so a lot of older folks are being squeezed out of the housing market. Um they might have to downsize, you know, or live in a different living situation as they age and their abilities and their needs change. So, I mean that that factors in, and I think it is it's just kind of converges in a way that is creating a little bit of a perfect storm where we have a lot of people that um end up being Alice.

SPEAKER_00 27:43

You know, I think um too often when people think about financial hardship, they oversimplify it and they just assume it's really about personal decisions. People spend too much, they don't save enough. But what does the data actually say about that?

SPEAKER_01 28:00

Right. The the survival budget has no room for savings, it doesn't have an emergency fund, it doesn't account for retirement. This is not about people making bad choices. This is about the math not working. The numbers just don't add up.

SPEAKER_00 28:20

So let's talk about the labor data. Uh, you know, I said earlier Columbus is booming. We've been adding about 15,000 net jobs every year for the last decade. Uh, but what I think is the piece that surprises people most is nearly a third of full-time workers in Ohio don't earn enough to cover the Alice survival budget for even one adult and one child. And in some of the most common jobs, cooks, nursing assistants, cashiers, the rates are as high as 41 to 46 percent. What does that say about the economy that we've built in this country?

SPEAKER_01 28:55

I think it says there's some kind of a disconnect somewhere. The wages are not keeping up with the expenses. So we still have a need for all of these different jobs in our society, um, and maybe even increasing need for these type of jobs because I mean, we want to keep shopping, we want to keep eating out and going to stores, we have the aging population and therefore an increasing, if not at least consistent need for nursing assistance and whatnot. But we as a society, for whatever reason, have not made I guess a choice or a decision to value those occupations in a way that is reflected in wages. So there's a disconnect. So if we're not gonna pay them enough and our living expenses keep going up, then things are not going to work and eventually it's it's gonna fall apart. You have to do something to fill those gaps.

SPEAKER_00 30:09

So let's talk about solutions and the path forward for Alice families. Um, as I have said in many of the previous podcasts about Columbus's growth, we are growing faster than almost any other metro area in the Midwest. Does growth help Alice households or could it make things worse?

SPEAKER_01 30:30

I think you would have a lot to say about this, Michael. And uh but I'll say that I think it can go both ways. It could go either way depending on how we prepare for it and respond to it as a community. I think if we pay attention to the Alice data and we work now to address the hardship, then we can put things in place that are going to increase the likelihood of the growth benefiting all of us, or at least more of us. So I think you've shared a lot about that in many of your talks and could speak to how we could ensure that the growth, as the growth happens, people are not left behind.

SPEAKER_00 31:11

Yeah, for sure. Um, but when you look at the data, what would actually move the needle, in your opinion? If you had to name two or three things that would make the biggest difference for Alice households in Franklin County, what would those be?

SPEAKER_01 31:26

Um, a couple of things that I would say would be wage growth. That would be the first thing. Second would be addressing housing costs, and the third thing would be investing in our children. So our like our work with success by third grade, we are focused on the the young people because we know that when a child is on a pathway to success, they're set up for success in the long term, we're not gonna have high costs down the road. We're we've gotta we've got to get ahead of it. So I think you know, wage growth would be something that addresses it now. Housing, we have to address that now. And then thinking about the future, if we invest in children, that's a way for us to get ahead of it. And we don't have to be as reactive, we can be more proactive.

SPEAKER_00 32:20

One of the things I appreciate about the Alice framework is that it's designed to be useful, not just a report card, but it's actually a tool. Uh, how is United Way of Central Ohio using this data to drive decisions and investments?

SPEAKER_01 32:34

Well, we use the data to inform the work that we do in Success by Third Grade and in our other investments. Um we we just read the reports and pay attention to it. We also share it with our local legislators and at the state level. So we have been meeting and will continue to meet as the new report uh is out and the new data is available with our city council members. We let them know what the Alice data looks like in their uh in their districts and their wards so that they can be more informed and use that data to better serve their constituents.

SPEAKER_00 33:15

I also know that you've been down in the statehouse. Tell us a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_01 33:19

Yes, we had an Alice summit at the State House, I think last year, and we had the opportunity to share and introduce Alice and maybe refresh folks with out about the Alice data, and that is everywhere from our state and local legislators all the way up to the governor. So our our legislators have been made aware of this and will continue to share it with them, and we strongly encourage them to use it again to inform the work. It's it's the the data is there as a tool to be used. And one of the best things you can do with the Alice data to get more familiar with it and to you know to make it be applicable to your work is to go to the website unitedforalist.org. And beyond this report, there are interactive tools and maps. So you can you can dig in and dive, take a deep dive into the data and put it to use.

SPEAKER_00 34:18

And I think what's really impressive about the data is that you can do it for all 88 counties, and within those counties, you can dive into communities. So, really, it's a nonpartisan tool where we've really been spending our time talking about Franklin County because that's where we do our investments. You could go to Ross County or Pickaway County, uh, look at places that might seem very different than Columbus on the surface, and realize that some of those rural communities might actually have higher rates of ALAs than even Franklin County. So I appreciate that. So let's talk about how this data can help inform policy at every level. Employers, nonprofits, policymakers, even individual residents. I love your example of uh how Columbus City Council is using it. But what's your call to action for each of those groups?

SPEAKER_01 35:04

Okay. Call to action for employers. Use Alice to inform your wages, benefits. You can we have a thing called Alice at Work that is emerging and growing, I think, throughout the Alice network, where we educate employers at a deep level about Alice, and then they use that information to make changes in how they operate. And that couldn't, it could be in terms of wages, it could be with benefits, it could be scheduling predictability, it could be addressing career pathways and helping their employers uh advance in their career so that they can earn higher wages and rise above the Alice threshold. Okay, very quickly, policymakers use the Alice data to drive housing policy to address child care. We need to get the child care costs down, income supports that uh don't create benefit cliffs. There's some work happening uh with the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services in that area right now. Nonprofits can use the data to target resources and not just respond to demand. Our residents understand who your neighbors are, advocate, vote with this in mind. Let your elected officials know that you understand and know about Alice and ask them about it. Say, go to your public forum, uh, you know, your city council meeting and say, how are you using Alice data to inform the work and help all of the people in our community? Just put it to use.

SPEAKER_00 36:52

All of the data that we're talking about today is about 2024. But Melanie, if you were to look at a crystal ball, what do you think's happened in the last two years?

SPEAKER_01 37:02

Well, what I'll say is that Alice is point-in-time data, and 2024 is the most recently available data. And it's great that we've seen a little bit of a decrease in the number of Alice households in the state over the last year or two, but the trend is still not great. And when I think about the future and I think about current conditions today, I'm not very optimistic about the plight of Alice and maybe even the plight of poverty. So it's an it's an it is important for us to pay attention to what's happening year over year, but more importantly, you want to pay attention to those trends. And the trend over the long term has been that poverty is remaining relatively flat, which I mean that's kind of a good thing that it's not getting worse, but the Alice trend line is going up, and so we are continuing to see more households struggling, and that's not a good thing, and more households struggling that are working. Yes.

unknown 38:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:07

So despite all this, uh what the data uh reveal, the scale of the challenge, the stubbornness of the numbers, what gives you hope about Central Ohio right now?

SPEAKER_01 38:18

People. I think people, individual people. When you talk to folks at an individual level, it's very clear that we have more in common than we don't have in common, and that people are compassionate. And we we all kind of want the same things. We want for everybody to have an opportunity to thrive and be successful. And so I I that gives me hope and yeah, hope.

SPEAKER_00 38:45

Well, thank you, Melanie, for spending so much time with us today and for all of your work. And I think what you've shared with us today is something I want every person in Columbus to sit with for just a moment. And again, it's 37%. That's more than one in three households in this county is working hard and still coming up short, not because of bad decisions, not because of laziness, but because the cost of basics has outrun the wages of the jobs that keep this community going. The Alice data doesn't just describe a problem, it names people, it gives us the tools to stop guessing and start acting, and it reminds us that the measure of a growing city isn't just its skyline, it's whether the people doing the work can continue to live to afford to be here. Melanie, thank you so much. Thank you for the rigor, the care, and the insistence that data should tell human stories, and thank you again for joining us today. And to our listeners, if this episode changed how you see your community, please share it. And if it made you think about someone you know who's navigating this every day, well, that's the point. And until next time, remember there's not a problem Columbus can't fix