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Why a "Living Wage"?

Living Wage Key To Ending Poverty

The issue of a living wage is at the heart of concerns over homelessness and affordable housing, according to Leslie Woods, PC(USA) representative for Domestic Poverty and Environmental Issues. Find out why ...

Living Wage Key To Lifting People From Poverty

The issue of a living wage is at the heart of concerns over homelessness and affordable housing. When individuals and families' incomes are too low, these households are at a greater risk of homelessness than families whose incomes are sufficient to secure stable, permanent housing. Therefore, the issue of living wage is of vital importance to those who wish to prevent and address homelessness. By extension, the question of the minimum wage is at stake, for a minimum wage that functions as a poverty wage, keeping people in poverty, ensures that wages stay artificially low. Low-income workers, then, are forced to make difficult decisions in order to make ends meet - choices among food, housing, medicine, utilities, child care, transportation, etc.

The question of an adequate minimum wage, one that will set the wage floor high enough to ensure that all workers can afford a basic human-needs budget, must come in to all conversations meant to address homelessness, especially homelessness prevention.

Currently, the federal minimum wage is inadequate, having stagnated for ten years in between the most recent increases (1997-2007). The recently passed wage of $7.25 an hour by July 24, 2009 will have lost much of its value to inflation by the time it has taken full effect. Advocates, therefore, are turning to states and local municipalities to raise the wage floor. State, regional and local minimum and living wage campaigns have met with many successes in recent years. As of Oct. 31, 2007, thirty-four states had minimum wages higher than the current federal minimum of $5.85 an hour.

For more information on minimum and living wage campaigns across the country, as well as advocacy for an adequate federal minimum wage, please visit the Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign at http://www.letjusticeroll.org. The Presbyterian Church (USA) has been a member of the Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign since its inception, under the auspices of the National Council of Churches Anti-Poverty Mobilization Initiative.

Leslie G. Woods, Representative for Domestic Poverty and Environmental Issues
Washington Office, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
100 Maryland Ave. NE Ste. 410, Washington, DC 20002
(202) 543-1126 (office)
leslie.woods@pcusa.org
http://www.pcusa.org/washington