Low Wages Are Blamed for Poverty in Loudoun: Pay Is $5 a Day Housing Is Big Need
LEESBURG, Feb.- 2 ÛÓ A four-month survey of low-income families in Loudoun County indicates unemployment is not a major cause of rural poverty there, i Among typically poor residents from 39 families, the Rev. Robert J. Stith, development specialist for the County's Community Action program, has found that of the 91 adults, 18 are unemployed but none of these are men. All the unemployed women are either aged, infirm or mothers with young children.</br></br>Stith found that only three of the 39 households receive welfare payments. Thirteen of the families get some type of Social Security payments.</br></br>Many of the families interviewed are headed by farmhands trying to support as many as nine children. Most of these farm workers earn from S135 to S240 monthly ! Û÷Tn another case, a 46-year-lold father of six works seven days a week from 4 a.m. to 7 p.m. for $38 cash plus housing and some food,ÛªÛª Stith says.</br></br>Though it has a liberal sprinkling of the very wealthy, Loudoun CountyÛªs median family income is not particularly high. At the time of the I960' census it was S4460, compared with $8607 in neighboring Fairfax County, Û¢ which rose to above $10,000 last year.</br></br>While Loudoun had no full-Sscale slums and only a few 'poverty pockets, many families living on the land are apparently just scraping by. The 1960 figures, the most recent available, listed 1858 families as earning less than $3000 annually. That was 32 per cent of the population.