The Truth About ALICE: What It Really Costs to Live in Chattanooga
- Amanda Sovago-Royal
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- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
On paper & social media, "Alice" looks like she's doing okay. She looks like me and you, making magic happen and enjoying a carefree life, but her bank account tells another story (as do many of ours).
I had the pleasure of attending United Way of Greater Chattanooga's fourth-annual United for Working Families Summit on Aug. 19, which walked attendees through the recent financial data revealing forty-four percent of Hamilton County households with children can't make ends meet. Those figures aren't simply alarming, they're familiar.
Meet ALICE
Allow me to introduce you to "Alice": She's a working mom, with a full time income. Her bills average out around the same each month, and mirrors a majority of her neighbors with a similar household size: Herself, husband, and two smaller children. Her husband works as well, and they've managed to keep everything afloat despite inflation, raising grocery costs, and fluctuating gas fees. She's not necessarily living in what people stereotypically picture as poverty.
Except ALICE isn't one woman.
“Over 10,000 households with children are below the ALICE threshold — 44% of households in Hamilton County.”
Did "Alice" sound familar to you? Could you see yourself in Alice? I could...because I am ALICE.
United For ALICE is an acronomy that stands for ALICE: asset limited, income constrained, and employed. He or she is an individual or household that earns above the Federal Poverty Level but still can’t afford basic needs: housing, child care, food, transportation, health care, and technology.
What does that actually look like?
“With the cost of living rising year after year there's a constant fear I'll never feel financially safe.”
As I mentioned, I know ALICE very well because I have been her most of my adult life after becoming a mother. I've always had a job ever since the age of sixteen, working throughout my years in college, and beyond. It wasn't until I became with my first child that I left the workforce due to pregnancy complications. I should have been on bed rest with my son but I wasn't, which I feel was a major factor in me going into early labor and losing him two weeks after his birth. After a short period of grief my ex-husband and I concieved our daughter, and with a combination of bed rest, weekly medical injections, and doctor visits, we had a sucessful birth. The second C-section left me unable to return to work right away, and due to the cost of child care, we determined it financially better for me to stay at home to take care of our daughter. Ever since then (nearly twelve years), it's been nearly impossible for me to get back on solid financial footing.
I went back to college to obtain a professional certification, yes I applied for dozen of jobs, networked, and even opened my own businesses as a means to create a means of self-support while balancing motherhood & marriage. Regardless of doing everyhthing "right", I'm still playing catch up at nearly forty years, and with the cost of living rising year after year there's a constant fear I'll never feel financially safe.
Meet ALICE's children
The part of United Way's ALICE presentation that effected me the most was the promotional video of Alice's child talk about their financial and living situatition from a child's perspective. I immediatly thought of Savannah, wondering if she had those same thoughts: worrying about her mom worrying all the time. Here's a few other facts that were given at the event that stood out to me:
2-1-1 (a free & confidential service helping people across Tennessee find the local resources) recieves sixty-six thousands calls for help per year
Childcare now costs more than in-state tution at a four year college
The cost per year for child care for a one year old is now $30,000.00
20 of the most common jobs in Tenneessee pay under $20.00 per hour
According to ALICE, "the cost of living for a Hamilton County family of four with two children in child care rose by $8,200 in just one year, and by $23,00 in three years (unitedwaycha.org)."
Chattanooga has one of the fastest-growing economies in the country—but remains one of the hardest places to move up economically.
So what do we do about it?
Based on ALICE's Wage Tool, for a family of two like mine, the minimum hourly wage needed is nearly $24 per hour, per worker. Since Savannah is twelve years old and obviously isn't contributing a second income to our household, that gives you some perspective on what it takes for a single parent to make the numbers work.
And I think that's the bigger conversation we need to be having.
When nearly half of Hamilton County households with children are struggling to make ends meet, we can't write it off as a few people who need to budget better, work harder or make different choices. These are people who are working. They're our teachers, childcare workers, restaurant employees, healthcare workers, small business owners, neighbors, friends and family.
They're me.
And there's a good chance they're you, too.
Chattanooga is growing, and there's a lot to be proud of about that. But as we talk about new development, new businesses and a growing economy, I think we also have to ask a much simpler question: Can the people who already live and work here afford to build a life here?
Because sometimes the person who looks like she's doing just fine is simply really good at making it work.
That's the truth about ALICE.
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