In April of last year, an average of 240 people waited in line each week to receive donated groceries from the Lazarus House Ministries food pantry in Lawrence.
Two weeks ago, the count was up to 739. Last week, it was 843, said Bridget Shaheen, executive director of the organization.
The influx, Shaheen said, represents a class of new poor - those whose previously comfortable livelihoods have been altered by the lingering effects of the recent economic recession and its slow recovery.
“We’re noticing more, greater tension as people are waiting for food. They just don’t see an end in sight,’’ Shaheen said. “People will bring their resume to our food coordinator, saying, ‘I’ve never had to do this before. I’m so embarrassed. I’m so ashamed.’ … It’s tough to live in a land where some people have so much and you have nothing and have nowhere else to turn.’’
Longer lines at food pantries, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, and other public assistance community organizations are a reflection of the increasing number of Americans falling below the official poverty line. Recently released results from the US Census Bureau showed that the nation’s poverty rate was 15.1 percent last year, the highest since 1993. The estimated numbers for the four largest Massachusetts cities north of Boston - Lawrence, Lowell, Lynn, and Somerville - are above the national rate.
The poverty threshold for a family of four in 2010 was an annual income of $22,314.
According to the bureau’s 2010 American Community Survey, which relies on estimates and lists varying margins of error, 27.3 percent of the population in Lawrence is living in poverty. In Lowell it is 15.8 percent; in Lynn, 20.4 percent; and in Somerville, 18.1 percent.
For all except Lowell, the numbers are higher than in 2000, when Lawrence was estimated at 24.3 percent, Lynn was 16.5 percent, and Somerville was 12.5 percent. The estimate for Lowell in 2000 was 16.8 percent.
Antipoverty agency organizers in these cities said these statistics are not only grim, but also inaccurate. The real numbers are much worse.
“The biggest problem is that low-income people are undercounted,’’ said Bill Lipchitz, deputy executive director of Community Teamwork Inc. in Lowell. “Particularly in Lowell, we have a number of ethnic groups, like Cambodians, and a number of African groups that are not comfortable filling out the [census] forms.’’
All four cities are popular gateway communities for various immigrant groups, which often struggle to find well-paying jobs and have to contend with the language barrier, organizers said.
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