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United Way presents ALICE data to Gahanna council; 24% of city households fall below survival threshold
Summary
United Way of Central Ohio presented ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) findings to Gahanna City Council April 7. Presenters said 24% of Gahanna households fall below the ALICE survival threshold, and the organization urged use of local, updated metrics when designing programs and eligibility.
United Way of Central Ohio data staff told Gahanna City Council on April 7 that an updated ALICE (asset limited, income constrained, employed) analysis shows that many working households struggle to cover essentials even if they are above the federal poverty level.
Melanie Hill, director of data and analysis at United Way of Central Ohio, and senior data analyst Troy Rindler presented state and local ALICE metrics and the organization’s interactive online tools. Hill said ALICE captures the cost of essentials—housing, childcare, food, transportation, healthcare and technology—and that the metric is updated annually to reflect local costs.
The presenters said the 2024 ALICE report showed almost 40% of Ohio households could not afford a survival budget in 2022; in Gahanna the presenters reported a lower prevalence but still significant strain. Rindler said, “Gahanna has 24%”—approximately one in four households—“so that’s roughly 8,400 residents” who struggle to meet basic needs when households are translated into individuals using local household-size averages.
Hill described how the ALICE survival budget differs from the federal poverty measure by including childcare and local cost variation. She noted that pandemic-era supports in 2021 narrowed the gap for many families, but that incomes and credits did not keep pace with rising local costs in 2022. The presenters showed that even with a 9% wage increase in some occupations, household budgets grew faster than wages for many common family types.
Council members asked how municipalities and nonprofit partners use ALICE. Hill and Rindler pointed to local pilots—conditional cash assistance and economic-mobility accelerators—citing a Columbus pilot that used ALICE to target services and a United Way tax-time pilot that pairs assistance with skills and employment pathways. Rindler highlighted the ALICE interactive tools (wage tool, legislative-district tool, and maps) and encouraged officials to use locality-adjusted thresholds rather than a single federal poverty level when setting program eligibility.
Several council members discussed demographics of concern: Hill said female-headed households and older residents showed higher ALICE prevalence; in Gahanna she reported 6.2% of households are single female-headed and about 16% of the population is 65 or older. Councilman Schnetzer and others asked about how caregivers or multigenerational households are reflected; Hill said the ALICE tools allow custom family-structure selections for county-level analysis and recommended digging into the online tools for further scenarios.
Council discussion emphasized using ALICE as a planning tool for housing, tax policy and local service design; presenters noted examples where ALICE-informed designs altered eligibility or targeted assistance. Council members thanked United Way for the presentation and for local data extracts the presenters provided.
Ending: United Way offered to deliver a full ALICE report update in mid-May when the 2024 data refresh is released and encouraged council and staff to use the ALICE online tools to refine program design and eligibility.
