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United Way: 42% of Cuyahoga County households are below ALICE or federal poverty thresholds
Summary
United Way presented ALICE data showing 16% of county households are below the federal poverty line and an additional 27% qualify as ALICE (asset-limited, income-constrained, employed), combining to 42% of households lacking sufficient income; East Cleveland had the highest ALICE concentration (about 79%).
United Way of Greater Cleveland presented the 2025 ALICE report to the Cuyahoga County Healthy Human Services and Aging Committee on July 2, telling councilmembers that ALICE—households that work but still cannot meet a local survival budget—now account for a significant portion of local need.
Ken Sar, United Way's chief revenue officer, described 211 call-data as a real-time indicator (United Way received over 226,000 calls countywide last year) and said ALICE data complements that work by estimating local survival budgets for different household types. Miriam Keefer, senior director of public policy, said ALICE measures local costs for housing, food, childcare, health care and transportation and reported that in Cuyahoga County 16% of households fall below the federal poverty line and another 27% are ALICE, combining to 42% who do not earn enough to meet basic needs.
Keefer gave local cost examples: a family of four needs roughly $73,500 annually to meet survival needs excluding higher education, and that figure rises to about $91,000 with two children in childcare. She said childcare is the county's largest single monthly expense for many families (cited roughly $1,900 per month for some family types). Keefer identified East Cleveland as the city with the highest ALICE share (about 79%) and said common low-wage industries—health care and retail—pay median wages that leave many working households short of the county survival budget.
United Way urged policymakers to use ALICE benchmarks, not only the federal poverty line, when evaluating program eligibility and policy impacts. Keefer noted several state-level proposals that would have aided ALICE households were omitted from the enacted state budget, including a proposed $1,000 fully refundable child tax credit phased out near $91,000 and expanded childcare eligibility. She said United Way will continue local advocacy, offer district-level data breakouts, and work with county partners on targeted responses.
Councilmembers asked follow-up questions about district-level plans, East Cleveland outreach, and whether ALICE accounts for higher-education costs (Keefer: it currently does not). United Way offered to provide additional district materials and to partner on public-education and program targeting.
