Poverty Facts

Open Table is competing to shift the status quo of Poverty Maintenance to Poverty Transformation solutions that break the chokehold of poverty on families and stimulate revitalization in targeted neighborhoods.

Nationally, the US Poverty Rate has remained unchanged at a static 12% for over forty years! These statistics translate to men, women and children trapped in generational poverty and the working poor. Tragically, the current, fragmented approach to social services fails to empower families to exit lives in poverty.

With some 37.5 million people in the US living in poverty, the time has come to provide new solutions. Open Table Models are the catalyst for poverty transformation through which impoverished families achieve stability and self-sufficiency and neighborhood revitalization begins.

Of Arizona’s 6.4 million residents, some 900,000 live at or below the federal poverty standard. Welfare benefits exceed $6.0 billion/year in Arizona alone. That is $947 in per capita cost annually, or $6, 715 for each Arizonan in poverty per year.

Across the state, poverty rates range from 33% to 11% with the state’s average rate at 14.1% . Arizona’s poverty rate exceeds the national average and has remained relatively unchanged for the last 40 years, until it began to trend upward due to the recent economic downturn.