Jul 20 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Barbara Cotter The Gazette, Colorado Springs, Colo.



Light switches, furnaces and water faucets aren't the typical gauges of economic health, but at Pikes Peak United Way's 2-1-1 call center, they tell a tale of people who continue to struggle to pay their bills in a weak economy.

According to a report released Monday by the 2-1-1 Information and Referral Hotline, requests for utility bill assistance in the fiscal year ending June 30 jumped 20 percent from the previous year, outstripping requests for help with food and rent.

"That's by far the biggest spike in looking at data year-to-year," said 2-1-1 Center Manager Jessica Johnson-Simmons. "I would guess it would have something to do with recent utility hikes that have gone into effect, but it's also a case of clients just getting too overwhelmed with their bills to pay them. It just accumulates month after month."

The center serves a six-county area that includes Teller and El Paso counties. In the 12 months leading up to June 30, 2-1-1 received 27,696 calls, compared with 24,646 the year before. About 7,000 were calls for utility bill assistance, compared with about 3,500 calls each for food and rental assistance.

 "What it comes down to is, people simply can't pay their utility bills, rent or groceries," Johnson-Simmons said.

In addition to requests for help with rent, utilities and food, people call for assistance with child care, clothing, health and mental health services, transportation, education, and legal and consumer affairs. With each call, a person is given two or more places to contact for help from a database of 13,000 programs statewide.

"We just try to give people as many possibilities as we can," Johnson-Simmons said.

For many callers, it's new territory. About 41 percent of the people who contacted 2-1-1 last year were first-timers.

"They have no idea how to work their way through assistance or what's out there," Johnson-Simmons said.

Yet, they've been able to find 2-1-1, even though the 6-year-old service rarely advertises.

Part of the reason for not advertising is a lack of money, but Johnson-Simmons said there's a reluctance to launch an ad campaign because it might elicit a flood of calls that the maxed-out center can't accommodate.

"We know people need to call us, but financially, we can't handle more," Johnson-Simmons said.

Four people staff the local 2-1-1 hotline from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Johnson-Simmons' goal is give people 24/7 access to 2-1-1 assistance -- a goal shared by the half dozen or so other 2-1-1 regional centers in the 2-1-1 Colorado Collaborative. They've devised a plan to pay Larimer County's 2-1-1 center $7,000 a year each to handle night and weekend calls, but it won't come together right away.

"The plan is in place and we're moving forward, but it probably won't happen until next year," she said.

2-1-1 by the numbers

The average 2-1-1 caller is a single, unemployed 41-year-old woman with two children.

Specifically:

--21,681 callers in the fiscal year ending June 30 were women

--13,113 callers were single, divorced or separated

--4,428 were Hispanic

--13,537 were white

--3,045 were over the age of 60

--11,985 were unemployed

--10,543 were first-time callers

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