Key West poverty hides inside a marketing super-engine of shimmering sunsets, glamorous galas, happy hours, peaceful walks along the beach and multimillion-dollar homes. That’s the Key West we want outsiders to see when they visit. It’s the Key West Mystique, nurtured for more than a century, that lured and kept many of us here.
Heck, it’s the Key West I wrote about last week, so I’m guilty of willfully ignoring this fact:
Half of Key West’s 15,049 households don’t have enough income to meet subsistence-level needs for food, housing, health care, child care, transportation, taxes and technology. Our local United Way, in its ALICE report, did the math. A Key West family of two adults and two children in day care needs an annual combined income of $106,608 simply to get by. God help that family if the car breaks down or a kid gets airlifted to Miami for emergency care.
Come Saturday, Nov. 1, making ends meet gets much tougher as congressional Republicans refuse to correct a course that will crush Key West’s working poor, senior citizens and children.
SNAP, which provides food assistance, is unfunded because of the federal government shutdown. About 10 percent of Key West’s households need SNAP to fend off starving.
And open enrollment begins for health insurance. Caught at the center of the federal government shutdown are health care benefits for the working poor, those not on Medicare or employer insurance and children. Unless Congress agrees to extend the current benefits, insurance premiums will skyrocket on Jan. 1. Nov. 1 is the first day people who purchase health insurance through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace will see just how terrifying those increases will be.
About 4,000 Key West households buy insurance plans through the ACA. Our hypothetical Key West family of four can expect their cost to increase at least $284 a month, or $3,413 a year. That’s about a week’s worth of groceries each month. Does one eat or pay the insurance?
By the way, and before you’re tempted to say “yeah, but,” none of those government-subsidized benefits are available to undocumented residents. Their plight is worse.
Key West poverty | The tattered core behind island’s image
If you’re not convinced there’s a dark and unraveling core of poverty swirling under Key West’s oh-so-pleasant facade, I’ll double down. The Monroe County Board of Commissioners cut 50 percent — a million dollars — from the grants it awards to local nonprofits that feed, shelter or care for the sick and at-risk. State and federal DOGE cuts had already hit programs — public and private — that help those in need. While benevolent donors are doing their best to pick up the slack, there simply are not enough givers to cover the losses.
It’s easy not to see Key West’s poverty. If you go about looking for it, you’re unlikely to have much of an aha moment because the tropes we use to decide who’s poor and who’s not aren’t there. Millionaires wear tattered shorts and t-shirts. Our still income-mixed neighborhoods put a sagging porch and battered shingles next to a spiffed-up two-story vacation rental with a pool and off-street parking. Most of us will never see the dilapidation and decay inside too much of the housing authority’s aging compounds, nor will we see the eroding military housing that puts service families at risk. Certainly the tourists don’t.
Because Key West’s poverty is so difficult to see — and because it’s just so much more “fun” to raise money for arts and entertainment, cats and dogs and pet projects — I suffer through a lot of meetings that start like this: “We need more members to fulfill our (fill in the blank) mission. Let’s build something, market something, get a new logo, add live streaming (might cost us $10,000 but, hey, it’s worth it).”
I have my pet projects that are barely tangential to caring for the sick, homeless and hungry. They’re worthy ones, they bring joy and I don’t begrudge them a penny. But there are others of mine whose mission truly is — or should be — caring for the least among us. They’re nattering about marketing and social media when the conversation ought to be “let’s figure out how to give 10 percent annually, off the top, before expenses, of what we have or raise to, oh, say, the Florida Keys Outreach Coalition.” Or AHEC, or Samuel’s House, or Wesley House, or Star of the Sea.
The consequences of half our island’s residents being a paycheck from destitution will worsen over the next decade. These are the children and teachers, law enforcement and public employees, bartenders and retail staff, landscapers and caregivers, mothers, fathers and grandparents who are truly the keepers of the Key West Mystique. We cannot turn a blind eye to Key West’s invisible poverty.
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