Lucille Jones has a rule, one of many self-imposed policies to keep herself and her son afloat.

"Every time I get a paycheck," she said, "I fill up my car so that if I don't have any money, at least I'll have gas in the car."

Then the Eastside resident pays the rent, the car insurance and the utility bill.

More and more, for Jones and an ever-growing number of people, there's too little money left over at the end.

Related: 1 in 6 live in food stamp households

Increasing joblessness isn't the only factor pushing families to the financial breaking point. One of the biggest problems that low-and moderate-income households now face is that fixed costs - everything from driver's license fees to utility bills - are rising dramatically.

Meanwhile, unemployment and poverty are soaring, forcing more people to the brink of crisis. Evidence of economic woes is everywhere. Poverty rates reached a 15-year high nationwide in 2009, and experts say the trend is accelerating.

Even people with jobs are finding themselves coming up short as wages have stayed flat while the cost of living has gone up.

Loretta Fuller is one of them. She knows her family's budget to a T. With her husband, a grocery store assistant manager, she raises their 13-year-old nephew as a son on Jacksonville's Westside.

But as costs such as health care and utilities rise, they find themselves cutting back in other areas.

"If we have to use more gas, we get less groceries," she said. "Sometimes you look at a shirt and think, I could wear that one more time before washing it."

So when she heads in to work at The Sanctuary on 8th Street, an after-school program for low-income kids, she has a good idea of the rising expenses

Housing

Despite a landslide of foreclosures and plummeting home prices, low-income renters are actually paying substantially more in housing costs. According to a recent housing report from the U.S. Census Bureau, more than half of all people living below the poverty line were paying 50 percent or more of their income for rent and utilities. Any more than 30 percent of income, and it's considered "unaffordable" by federal measures.

While home prices fell drastically, rent prices have remained fairly stable in Jacksonville. The most recent data show that rents are on the rise, the Times-Union reported in July.

Utilities have been a bigger problem. Rental homes and apartments are often poorly insulated and have energy-inefficient appliances and air conditioning, because landlords typically don't pay the electric bill.

All Josephine Staples knows is that her utility bill topped $600 one month this past winter. Despite keeping her thermostat no lower than 78 degrees in the summer and having JEA workers in to do an energy audit, she still finds herself sometimes paying more in utilities than rent.

Part of that is because beginning in 2007, JEA embarked upon a four-year rate-raising plan. The average bill was about $178 a month in 2007. By 2010, it was more than $230, nearly a 30 percent increase.

"You're still working but everything is going up and you're not getting more money," said Staples, a nursing assistant who lives in Jacksonville with her husband and 8-year-old grandson.

And there are other costs. Fuller said her apartment complex recently required tenants to obtain renters' insurance. It's another $20 per month that will have to come from somewhere.

Government fees

When Staples went to register her truck earlier, she got a surprise. Instead of the $47 she was used to paying, she found the fee went up by more than $20. The cost of driving a car has dramatically increased, thanks to state-imposed fees and taxes. Vehicle registration fees have gone up. And driver's license renewals jumped, from $15 in 2007 to $48 today.

Then, Staples and thousands of other property owners got a bill from Jacksonville City Hall. It instituted three new fees - stormwater, garbage and a utility franchise fee - in 2007. Some of them have gone up since then. All together, they will cost the average household $270 this year.

Vicky Watkins, director of the Sanctuary on 8th Street, remembers taking some students to hear the mayor speak on the fees issue a few years ago. She said she can't forget how quickly some of them understood the disproportionate impact that fees - such as the flat garbage fee set to double to $150 this year - have on lower-income families.

"After it was over, one of the girls turned to me and said, 'Ms. Vicky, that's not fair. We have to pay that fee and we don't have any money. You have money and you pay the same amount.' This 14-year-old child immediately understood the impact," Watkins said.

Health care

Last week's Census report showed that even fewer Americans now have health insurance, leaving those without to pay out of pocket - when they can.

And for the declining number of people who do have health insurance, costs are going up, too. A Kaiser Family Foundation study showed that the average amount that workers pay for employee-sponsored health insurance premiums has risen 22 percent since 2007.

For some, co-pays for office visits have also gone up. Fuller feels lucky to be covered by her husband's insurance plan. But office visits have gotten more expensive, from $10 to $15.

That's if they don't get sick. In addition to health care costs, Fuller and her husband, a Navy veteran, don't get paid if they miss work.

It leaves the young couple wondering whether a child of their own is in the future.

"My granny is always asking when we're going to have kids," Fuller said. "But you're scared to have a baby because of the cost."

deirdre.conner@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4504

link: http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2010-09-21/story/jacksonville-po...