Community leaders found Charlotte County has a growing number of residents struggling to make ends meet. That’s one of the results revealed by a needs assessment survey of the county.

Carrie Blackwell Hussey, the Executive Director of the United Way of Charlotte County, and other county partners conducted a survey to find out where their services would have the most impact.

Hussey said the assessment found an “inordinate” number of people in the county classified as “working poor.”

She said many of these residents work in the service industry with salaries that don’t cover the cost of living in Charlotte County, but they are often exempt from government help because they aren’t poor enough.

“They don’t qualify for food stamps they don’t qualify for any kind of programs that would help them,” Hussey said. “So, what’s happening is they are getting squeezed. That’s that working poor that is getting squeezed.”

Hussey said the average cost of living in Charlotte County is $63,000 a year for a family of four, yet the median household income is $41,000. That number is down considerably since the last needs assessment was conducted more than a decade ago.