Guest article by OnRamp board member Austin Rogers
This article begins with a simple question, “Is there a meaningful Return on Investment for a local business that donates to provide reliable vehicles to the working poor?” The unequivocal answer is yes! There are actually returns in both the spiritual and economic realms for those employers who invest in helping the working poor secure dependable transportation.
Consider this: Time and again in Scripture, we find the concept of generosity toward those in need providing a return to the giver in the form of a fuller, more blessed life than they otherwise would have.
“You shall give to him freely, and your heart shall not be grudging when you give to him, because for this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake.” -Deuteronomy 15:10
“Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will repay him for his deed.” -Proverbs 19:17
“Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.” -2 Corinthians 9:6
This isn’t a mechanical exchange, as if God is a vending machine waiting to dole out rewards when his children put a quarter in the slot. Rather, this kind of giving is a form of investment in one’s community by helping others achieve their God-given potential. It enriches the community in ways that have ripple effects, often returning to benefit the giver in some way.
Sometimes this “return” is simply the heartfelt joy one discovers from helping to meet the genuine needs of others. But often it is more tangible. Proverbs 3:9-10 says that when you honor the Lord with your wealth, “your barns will be filled with plenty.”
So, what sort of “return” can local businesses expect from the investment of facilitating car ownership among the working poor?
We find answers in a few studies conducted over the last decade. A research report put out by the Urban Institute in 2014 titled “Driving To Opportunity” details a surprisingly wide range of benefits to car ownership for the working poor. The study demonstrated that access to a reliable automobile played a major role in determining the residential locations and employment opportunities of low-income households. In other words, owning a car allows one to move or commute to an area with greater economic opportunity and job possibilities.
As Sophie Quinton put it in a 2014 article in The Atlantic,
“The suburbs are home to many low- and middle-income jobs that can be hard to reach without a car. Accessing these workplaces is at best time-consuming and at worst impossible for low-income residents of urban neighborhoods.”
These sentiments are corroborated by a more recent research article by Nicholas J. Klein published in 2020, which found that car ownership not only eases daily travel for low-income individuals but also enables access to higher paying jobs.
Vehicles For Change, the Washington D.C.-based charitable organization from which Klein gathered his findings, has awarded over 7,000 reliable cars to low-income households since its founding in 1999. The organization conducted its own study in 2011, finding that 75% of recipients got better jobs or otherwise increased their earnings as a result of receiving a car. The average increase in earnings was $7,000.
The benefits of receiving a reliable vehicle are perhaps more obvious for the recipients, but we need only think about this subject from a different angle to see the value to employers.
Without access to a reliable vehicle, a worker can only accept jobs within walking distance of their home or of a bus stop or public transit system. This not only limits job opportunities for the carless worker, but it also shrinks the supply of available workers for most employers.
In effect, then, car ownership among the working poor expands the labor pool available to most businesses. Car ownership among the working poor is especially beneficial at a time when the nationwide labor shortage is inhibiting many businesses’ ability to expand or maximize revenue.
Consider the case of a restaurant with a shortage of wait staff such that the restaurant is forced to limit seating during the busiest hours or close the store during non-peak hours. We have all seen this at one or more restaurants in the Bryan/College Station area over the past few years.
Despite the gains full-service restaurant employment has made since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the nationwide total remains well below pre-pandemic levels.
Without adequate staffing in the kitchen and dining room, a restaurant’s sales are effectively limited.
Also consider the case of a skilled nursing facility with plenty of demand for beds from patients stuck in hospital rooms but without the staff available to accommodate those patients. This hurts many parties:
the patients, who are not able to be moved to better accommodations at a nursing care facility;
the staff, who are overworked because of the labor shortage;
and employers, whose revenue is limited due to inability to increase occupancy at their facilities.
As in the case of understaffed restaurants, this example is not hypothetical. It is a severe problem in our country right now.
In fact, nationwide employment at nursing care facilities has collapsed to its lowest level since 1994, largely because of this self-reinforcing cycle of too few workers causing exhaustion, leading many to quit, then resulting in the remaining workers becoming even more overworked, and so on.
Labor shortages in food service, nursing care, and many other industries could plausibly be eased by higher car ownership among the working poor.
This is not just the case nationwide but also here in the Brazos Valley. There are at least a dozen examples of OnRamp clients who, before receiving a vehicle from us, missed out on great job opportunities due to lack of reliable transportation. In these cases, it is both the clients and their potential employers who suffer.
Foregone revenues for businesses in Bryan/College Station alone likely reach into the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars because of the labor shortage. With that in mind, the “returns” to an investment supporting car ownership among the working poor become apparent.
Not only does it richly bless the recipients themselves by helping them achieve their God-given potential, but it also enriches the broader communities to which business owners belong.
“The rich and the poor meet together; the Lord is the maker of them all.” -Proverbs 22:2