Saginaw and Flint have been ranked in the top ten most impoverished cities in the country. The poll by Forbes Magazine based its rankings on things like the unemployment rate and the number of homeless people.
Cherrie Benchley is with the United Way in Saginaw. She says poverty in the city has many causes, but unemployment is the main factor.
"Even the plants that contracted with the larger plants the GM powertrains the Delphi and so forth are not employing people, they've laid off, we have so many people who are laid off. Because these higher income people are not working we're not we're not going out to eat as much, we're not going to the movies as often, we're not spending as much. So it's left a lot of the service jobs. The lower income service jobs are even cut back too."
Benchley says Saginaw will be getting just over a million dollars from the state in November.
