Lani Benton said she had a stack of bills, just a few groceries and $1 in the bank.

“I go from paycheck to paycheck,” said the 35-year-old single mother, who works in Lawrence and lives in Lecompton.

“I don’t want a handout, and I usually don’t ask for help, but when you need it, you just can’t find it,” Benton said.

Her story is becoming too familiar, according to advocates for the poor who released a report Tuesday that says one in four Kansans don’t make enough income to meet their basic needs.

“More and more working Kansas families are living on the edge,” said Tawny Stottlemire, executive director of the Kansas Association of Community Action Programs.

The report said Kansas had lost 40,000 well-paying jobs since 1999; 13 percent of Kansans had no health insurance; and many impoverished Kansans must pay too much for rent and child care.

In addition, over the past four years the number of Kansans needing food stamps has increased 34 percent; and from July 2002 to March 2004, the number of families needing temporary assistance jumped 14 percent, the report said.

One of the group’s major complaints was that the federal government’s income-eligibility requirements for assistance were too low.

For example, a single parent with one child must make less than $12,490 a year to qualify for most programs.

Ryley Benton, 2, helps his mother, Lani Benton, with the dishes before dinner at their Lecompeton home. A report released Tuesday by the Kansas Association of Community Action Programs states that one in four Kansans is unable to make enough income to meet basic needs. Benton considers herself one of the 25 percent of Kansans who just scrape by.

But a “basic family needs budget” for that family living in a rural area is $25,261, the group said.

Benton, who is a data processor, is making about 25 percent less than the salary needed to sustain the basic-needs budget.

She lives in a mobile home with her 2-year-old son and has four older children who live with her ex-husband.

Penn House, 1035 Pa., is a nonprofit organization that helps low-income families in the Lawrence area. Director Linda Lassen said she was seeing more working families seeking assistance.

“They fit between the cracks sometimes, and that is the problem,” Lassen said.

“We are seeing more people seeking assistance who have never before asked for anything in their life,” said Richard Jackson, executive director of East Central Kansas Economic Opportunity Corp. Inc. in Ottawa. ECKAN is a community action agency that serves the Douglas County area.

In its report, the Kansas Association of Community Action Programs called for a summit next year of Kansas leaders to put together a plan to eradicate poverty.

It also recommended an increase in the federal minimum wage from its current $5.15 an hour to $7 an hour, and continued support for Head Start and federal housing subsidies.

On the state level, the group wants increased subsidies for child care, initiation of a low- to moderate-income home mortgage program, and increased outreach to enroll people for federal and state health-care benefits in Medicaid and HealthWave.

At a news conference, another single mother, Lori Woods, of Girard, who has two children, said she gave up many of the assistance benefits she received in order to take a temporary job.

“It has been a constant struggle to keep myself and my family out of poverty,” Woods said.

Benton said she didn’t want to sound as if she were complaining about her situation, and felt lucky to have a job.

But, she said, “there are a lot of people out there who need help.”