Sarah Davis had the bad luck to be living in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit the city in 2005, driving her out of her home.

The storm sent the then 26-year-old mother on an odyssey through Texas, Indiana and the Pacific north-west in search of steady work that paid enough to provide for her three children.

For a while, Davis lived in eastern Kentucky with her mother but that presented its own challenges: the region was in the grip of the opioid epidemic and she feared the impact on her teenage daughters.

So three years ago, Davis returned to New Orleans. She landed a job as a phone operator for a hotel chain, but that didn’t bring in enough to feed the children and at the same time save the deposit to rent a home.

“We were homeless, staying in shelters,” said Davis.

In time, a local charity, Armstrong Family Services, stepped in to pay the deposit and the first few months’ rent on a small house until Davis got on better financial footing.

Sarah Davis’s daughters, Magnolia, 16, left, and Chloe Clark, 18, pose for a portrait in their backyard in the Mid-City neighborhood of New Orleans. Photograph: Emily Kask/The Guardian

Now the family has a home but Davis earns still less than $1,700 a month, below the federal poverty level. Half her wages go to housing. The rest is juggled between paying just enough of the utility bills to keep the electricity and water on, and feeding and clothing two children after her eldest left home.

“I can’t do a lot of the extra stuff that I would like to do for my kids or with my kids because I just can’t afford to. No vacations. There’s not too much going to the movies or little outings. Even getting school uniforms together is expensive. Sometimes they have to wear stuff from last year. I have a lot of guilt because I can’t provide for them the way that I want to,” she said.

A report by the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) released on Tuesday calculates nearly 13 million children were living in poverty in America in 2017. Of those, nearly 6 million were in families with an income of less than half the 2019 poverty line, $2,091 a month for a family of four. That means raising a family on $260 a week or less, with food stamps and housing subsidies only plugging a bit of the gap.

A woman plays ball behind a school with her dog in the Leonidas neighborhood. Photograph: Emily Kask/The Guardian

Black and Latino children were more than twice as likely to live in poverty as white children – a reflection of the broader demographics of the US, where the poverty rate among African Americans is more than double that of whites.

Perhaps most shocking of all, nearly one-third of children in poverty live with a family member in a full-time job.

“No family with a full-time, year-round worker should live in poverty in America,” the report said. “Poverty stacks the odds against children before birth and stalks them down every avenue of their lives. It places them at risk of hunger, homelessness, sickness, violence, educational failure and family stress.”

Some of the worst rates of child poverty run through Appalachia and the south from West Virginia to Mississippi and Alabama. At the bottom of the list was Louisiana, where 28% of children were being raised in households below the poverty line.

“I won’t say that I’m surprised but it’s very disappointing that instead of us getting better, it appears that we are getting worse,” said the Louisiana state senator Regina Barrow, who chairs the select committee on women and children.

A ‘Fix my streets’ sign in pothole-ridden Leonidas, near Wanda Cobb’s home in New Orleans. Photograph: Emily Kask/The Guardian

Poverty has a cascade of consequences. The CDF said: “A lack of funds often forces children to go without the food they need to survive and thrive.

“In 2017, more than 43% of poor children lived in homes where not everyone had enough to eat,” the report said. “The harms of child hunger and malnutrition do not last just until the next meal. Food insecurity is associated with lower reading and math scores, greater physical and mental health problems and higher incidence of emotional and behavioral problems.”

The US agriculture department calculates that a disproportionate number of people struggling to put a meal on the table are single parents. Some skip meals so their children have enough to eat but lack of money drives families toward cheap foods that are filling but unhealthy, such as pasta, white bread and potatoes.

“A lot of times I have to buy foods that are less expensive to buy but I know are totally disgustingly bad for you. There are a lot of Ramen noodles,” said Davis.

Davis has the food covered but other bills are juggled.

A closed corner store in the Mid-City neighborhood of New Orleans. Photograph: Emily Kask/The Guardian

“Sometimes I pay just enough on my water or electricity bill to keep it from getting cut off. I always owe no matter what, because I have to have money for other things,” she said.

Since returning to New Orleans, her youngest daughter, Magnolia, has been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. It is not serious enough to warrant assistance with her care from social services but it has added to the pressure and financial demands on Davis.

Davis could take a second job, but that would come at the expense of the time she needs to spend with Magnolia and require her to pay a carer.

“If I worked two full-time jobs, then I’m not at home and that falls apart. If I work one full-time job, there’s more structure at home but then I make less money. It’s like, you can’t win like that,” she said.

Wanda Cobb with her children Cecelia Johnson, Noel Cobb, and Elijah Cobb, outside their home in the Leonidas neighborhood. Photograph: Emily Kask/The Guardian

Wanda Cobb faced a similar dilemma as the single mother of three children under 12. The best-paying job she could find, at $12 an hour, was working security at a casino. But she was on the late shift and that meant a third of her earnings went to pay for after school childcare, and even more on school breaks. Eventually, she was able to move to the day shift.

“That saved a ton of money right there, and I get to see the children more. I can be there for them when they get home from school,” said Cobb, who is raising her children on her own after leaving an abusive relationship.

But it’s a constant struggle to provide and pay the bills.

“There’s a lot of stress. At night you should be resting and you’re laying up there thinking about how you’re going to pay the bills, and it’s hard to fall asleep. I started having seizures,” she said.

A decade ago, many low-income families were forced to choose between spending on healthcare and food. But as rents have escalated in many parts of the country, housing is now the biggest drain on their budgets.

New Orleans presents particular challenges. Hurricane Katrina damaged public housing that was never rebuilt or replaced. Housing once rented by struggling families has now disappeared on to the Airbnb tourist market. Rents have risen accordingly, driving more people into poverty. Public assistance for housing is increasingly difficult to get.

A yoga studio a few blocks from Wanda Cobb’s home in Leonidas, which has been partially gentrified. Photograph: Emily Kask/The Guardian

The problem is not limited to New Orleans. Flooding across large parts of southern Louisiana three years ago hit Barrow’s constituency in East Baton Rouge parish, where thousands of people were driven from their homes.

“We already didn’t have enough housing stock and now we have less,” said Barrow. “People are having to live two or three families in a home to survive. This an additional stress on families and children already dealing with a lot of stress.”

The CDF report said that reducing housing costs would have the single largest impact on child poverty. The fund calculated that expanding housing subsidies to families living on less than 150% of the official poverty rate, and where fair market rent would cost more than half of their income, would lift 2 million children out of poverty and reduce the child poverty rate in the US by 22%.

The report also said that raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour within five years – more than double the present federal minimum – would have an important impact.

Cecelia Johnson, Elijah Cobb, and Noel Cobb on Cecelia and Wanda’s bed. Photograph: Emily Kask/The Guardian

“Seventy per cent of African American households [in Louisiana] are actually single-parent households,” said Barrow. “A low minimum wage is a huge contributing factor to poverty because that means that nine times out of 10, the provider is a female who is actually making only $7.25 an hour.”

But in a state like Louisiana, the minimum wage is a political minefield. The Democratic governor, John Bel Edwards, proposed a raise two years ago that was blocked by the Republican-controlled legislature. He’s pushing again this term but Barrow, who serves on the labor committee, is not optimistic because, she said, Republican legislators listen to business interests but don’t see many of those struggling to make ends meet.

Half a century ago, Marian Wright, a lawyer who later founded the CDF, organised a tour of Mississippi for Senator Robert F Kennedy so he could “look at the empty cupboards in the Delta and the number of people who are going around begging just to feed their children”. She planned the trip on the grounds that politicians could not understand poverty without speaking to those living with it.

Barrow thinks that’s as true today.

“If policymakers and the people who are in these positions like myself can see the human face of the reality of how these decisions impact real lives, hopefully we can begin to change. But many of the people that are in these positions have never seen those faces. They have no idea what it’s like to not have food. They don’t know what it’s like to not have electricity. They don’t know what it’s like to have a child sick and you can’t get them to the hospital,” she said.

A cat hides crosses the street in the Leonidas neighborhood of New Orleans. Photograph: Emily Kask/The Guardian

Davis knows her children have missed out in some ways, although it’s left unsaid at home.

“They don’t really talk about it but I’m sure seeing other kids getting to do things that they don’t get to do or have things they don’t, who wouldn’t feel like that, especially as a child? I don’t think they say anything because they don’t want me to feel bad, because I can’t really help it,” she said.

Still, Davis sees hope. She said growing up hand-to-mouth spurred her middle daughter, Chloe, to greater things. She is 18 now and has a place at a New York university.

“I think it’s made her very hardworking. She gets excellent grades. Such a brilliant student. National Honor Society scholarships. She has goals. I think she sees the struggle and she doesn’t want it to happen to her. She always tells me: ‘Don’t worry, Mom, because when I grow up, I’ll take care of you,’” said Davis.