Mom forced to live in car with dogs

I am amazed that this woman managed to get a job when she was living in her car. If you don't have an address most companies won't give you a job. She must have some place to shower too because of course you have to look nice for your job. I wouldn't be surprised if she lost her job after the CNN story came out.

It is when you are down on your luck that people are least likely to help you. Nobody likes a loser. People just like to pile on and attack the person for not making better decisions.

No one is immune from the threat of poverty. Just about anyone can find themselves totally screwed one day due to circumstances they didn't anticipate. Sometimes it's that person's own fault. Sometimes it's not. The end result is the same: they are screwed.

I don't know who to blame for poverty in America but it is there and people who are not experiencing it don't understand. I live in one of the most depressed areas of the country: Oil City, Pennsylvania. I read that the average income here for a family of four is $11,000. There are very few companies still in business. Most of the stores and factories have been abandoned. Funny enough, I have heard that you have to have a job working at least 25 hours a week and earning at least minimum wage before you qualify for welfare. If you don't have a job you don't qualify. If your job pays less than minimum wage you don't qualify. If it pays more than minimum wage you don't qualify. Also, you have to have children living with you to qualify. Housing is very cheap here but it's also of very poor quality and energy prices will wipe you out. One of the most noticeable things you see as you are driving into town is a giant billboard advertising a suicide hotline.

The heartlessness of many of the posters here is shocking.

reply to post by tracyrtwymanII


Yes it is, extremely shocking. Many people aren't aware of the fact that many of the programs that they think are there to help people actually discriminate against working people, as you pointed out.

For example many don't know that if you apply for assistance and are working they compute your assistance using your gross pay, not your net pay. So they base your available money at a rate that is 20-30 % higher than what you actually take home.

They don't allow for things such as phone bills as they consider a phone a luxury although many people need a phone just for thier job to contact them if neccesarry. Nor do they take into account transportation costs to & from work, which is rising daily. And food i believe they give something along the lines of $3.00 a day for that.


The elderly get hit the hardest. Sizzle posted something that said a friend of hers received a cost of living increase in his social security retirement benifits, i believe it was something like $8.00 a month, not like a measely $8.00 is gonna help him with anything anyway, but the goverment then proceeded to deduct that $8.00 out of his food stamps.


My mother recently retired and was told that she would have to pay $140.00 a month in order to receive medicare insurance, funny i thought thaty's what the FICA deductions on our pay stubs were for.


But we still have those that point a finger and say it's thier own fault, instead of that's not right people shouldn't have to live like that. And those that think there's something wrong with a citizen that works and pays taxes to ask for and receive help when needed.

Anybody that is willing to get up and work 40 hours a week should be able to have a decent home to live in and decent food to eat as well as decent health insurance. People shouldn't have to work two jobs, 60-80 hours a week just to make ends meet, or keep a roof over thier heads. Especially not in this country.

Well many pages back an Annon. asked to focus on the cause(s) of this. It is my opinion that the direct cause of many problems relating to uncontroled property value increases, is directly connected to the general public's lack of interest in the political process with in our cities (see voter turnout for municipal elections).

I have recently become concerned with the 'Starbucks Affect', where property located near said coffee shop increase significantly in value in a very short time period. My thought used to be that: if the value of the property increases that it was 'good' for the owner.

In the last few years the neighborhood in which I live has undergone a massive face-lift,including the addition of a few SB's, and property values are at an all-time high. Good right?

Maybe for some, even most possibly? But there are people who DON'T want to move, or sell their home. They have planned to live in the family home, leave it to their children etc...But, as property values go up and new fees are levied, older people, renters, retirees and so forth are being valued out of an area. Is this how we create a class system in North-America?

I live in Toronto, a city which has just implemented the 'Land Transfer Fee'. It is a 2% (selling price) 'fee' that goes to the city after the sale of one's home. Thus, a potentially biased group can raise an individual area's propert value using an unpublished equation, and effectively changing a neighborhood's economic structure (over time) with out rhyme or reason, save personal gain.

Santa Barbara is starting to sound a lot like many cities across NA. Have our municipal governments figured out something? Perhaps a way of restructuring the socio-economic surface of our cities, without distracting/disrupting the area itself?!

-Cuauhtemoc

reply to post by Cuauhtemoc


You have most definitely hit on something. And i believe the answer to your question is yes.


I'm in Chicago, been here all my life. Years ago they had the great push towards the middle class movimg out to the suburbs. The nieghborhood that i have been in for the past 24 years is primarily two flats. This nieghborhood has always had a zoning law that stated that any new buildings that were put up had to be a bungalow. If a home owner wanted to build a new house, but wanted it to be a two flat the only way they could do that was to put the house on stilts, gut it and rebuild on the original frame. As any other way would be considered a new building and would only be allowed to have one level. The city wanted these nieghborhoods to stay residnetial nieghborhoods, for single families, not multi dwelling units.


Now they have a new agenda, move the working man into the suburbs, and bring the middle and upper class back into the city. All of the sudden they are allowing multi unit dwellings in the form of condos. They get around the zoning laws by allowing them to rehab old buildings, rather than build new ones. A couple years ago one of the buildings being converted into condos had half of the building collapse during the process.


Well all these condos have succeeded in raising property values, property taxes, and insurance costs sky high. Houses that were previously valued at less than a quarter of a million dollars have quickly jumped to almost a half a million dollars, mind you this has never been a middle class nieghborhood.


The result is devastating to some. We have raised our children here, i have good nieghbors, however one by one we are being forced to leave a place that we have lived in for over a quarter of a century. We have a couple down the street, wonderful people, raised thier family here. However they must now sell thier beloved home where they raised thier family, the man has recently retired and can no longer afford the property taxes on his house. Those of us that rent are having to leave because we can not keep up with the rising rents.


So yes you are right, i see proof of it where i live.

Originally posted by TXMACHINEGUNDLR
reply to post by Quazga

 

While I feel bad for this lady, I have to say that I would bet my paycheck we are not getting the whole story. Drugs are involved here...I can feel it in the story. If they are not I would be amazed. I think life is what you make of it, and how tough you are. The goal of the world is to chew you up and destroy you. So you gotta beat the world at it's own game. Find a decent place to live NOT in a big city, get a simple job and do whatever it takes to make it.Hard work and brains will get you a long way. Luck is also important. IMHO

You really think drugs are at play for all of the women in this parking lot and the others? It's not that difficult, she was a loan processor, and her industry tanked, she was probably living paycheck to paycheck, and she wasn't prepared.

I think it's rather cynical to think that in every parking lot, every person is there because of drugs, because there are a lot of people in that situation right now. This epidemic is geographical and like the plague, because no one will hire anyone from that industry who worked in those areas, even if they move.

It's a very odd phenomenon, that is happening to lots of folks, and has nothing at all to do with drug use for the most of them. Although I'm sure this could drive someone to drink.

BTW, How much would your paycheck be? I'm expecting it soon.



[edit on 24-5-2008 by Quazga]

Originally posted by Quazga
reply to post by greeneyedleo

 

Thats what I'm concerend about. And all I hear people talking about is compassion on one side, and callousness on the other, but they are both blind as to the bigger picture.

 

Mod Edit: Full post quote removed. Reply To function used - Jak

[edit on 21/5/08 by JAK]

Compassion is not blind.

You should be helping others because no human being deserves to live that way. Arguing that the bigger picture is protecting your selfish interests from rising crime rates is a disgusting way to go about anything.

Crime rates should rise if homelessness gets out of hand. Thee only reason why there is such a homeless problem is because we are trained to not care about anyone but ourselves. and the only time we actually do start caring is when our way of life is threatened.

Perhaps if people were more compassionate we could stop homelessness and the rising crime rates that you are so afraid of.