The Working Poor – Not a New Concept
In “The Working Poor: Invisible in America,” David K. Shipler explains
“It takes twenty years of nothing going wrong to escape poverty.”
That’s 20 YEARS, with no broken arms, nobody getting cancer, no brakes going out in the car, no babysitter quitting, no employer not paying you on time, no evictions, no repossessions, no deaths, no fires, no floods, no getting fired, no speeding tickets. If you have a parent, sibling, partner, or child who isn’t perfect, who messes up, who causes trouble, doing everything perfectly will never happen.
In lieu of perfection, the reality of cascading catastrophes means that one late paycheck, leads to late bills, and late fees when you couldn’t afford the bills to begin with, and now you have a lease violation, and you had to borrow money- with interest, to squeak by until then. This means that the $40 you were going to have to fix the thing on your car was all absorbed by this predatory system, and actually even after getting paid now you’re $400 in the hole all because your boss didn’t pay you on time. “Woops, I’ll have it to you tomorrow.” When you finally text your boss the following day because you haven’t heard anything about your pay, and your babysitter says she won’t stay with your CHILD if you don’t pay, your boss says, “You can leave if you don’t like it this way.”
This pressure is what had me back to work stocking the shelves of a liquor store 3 weeks after a caesarean. We had finally found housing after 2 years on the street, sleeping in my van, a storage shed, and then in rooms of homes owned by men who accepted alternative forms of payment. We would have been back on the street if we missed rent, and they were watching for any toe crossing the line.
We didn’t have a car, because I couldn’t afford maintenance on the van we had been living in, and it had a headlight I didn’t know was out, which resulted in a hefty ticket before it quit on me.
There’s no family for me to call. I grew up with my mom calling us her slaves, and took my first chance to get away. So if I didn’t bring in a paycheck, rent would not get paid.
It was a three-mile walk from the farthest stop on the bus route to the Walmart, and grocery store. I could fit 60 lbs of groceries in the backpack, and still wear my baby in front of me. I didn’t dare need to pee.
Before that, I’d been a housekeeper but couldn’t make enough to pay rent. They pay by the room, and will refuse to give you enough rooms to make enough money. “We just don’t assign more than 8 per housekeeper. It just shreds them too much.” It had been the only job I could get.
According to Barbara Ehrenreich in Nickel and Dimed,
“You can work hard—harder even than you ever thought possible—and still find yourself sinking ever deeper into poverty and debt.”
I’ve worked split shifts in the kitchen, which turn into 13 hour days with the middle unpaid, all for a boss who couldn’t be bothered to pay us. Those late fees sure add up.
My homelessness was never the result of a lack of hard work. I HAD jobs, and I always took any overtime that was offered.
This is only a fragment of my story, and every unhoused person has their own story.
According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, over 50% of homeless people have jobs. We are not talking about a “them.” We are talking about us. We are talking about people struggling to make it in a system that is breaking them and it’s everybody’s problem.
Being mad that we exist, doesn’t make us stop existing. In the times I could find nowhere to be, I couldn’t just cease. Only death does that.
In Michael Crichton, States of Fear, he explains,
“There are four ways to do things: the right way for the right reasons, the right way for the wrong reasons, the wrong way for the right reasons, and the wrong way for the wrong reasons.”
We can see you through this lens.
At the special meeting, you could have been excited that so many people from your community wanted to participate in public process. Instead you were defensive, and addressed your fellow lovelanders like enemies. You accused us of being a waste of your time.
Where does that place you in the quadrants of morality?
Choosing not to fix this is extermination. Making this harder is extermination.
Do you know how hard it is to show up for work, when the cops stole everything you own because you had to go find services? If you can blame that person for just not trying hard enough, you are fine with killing your fellow Lovelanders.
It’s not that there will be blood on your hands. There already is. I just can’t figure out why you’re making such a display of rolling around in it.
Acting belligerently against any attempts to solve this is murder.
Operation **Reclaim** Loveland 
What do you think?