A lot of people think that “poor people” are just lazy and sit around and collect government checks. Since I work with “the poor” I know that in a large majority of cases that simply isn’t the case. Yesterday, I was talking to a thirty-something single mom with one child that works full-time and makes about $12 per hour or about $25,000/year (40 – 50% AMI for family of two).
Over the years I have seen her struggle to get off W-2, try to figure out how to get the best health care benefits for her and her child, swallow her pride and go to food pantries to feed her child, figure out how to get childcare, struggle to get her measly little child support payments, agonize over the latest payment she has to make for some activity her child wants to do, struggle to pay her rent, express frustration about standing in long dehumanizing lines to get one toy for her child for Christmas, struggle to find money to fix her car . . . while dealing with family and health issues and all the normal struggles in life that we all have. Being “poor” and a single mom takes an enormous amount of time and non-stop dedication and strength. It’s exhausting. I sometimes am amazed how people can pull this all together and struggle day after day to just . . . live.
Yesterday the new drama was not getting her child support check (again) and finding out that her co-pays for childcare and Badgercare both went up. After school childcare went from $75/month to $167. The health care went from $75/month to $108.
(A total aside: It broke my heart when she said in exasperation, “I know, I shouldn’t have had a child.” Wow. How must it feel to have feelings of guilt about doing what everyone is expected to do when they grow up – fall in love and start a family? And then figure out the reality that the adults can’t make it work and its just healthier to split up.)
When you’re already struggling, these increases that might seem small to some but are actually quite devastating to people who are in these circumstances. And the amount of energy it takes to try to figure out if these increases are yet another bureaucratic snafu or just a fact of life is staggering. When you have a county worker the routinely doesn’t call you back (a common complaint) and have to figure out how to make it through the bureaucratic nightmare, what do you do?
Luckily, this person knows me, who knows people. A quick phone call to Andy Heidt or a former staffer who now works for the county will likely sort out some of the answers and at least get her pointed in the right direction. And save her several hours of time and endless amounts of phone calls. At least for this time. Until the next crisis. Hard working people, with full-time jobs, shouldn’t have to live like this. It shouldn’t be so damn hard.
That’s it, that’s all I was going to say. That was going to be the end of my post. I felt exhausted yesterday after talking to her, and it wasn’t even my life.
But . . . what usually happens next is . . . someone looks at me and asks me, “what are you going to do about that?” And I feel like I should try to do something, so I’ll do what I always do, keep working for affordable housing, childcare, transportation and good jobs.
But I do have to say, with a little distance, it made me wonder, what will the City’s Economic Development plan do for people who struggle like the woman I was talking to yesterday? Will there be strategies in there that make it so that full-time working people don’t have to still rely on the feds/state/county for help with food stamps, childcare and healthcare? Or will it be all about TIF and other subsidies for businesses that don’t provide pay and benefits to ALL their employees so that they can afford to live in this City?
