Poverty 2020

 

Artwork by Lamaro Smith (@lamarosmith)

Poverty. Living paycheck to paycheck with no savings. Making $50 too much to qualify for food stamps. Having a full-time job that barely pays your bills-including living expenses. Working 3 or 4 additional jobs to break even. Living off of student loans whose high interest rates will ensure you are never able to buy a house or secure any other loan because of your debt to credit ratio. An education costing more than what you will make after graduating. Having an unexpected expense of $200 fuck up your whole year. A budget meaning that you don't overdraft your account, not money left over every pay period. Getting sick or having to go to the hospital means you now have over thousands of dollars in debt. This disqualifies you from getting student loans. Having no rich family members to turn to because this lack of wealth is generational. Kids eating all their meals at school, 1-5 families are unhoused. This is the reality of many Americans. For the majority of my adult life, this was my reality. 

If you have been unemployed the last eight months and relying on the moratorium on rent and student loans, what will $600 do? Let's break down what poverty looks like.

1. The scam of credit scores: Numbers that dictate what you can and cannot purchase is arbituary. It is classist at best, racist, homophobic, ablieist and transphobic at worst. People's economic pasts should not be used to punish them moving forward. Who is more likely to have missed or late payments on their accounts? It's not people who have a surplus of funds, or savings accounts. It is not people who lack steady employment. In short, it is not people with significant disposable income. I worked as a property manager once and we would run perspective applicants credit before renting them a $620 apartment. We turned away families, parents, and eighteen year-olds (who hadn't yet established credit). We didn't care why their score was low, or if their monyhly income was triple the cost of the rent, we just determined we wouldn't rent to them because of 3 numbers. It was a "higher end" complex, that I couldn't afford to live in even though I worked there. This process told people, you may be able to afford the rent here but you don't look like the type of people we would rent to. 

2. Late fees: When you are struggling to pay your bills, having an additional cost tacked on makes it even more difficult to get caught up. I remember only being able to pay the past month's electric bill and then put $20 on the current bill to avoid shut off. The late fees continued to pile up and I continued to feel like I was drowning because this wasn't just the electric bill but all of my other bills. Talking to Wells Fargo, asking how many mortgage payments I could miss before it began foreclosure proceedings was a phone call I made in my bathroom so my kids wouldn't hear I was worried I may lose the house. (Luckily, we didn't-by the skin of our teeth).

3. High interest rates: This goes along with number one. When your credit score is low, borrowing money for a car or house or tuition means it costs you more to do so. Alot of times this leads to paying the lender more than what you originally borrowed, furthering your journey to financial stability.

4. No health insurance: This means being terrified of getting sick because literally you can't afford to. Finding a lump in my breast was terrifying. I didn't think I'd see my kids grow up, if it was breast cancer. That was the big one, but I was more afraid that this meant tests. I couldn't determine the lump's qualities with a home remedy.  And waiting until I could afford the tests meant waiting. Waiting for the lump to grow larger or the possibly cancerous cells to spread through my body. After getting checked by a racist doctor who said it wasn't cancer, I had a $4000 bill which haunted me for years. I was denied loan after loan, and housing applications, as my credit score continued to fall. 

5. Medical bills: See number 4, but also include prognosis and quality of life. When you can't afford treatment, you don't live as long, you get sicker faster and develop more complications. 

6. Food deserts: When you can't live in a "higher end" part of town, you are more likely to be surrounded by dollar stores and gas stations-not groccery stores which offer fresh produce. Even if you can afford fresh produce, you need food that can stretch for 2 weeks or twice a month. And fresh veggies just go bad faster than canned goods. So even if you can afford to drive across town and get the fresh produce, it may not be the best choice, even if it might be for your health in the long term, it isn't for the short term. 

7. Underfunded schools: Having a low credit score lock you out of "high end" neighborhoods means you are more likely to live in a school district that is more about teaching kids to follow directions than how to critically think or prepare them for job opportunities or college admission. 

8. Access to Healthcare: Jobs which cater to people with low income, people of color, people who identify as queer, disabled people, and people with each of these identities intersecting are more likely to work jobs that pay an hourly wage, with no sick leave or health insurance. If you are a woman, particularly a woman of color, you are less likely to be paid your worth which means even if you have a salaried job which offers health insurance, you can't afford to opt into it. 

9. Retirement: The idea of early reitement, or even retiring when you are in your seventies is a myth unless you have generational wealth like a trust fund, a family who paid for your college,or provided your 20% down payment to your house, or provided an inheritance. There is no way to put aside enough to retire when you are starting from zero or anegative amount of money. 

10. Internet: Applying for a job, staying connected, and going to school are impossible in 2020 without internet. Which may sound like a no brainer, but this also creates an additional expense when it comes to being able to complete basic life things. Children in parking lots so they can log into school to avoid truancy officers coming to their house, risking their families safety, is where we are right now. 

Even though Trump has said he will gladly sign a bill for a $2000 stimulus package, Nancy Pelosi has said it must be a 100% consensus meaning, only one Republican has to oppose it for the bill to flop. I'm sure her strategy is to get the stimulus out before Christmas, as $2000 is less likely to pass the Senate, but the impact is that people living in this country are once again simply bargaining chips rather than real people.

Every article which mentions that $600 isn't enough but it can be if you make it work for you by investing or paying down debt are out of touch for the ten reasons mentioned above but also so many more.