The High Cost of Being Poor in the U.S.

I started this post to simply link to this Washington Post article about why it costs so much to be poor in the U.S..   It popped up on my home page, and I just read the whole thing.  It goes into detail about many of the ways that people get screwed with fees and higher interest rates because they don't have an excess of money.  As a veteran blogger, I know that adding a video makes a post look more interesting.  I quickly found the video clip above.  There's a reason I picked it.

So... I woke up in my own tent this morning, after a night of rain.  I was given the tent a few days after coming to this city by a personal trainer I met while filling up my water bottle in a park.  He guessed that I was homeless, and told me he'd had to live in his car for a couple of months while getting his training business going.  Personal drama from an ex led to his situation, and he told me about his battle to get going again financially.  I told him I'd applied for a whole bunch of jobs, and only got one call back, from a fast food place.  Once the manager met me, she changed her mind. 

I told him the only thing that was making me any money was my weird and unique style of artwork with Sharpie markers.  After talking for ten minutes or so, the guy said, "You want a tent?"  It was several years old, but was big and roomy.  I thanked him, and hiked into a patch of woods to put it up.  I've been living in that tent for about six of the last eight months.  In that time, I've been able to get an art show at a local music shop, and next week I'll have one or more drawings up in a gallery downtown, for our city's First Friday art walk.  I've been making steady money from my artwork, just not enough to get me out of the tent and into one of the "cheap" motel rooms they talk about in the article. I'm at the point where I'm going to step up my art and writing, again, to the next level, which should get me out of my wet tent and into a room.

But let's go back to the video above.  I picked it for a reason.  Way back in 2002, I was living in a small room that a Mexican-American family built on the side of their house.  My rent was $200 a month, and I was reading voraciously then, and looking for a way to get back into a better job, but I didn't have a car.  If I had a car then, I could have started working freelance on TV shows or movies for $100 to $200 a day.  But my car got towed a couple years before. 

After taxi driving for a while, and other odd jobs, I wound up living in Garden Grove, California, a couple miles from Disneyland.  Out of desperation, I started going to the nearest Labor Ready day labor office.  I woke up about 4:00 am, took a cold shower (they didn't have hot water hooked up for my bathroom), and then I walked a couple of  miles to Labor Ready.  I walked up the bike path next to the Santa Ana River, which is a big ditch most of the time, but fills up with water during the winter rainy season.  The part of the bike path I walked is the exact same part that is filled with homeless people's tents in the video above.  There was no tent city there in 2002, although there were homeless people living nearby.

I would make it to Labor Ready about 5:00 am, and get in the line of people looking for work.  At 5:30 am, the office opened, and we'd walk in, sign the list in order, and most people would get a cup of coffee.  Then we'd all sit there, half-asleep, for the next three or four hours.  I did this, for nine days, before I got sent out to work for the first time.  That job was two hours, I made about $15.  I soon learned that most days, there wasn't much work, and there were a few ass-kissers who got those jobs.  But that particular office also hired workers for the Anaheim Angels baseball games because the stadium was close by.  So I started just showing up on game days.

Here's how those days went.  Wake up a 4am, walk 2+ miles to Labor Ready.  Sit there for three hours or so, and then several of us would be told we could work the baseball game.  We all worked in one of the many food stands in the stadium.  Then I would walk the two miles home, and take a nap.  Then I would take a cold shower, and walk the two miles, again, back to the office, where I had to have my white T-shirt, black slacks, and black shoes approved.  I didn't have all-black shoes, so I took a black marker and colored the white parts of my shoes.  Then we'd all walk the 3/4 mile to the stadium worker door, where we'd hang out for a while until they let us in and assigned us to a specific food stand.

Then I would do a basic fast food type job for 6 or 7 hours during the baseball game.  Then I'd walk back to Labor Ready after the game, get my ticket, punch my code into and ATM-type machine, and get the $43 or so that I earned that day.  Then I'd walk the 2+ miles home, and get home around 11pm or so.  So I had to screw around from 5am to about 11pm to make $40-$45, two or three days a week.  It sucked.  Pure and simple, it fucking sucked.  The only good part was that I usually got something to eat at the food stand. 

After a few days at this, I learned the trick from another worker.  Because I could actually count change, which most of those idiots couldn't do well, I managed to get assigned to a beer stand.  There, I was allowed to put out a tip cup.  I usually made $30 to $50 in tips, in addition to my $40 or so in pay.  Even then, I it was ten miles of walking and an 18 hour day to make $80-$90.  All that did was prove to me that day labor places should be avoided at all cost, and that you could never make a an actual living working for one.  Working at the baseball games kept me alive for three or four months, but just barely.  The Mexican/American family eventually kicked me out, with only two days notice, and let two illegal Mexican immigrants move into my room.  They made $100 more a month that way.  I wound up homeless (not the first time), and soon got a restaurant job at Fashion Island, an upscale mall in Newport Beach, California.  I lived in the bushes and worked that job for nine months, and finally saved up enough to get my driver's license back and get another taxi driver permit.  Then I went back to taxi driving, and lived in my cab for most of  the next four years.

I'm one of the people that the Washington Post article talks about.  I was back in 2002, when I walked the bike path that is now home to a huge tent city.  Then I would work a few hours in the baseball stadium in the background of the video above.  I'm still struggling 16 years later, but now I'm doing something original, and creating my own job.  A big part of what I'll be writing about this year, and in coming years, will be ideas about how to get people like me, and all those the article above and video above, back to making a good living again.