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POVERTY 101

Ron Jensen

"Introduction to Poverty "

It's very important to read the written material with each video. This information, in addition to the video, will make you a far more effective mentor.

You have preconceptions about poverty.

My focus in this training is on generational poverty. Many of us have found ourselves lacking money at some point in our lives, especially when we're young. But generational poverty is different. It's not just a temporary lack of resources, it's a matter of never having really experienced those resources in your life. They're not only absent; they're alien to a person in generational poverty. Most of the folks we'll find ourselves getting to know in the target group of Life Initiatives will be from a background of generational poverty.

My goal in Poverty 101 is to pry open the door of your perspective, so you may see generational poverty from the inside-out rather than from the outside-in. If you're anything like I was a few years ago, you believe that the poor have had some tough breaks here and there, but basically they just need to apply themselves, work hard, and succeed.

In the area of generational poverty, the proverb is true: "the devil is in the details". If hard work alone could get people out of poverty, poverty would be an easily conquered foe. But it's in the details that the power of poverty becomes more identifiable.

In the video above, I gave Dr. Ruby Payne's definition of poverty: "Poverty is the extent to which an individual does without resources." The problem isn't simply a lack of money. The resources we need include the following:

•  FINANCIAL: Having the money to purchase goods and services.

•  EMOTIONAL: Being able to choose and control emotional responses, particularly to negative situations, without engaging in self-destructive behavior. This is an internal resource and shows itself through stamina perseverance, and choices.

•  MENTAL: Having the mental abilities and acquired skills (reading, writing, computing) to deal with daily life.

•  SPIRITUAL: Believing in divine purpose and guidance.

•  PHYSICAL: Having physical health and mobility.

•  SUPPORT SYSTEMS: Having friends, family, and backup resources available to access in times of need.

•  RELATIONSHIPS / ROLE MODELS: Having frequent access to [people] who are appropriate, who are nurturing …, and who do not engage in self-destructive behavior.

•  KNOWLEDGE OF HIDDEN RULES: Knowing the unspoken cues and habits of a group. (see Poverty 103: "Hidden Rules" )

[”A Framework for Understanding Poverty ” by Dr. Ruby K. Payne (c1996,2005, pub. by Aha! Process) p. 7]

Generational Poverty is a complex enemy to fight. If you lack resources in any one of the areas listed above, it will be very hard for you to move ahead in life. If you lack resources in two, three, or more areas, poverty's grip will be inescapable without the support of an informed and committed friend (a mentor).

Let's say you lack resources in the area of "Support Systems" (see the definition in the list above). People in generational poverty find themselves isolated in a world without resources. Your closest friends probably lack the same resources you do. So, if you apply for work, who are you going to put down as "references"? Your friends probably lack regular employment, just like you. And they may lack regular access to a phone. They may not even have a consistent place to live. "Down and out" is normal. In fact, it's not even worth mentioning. There's little hope. To grasp more of a sense of this see Dr. Donna Beegle's video in Poverty 102: Invisible Nation.

In this Life Initiatives series on Poverty, my desire is to gradually give you "snapshots" of life among the working poor, so you can begin to see the world through the lens of poverty. If you're a professional or business owner, you have many challenges. But it's important to understand that the life of poverty has a set of challenges also. The low-wage life is not a low-stress life. In fact, my experience in joining the low-wage workforce has confirmed that the stresses of poverty exceed the stresses of a middle-income professional life.

Barbara Ehrenreich witnesses those stresses in her book, “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America”. To discover what it’s like to live in poverty, she lived in four parts of the United States , working in low paying jobs like waitressing and housekeeping. Her situation is better than most of those you'll know through Life Initiatives. She starts with a bankroll of $1300, something most people in long-term poverty don’t even dream of. But even with that, she discovers how hard it is to survive with a low-wage job (you can read an extended excerpt – pages 12-16 – on Amazon.com. Click on “excerpt” on the left side of the page. Or better yet, borrow the book from the Public Library if you’re in Rapid City.)

So let Barbara Ehrenreich be your eyes and ears into the life of those you'll meet through Life Initiatives...

“My first task is to find a place to live. I figure that if I can earn $7 an hour (which, from the want ads, seems doable) I can afford to spend $500 on rent or maybe, with severe economies, $600 and still have $400 or $500 left over for food and gas. In the Key West area, this pretty much confines me to flophouses and trailer homes like the one, a pleasing fifteen minute drive from town, that has no air-conditioning, no screens, no fans, no television, and, by way of diversion, only the challenge of evading the landlord's Doberman pinscher. The big problem with this place, though, is the rent, which at $675 a month is well beyond my reach. All right, Key West is expensive. But so is New York City , or the Bay Area, or Jackson , Wyoming , or Telluride, or Boston , or any other place where tourists and the wealthy compete for living space with the people who clean their toilets and fry their hash browns. Still, it is a shock to realize that "trailer trash" has become, for me, a demographic category to aspire to.”

("Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting by in America" Ehrenreich, Barbara, 2008, Holt Publishing, p. 12)

The price range of rent in Rapid City isn't a whole lot different than those listed in Ehrenreich's book. In my own personal trek through poverty as I started Life Initiatives, I worked as a hotel clerk. During tourist season, motels that are relatively bug-free range from $60 (pretty buggy) to $200 (pretty nice) a night (remember, this is a tourist area... bad news for those who have to live in motels).

The people in poverty, who have no home, the ones who have few resources, are forced to pay those same rates. Why do the poor live in a motel instead of paying the lower cost of renting an apartment? It comes down to lack of financial resources. When you live day-to-day, paycheck-to-paycheck, every penny that is earned goes to pay immediate expenses - food, diapers, transportation, today's housing. To move into an apartment, a tenant usually needs to come up with a deposit and first month's rent - easily $1,000 or more. When you don't have an extra $1,000 laying around and no rich uncle, the immediate solution is to pay by the night or by the week. So you find a cheap motel, if you can.

Back to Ehrenreich's story. She has the roof over her head. Now it's time to find a job in the world of low wages...

"The next piece of business is to comb through the want ads and find a job. I rule out various occupations for one reason or another: hotel front-desk clerk, for example, which to my surprise is regarded as unskilled and pays only $6 or $7 an hour, gets eliminated because it involves standing in one spot for eight hours a day. Waitressing is also something I'd like to avoid, because I remember it leaving me bone-tired when I was eighteen, and I'm decades of varicosities and back pain beyond that now. Telemarketing, one of the first refuges of the suddenly indigent, can be dismissed on grounds of personality. This leaves certain supermarket jobs, such as deli clerk, or housekeeping in the hotels and guest houses, which pays about $7 and, I imagine, is not too different from what I've been doing part-time, in my own home, all my life.

So I put on what I take to be a respectable-looking outfit of ironed Bermuda shorts and scooped-neck T-shirt and set out for a tour of the local hotels and supermarkets. Best Western, Econo Lodge, and HoJo's all let me fill out application forms, and these are, to my relief, mostly interested in whether I am a legal resident of the United States and have committed any felonies. My next stop is Winn-Dixie, the supermarket, which turns out to have a particularly onerous application process, featuring a twenty-minute "interview" by computer since, apparently, no human on the premises is deemed capable of representing the corporate point of view. I am conducted to a large room decorated with posters illustrating how to look "professional" (it helps to be white and, if female, permed) and warning of the slick promises that union organizers might try to tempt me with. The interview is multiple-choice: Do I have anything, such as child care problems, that might make it hard for me to get to work on time? Do I think safety on the job is the responsibility of management? Then, popping up cunningly out of the blue: How many dollars' worth of stolen goods have I purchased in the last year? Would I turn in a fellow employee if I caught him stealing? Finally, "Are you an honest person?"

Apparently I ace the interview, because I am told that all I have to do is show up in some doctor's office tomorrow for a urine test. This seems to be a fairly general rule: if you want to stack Cheerios boxes or vacuum hotel rooms in chemically fascist America, you have to be willing to squat down and pee in front of a health worker (who has no doubt had to do the same thing herself.) The wages Winn-Dixie is offering ”$6 and a couple of dimes to start with” are not enough, I decide, to compensate for this indignity."

("Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting by in America" Ehrenreich, Barbara, 2008, Holt Publishing)

After days of job hunting, Barbara ends up waitressing at a restaurant she calls "The Hearthside" for $2.43 an hour plus tips. In a footnote, she writes,

"According to the Fair Labor Standards Act, employers are not required to pay "tipped employees," such as restaurant servers, more than $2.13 an hour in direct wages. However, if the sum of tips plus $2.13 an hour falls below the minimum wage, or $5.15 an hour, the employer is required to make up the difference. This fact was not mentioned by managers or otherwise publicized at either of the restaurants where I worked."

("Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting by in America" Ehrenreich, Barbara, 2008, Holt Publishing)

$5.15 an hour (the minimum wage at this printing of “Nickel and Dimed”) was increased to $6.55 an hour on July 24, 2008.

Living with an income produced at or near the minimum wage is more difficult now than it used to be. The "Information Please" website lists a chart giving the purchasing power (in 1996 dollars) of the minimum wage from 1955 to 2008. In 1996 dollars, here is the purchasing power of the minimum wage:

1968 minimum wage of $1.60 = $7.21 in 1996 dollars.

2007 minimum wage of $5.85 = $4.41 in 1996 dollars.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0774473.html )

 

Ehrenreich found herself caring about the quality of her work, even though she was only making $2.43 an hour:

"At least Gail puts to rest any fears I had of appearing overqualified. From the first day on, I find that of all the things that I have left behind, such as home and identity, what I miss the most is competence. Not that I have ever felt 100 percent competent in the writing business, where one day's success augurs nothing at all for the next. But in my writing life, I at least have some notion of procedure: do the research, make the outline, rough out a draft, etc. As a server, though, I am beset by requests as if by bees: more iced tea here, catsup over there, a to-go box for table 14, and where are the high chairs, anyway? Of the twenty-seven tables, up to six are usually mine at any time, though on slow afternoons or if Gail is off, I sometimes have the whole place to myself. There is the touch-screen computer-ordering system to master, which I suppose is meant to minimize server-cook contacts but in practice requires constant verbal fine-tuning: "That's gravy on the mashed, OK? None on the meatloaf," and so forth. Plus, something I had forgotten in the years since I was eighteen: about a third of a server's job is "side work" invisible to customers—sweeping, scrubbing, slicing, refilling, and restocking. If it isn't all done, every little bit of it, you're going to face the 6:00 P.M. dinner rush defenseless and probably go down in flames. I screw up dozens of times at the beginning, sustained in my shame entirely by Gail's support—"It's OK, baby, everyone does that sometime" — because, to my total surprise and despite the scientific detachment I am doing my best to maintain, I care."

("Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting by in America" Ehrenreich, Barbara, 2008, Holt Publishing, p. 18)

There's also the stress of living the life of the "worker bee" which all lower-wage workers live. Translated, "living the life of the worker bee" means unskilled workers end up with the stress of implementing management's decisions.

As a call center employee, I remember when management decided to peel off 5 channels from the basic list of TV channels and begin charging an extra monthly fee for those channels. For management it was like magic, producing $5 per month per customer out of thin air. For customers it was the insult of feeling "ripped off". For the thousands of worker bees in the call center, it meant weeks of getting yelled at by irate customers.

Ehrenreich has her own story to tell about management:

"I COULD DRIFT ALONG LIKE THIS, IN SOME DREAMY PROLETARIAN idyll, except for two things. One is management. If I have kept this subject to the margins so far it is because I still flinch to think that I spent all those weeks under the surveillance of men (and later women) whose job it was to monitor my behavior for signs of sloth, theft, drug abuse, or worse. Not that managers and especially "assistant managers" in low-wage settings like this are exactly the class enemy. Mostly, in the restaurant business, they are former cooks still capable of pinch-hitting in the kitchen, just as in hotels they are likely to be former clerks, and paid a salary of only about $400 a week. But everyone knows they have crossed over to the other side, which is, crudely put, corporate as opposed to human. Cooks want to prepare tasty meals, servers want to serve them graciously, but managers are there for only one reason—to make sure that money is made for some theoretical entity, the corporation, which exists far away in Chicago or New York, if a corporation can be said to have a physical existence at all. Reflecting on her career, Gail tells me ruefully that she swore, years ago, never to work for a corporation again. "They don't cut you no slack. You give and you give and they take." ...

Just four days later we are suddenly summoned into the kitchen at 3:30 P.M., even though there are live tables on the floor. We all—about ten of us—stand around Phillip, who announces grimly that there has been a report of some "drug activity" on the night shift and that, as a result, we are now to be a "drug-free" workplace, meaning that all new hires will be tested and possibly also current employees on a random basis. I am glad that this part of the kitchen is so dark because I find myself blushing as hard as if I had been caught taking up in the ladies' room myself: I haven't been treated this way—lined up in the corridor, threatened with locker searches, peppered with carelessly aimed accusations—since at least junior high school. Back on the floor, Joan cracks, "Next they'll be telling us we can't have sex on the job." When I ask Stu what happened to inspire the crackdown, he just mutters about "management decisions" and takes the opportunity to upbraid Gail and me for being too generous with the rolls. From now on there's to be only one per customer and it goes out with the dinner, not with the salad."

("Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting by in America" Ehrenreich, Barbara, 2008, Holt Publishing)

In addition to the inhumanities many people in poverty are forced to endure, there is the added insult in the workplace of being treated like school children or, at times, like slaves. It tends to confirm the message that the working poor may already believe: they are substandard human beings.

 

Finally, you might be wondering how people manage to live on low wages. You struggle to make ends meet on a middle income salary. How do people live on $7 an hour? As the author discovered, there's no "secrets of the poor"... it boils down to creativity and flexibility... and the imminent threat of homelessness:

"You might imagine, from a comfortable distance, that people who live, year in and year out, on $6 to $10 an hour have discovered some survival stratagems unknown to the middle class. But no. It's not hard to get my coworkers talking about their living situations, because housing, in almost every case, is the principal source of disruption in their lives, the first thing they fill you in on when they arrive for their shifts. After a week, I have compiled the following survey:

•  Gail is sharing a room in a well-known downtown flophouse for $250 a week. Her roommate, a male friend, has begun hitting on her, driving her nuts, but the rent would be impossible alone.

•  Claude, the Haitian cook, is desperate to get out of the two-room apartment he shares with his girlfriend and two other, unrelated people. As far as I can determine, the other Haitian men live in similarly crowded situations.

•  Annette, a twenty-year-old server who is six months pregnant and abandoned by her boyfriend, lives with her mother, a postal clerk.

•  Marianne, who is a breakfast server, and her boyfriend are paying $170 a week for a one-person trailer.

•  Billy, who at $10 an hour is the wealthiest of us, lives in the trailer he owns, paying only the $400-a-month lot fee.

•  The other white cook, Andy, lives on his dry-docked boat, which, as far as I can tell from his loving descriptions, can't be more than twenty feet long. He offers to take me out on it once it's repaired, but the offer comes with inquiries as to my marital status, so I do not follow up on it.

•  Tina, another server, and her husband are paying $60 a night for a room in the Days Inn. This is because they have no car and the Days Inn is in walking distance of the Hearthside. When Marianne is tossed out of her trailer for subletting (which is against trailer park rules), she leaves her boyfriend and moves in with Tina and her husband.

Joan, who had fooled me with her numerous and tasteful outfits (hostesses wear their own clothes), lives in a van parked behind a shopping center at night and showers in Tina's motel room. The clothes are from thrift shops."

("Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting by in America" Ehrenreich, Barbara, 2008, Holt Publishing, p. 26)

 

It's impossible to effectively mentor someone without first truly stepping into their world. When I observed poverty from the perspective of a middle-class American, the temptation to judge was inescapable.

Barbara Ehrenreich, in so many ways, gave words to the emotions I felt after joining the ranks of the poor. No doubt, bad choices abound among the poor. And everyone has responsibility to make the best possible choices, the healthiest choices. But when you live in a world that is an endless highway of hurdles, survival is the goal. When you don't have the resources to have options, numbing yourself from the pain is understandable.

As you move through the Life Initiatives Mentor Training Course, you'll learn about tools that are available to help people improve their choices. But before we approach anyone with "the answers", it is so important that we truly empathize with the challenges they face.

 

You've just read the experience of a middle-class person who "dabbled" in poverty. But what is it like to be RAISED in poverty... to never know any other life? Next we'll move on to someone who can answer that question from her own experience, Donna Beegle. Poverty 102 is a video excerpt from her video biography, "Invisible Nation".

 

- Ron Jensen, Director

Life Initiatives, Inc

 

 

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