This is my contribution to the Blog Action Day 2008

After graduating from Cal, I spent a year working for City Year D.C., an AmeriCorps program, in Washington D.C. Our stipend came out to be $2.50 - $3.00 per hour. To make ends meet, I lived with 5 other co-workers (just so happened it was 3 boys and 3 girls, exactly like the Real World house casting), and took a waitress job at Dupont Circle in additions to already working 50-hour weeks.

Granted I wasn’t living in “true” poverty, but all of us in the program were basically living on borderline poverty line. But luckily with 6 of us in the house, we were able to split everything 6 ways. When you split everything 6 ways, well, it didn’t seem that terrible. Still, ramen and cheap groceries were major stock in our house.

Our house was 2 blocks away from where Rockridge park, where Chandra Levy’s body was found (Modesto college student who disappeared, consequently erupted scandal of hometown congressman was having an affair with her). We lived in the vicinity of 4 different liquor stores that had iron bars and bullet proof glass in front of the counters, and a half way house. When I was living in that neighborhood, I was so oblivious that I didn’t even notice the women and their pimps, the drug dealers.

Still, housing condition was bad. Within a week of living in the row house, we came home from work finding a piece of ceiling on the floor in the living room. The real estate management company didn’t bother to give us any attention at all. In comparison, we were small potato clients. We were poor, and they had luxury clients to deal with. We had issues with sewer where the gross stuff came back up from the pipes. Dryer was broken. By the time most of us moved out a year later, the giant hold still lived in the ceiling, with the water pipes exposed. When the weather got warm, we soon found in addition to Jeff, the freeloader who were just “crashing” but never ended up moving out until he found a girlfriend to mooch off, we had mice as our new roommates. And somehow we couldn’t get our full deposit back! What a crazy world?

Living with low wages and working 70-80 hour weeks taught me a lot about living below our means. It was a testy year. Groceries were terrible. We bought the cheapest things which usually contained high fat, grease and all sorts of chemical. I gained a lot of weight because fast food was the cheapest thing. (How can you beat $5 fried chicken that came with all sorts of sides and a giant soda?) Gaining weight made me had less energy and more testy in dealing with tough situations, which we encounter a lot working with DC public school systems. Living with 5 other people (who you also saw at work daily AND on weekends) in a 3 bedroom house was also rough. I ended up living in attic because half way through the fall I realized that there were no insulation in sun room, I would be freezing to death if I continue to live in sun room. Attic had more insulation and my thermal sleeping bag proved to be a fantastic investment.
More importantly, I learned about “the vicious cycle.” It’s very difficult to escape poverty, because while you are trying to make your ends meet, you really can’t afford to think about what is green or eco-friendly for your house since all the eco-friendly stuff costs at least 2-3 times more comparing to drugstore brands. You also can’t think about buying high-quality food, because Whole Foods would really take your entire paycheck of a month for your one-week worth of food. I can’t even imagine people who have families, kids to feed, dress and send to school, and dealing with mortgages and car loans. Or what if you have children who are sick? How are you going to pay for their bills if you don’t have health insurance. Life is much more easier when you only have your own mouth to feed, yet I was working 70-hour weeks.
I obviously survived, and plenty of other AmeriCorps members have similar stories. (I once heard about 15 people living in a 2 bedroom house, now that’s AMAZING.) All of us *chose* to have this job and live on the stipend, but how about people who didn’t choose to? Who didn’t grow up with the means to go to school to receive higher education? Or people who can’t afford afterschool care, or babysitters, but have to work 2 jobs to support their families? They didn’t *choose* to not read to their kids and do their homework with them. They are simply too tired.
So let’s help others to get out of that cycle. There are a lot of ways you can help:

a. You can donate to charities to help people get assistance to gain independence.
b. Support new entrepreneurs through micro-lending organizations and courses
c. Involve your local politicians
and many many others!