Nouveau Poor

A sympathetic friend of mine shared this item on Facebook, and I’m probably the one person she knows with whom it resonates the loudest.  It comes from Vox, and features a guest columnist named CeliaSue Hecht.

CeliaSue is actually “over the wall” as she reached the age where Social Security checks are there for her.  But that’s about all.  She is in a region where I think it may be a pretty price to rent, and so is the area where I have made a home of some kind for over 30 years.  I am not old enough for any SSI checks, not disabled, no kids–no criteria for which an exception can be made to help me much out of the “nouveau poor” status that I have share with CeliaSue.

Some people offer the cavalier advice of “move where the jobs are”.  Move?  If you have a busted down car (or very nearly one), no regular income (just what dribbles in from freelance work), and reliant on people giving a rat’s ass about you (well, my phrase for having a support network), how the hell are you able to move around the country?  Can’t afford to leave, can’t afford to stay.

Dodging Bullets

I have been able to dodge some of the worst so far, with a housing solution that combines a spot with a longtime friend when I am not house and cat-sitting for others.  Maybe I’m not so much un-homed or un-housed like Hecht, but I just mentioned to someone recalling that the Duke of Edinburgh used to be shipped around as a youngster while his parents were exiled from their home in Greece, and he was known to sign the visitor’s book set out by his hosts with information that read something like “Philip, Of No Fixed Abode” (I actually found internet references like this one).  That’s what I am tempted to say when people ask me where I live.  I have dodged a number of long time friends, I am just too exhausted.  Let me sum it up this way:

I’ve interviewed for a few jobs in some of the more fertile employment markets that are more likely to feature the kind of jobs I am suited for yet nothing sticks.  In addition to being gray-haired, creakier and slower moving, and somewhat pale in my overall character, I am not helped by ancient clothes that offer more in comfort than in style.  My best walking sneakers that didn’t aggravate my heel spurs and plantar fasciitis are nearly worn through.  I didn’t deliberately choose to require costlier footwear (inherited my father’s horrible feet, I suspect), it is just a fact.  But I can also do so many different types of tasks and excel at using my intellectual gifts, why do I need to rely solely on looks?  Oh yeah, I’m a girl.  My value is tied up on how tasty I can be as eye-candy.

I got hit by one vicious bullet: the loss of my two cats who I believe have been re-homed via a super rescue service, but in my world, they were what kept me in better fighting form.  It was a risk to leave an unsavory situation I was in about 16 months ago, but I honestly, like CeliaSue, could not see staying in a housing situation where my sanity + my cats’ safety would be under continuous assault.  It was a different type of abuse, more psychological and financial on the one hand, physical danger from 4 out of control dogs and an Alzheimer’s patient on the other.  So I jumped to miss one bullet, and shortly afterwards I took a direct hit where the pain still comes back in searing hot tears and loneliness.

FDR: “I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill-nourished”

Approximately 80 years ago, this man rallied a nation to do better.  While it isn’t as bad today, CeliaSue provides a embedded link to HUD data with her own words that the over 50 demographic make up 1/3 of the homeless population of America:

Elderly homelessness is on the rise. A combination of slow economic recovery from the recession and an aging baby boomer population has contributed to the rise of the 51 and older homeless population. The percentage has spiked by almost 10 points since 2007 — in 2014, the 51-and-older group represented nearly a third of the national homeless population.  –CeliaSue Hecht, as told to Karen Turner at Vox.com

A major component of The New Deal targeted keeping the older American out of poverty, something that was common in the early part of the 20th century amid another Gilded Age of economic inequality with a vast gulf between a small group of oligarchs and the rest of America.  Will we be able to see our own era give rise to a new FDR that can demand human dignity for the majority and shame the 1% in backing off with their rapacious greed.

And will that person come in time for many of us?