The Working Poor
"Call it working poor, not poverty. I know what people think when they hear the word poverty. The working poor have jobs, but we are barely making it. There are more of us than you think in Fairhope."
It was her day off from waiting tables. Surrounded by pictures of her children, she sat in her income-based apartment that she waited on a list for three years to get into. Her dog jumped around a pogo stick left on the couch by her son. She recently pulled together enough money to get the power turned back on. Her teenage daughter gets SSI and that money helps pays the rent and food.
After I wrote “Sleeping in Cars in Fairhope,” the stories started coming. A Fairhope friend told me how close her family once was to being homeless. Things fell apart and she went dumpster diving for food as her young children watched from the car.
A single mother messaged that she left her abusive husband a year ago and she and her son have been homeless, couch surfing and staying with friends, ever since. She is a bookkeeper making $18 an hour and with a car that is paid off. She is on a tight budget, spending $70 at Walmart every two weeks for food and necessities. She likes her job and her son loves his school. She can only afford a home in the $80,000-90,000 range. "Where am I going to find a house like that in this area?” she asked. “Apartments are $1,000 a month and I can't afford that either. I can count ten other women in a similar situation on the Eastern Shore right now."
I mentioned the working poor story to a friend watching the sunset at the pier and she said, "That is me. I work in a doctor's office and pay $750 for rent at the beginning of the month. Sometimes I only have $20 leftover to get me and my daughter through the next two weeks until I the next paycheck.”
"People are struggling here," she said. "We just hide it well in Fairhope.
Pastor Chris Bell at 3Circle Church calls this a “veneer” hiding problems below Fairhope’s pretty surface. 3Circle offers a benevolence ministry and its HOPE Center provides medical care to the uninsured. In his sermon in the “Blueprint” series about the Lord's prayer, Pastor Chris explained that people at 3Circle serve others because they "believe in the Gospel. We know what God us done for us. We love and serve because every one of us has been forgiven of our debts."
Fairhope has working poor and a lack of affordable housing and affordable childcare, like all other places. It also has schools and agencies that are filling in the gaps to help students and families from falling farther behind. It has volunteers whose lives have been changed by loving, giving, and serving their neighbors. I am trying to learn more about all of these, where the gaps are, and what we can do better as a community.
If you want to share your story, or know someone who would, please message me. It can be just on background or it can be anonymous
There are some stigmas that need understanding and changing. The working poor is one of them.
