Our LVC'r Extraordinaire Laurie Elseroad passed this article around to us and it is an eye opener. I hope it dispels the myths that we only serve wino's living under the railroad tracks (not that they don't deserve our help!) but that we also help every day people running into some not so everyday situations. Actually, in today's world, this is everyday now. This is the reality we are living in...
Source: NPR
It's a visual no parent wants to picture: a child describing what
it's like to live in a house with no power for lights, heat or cooking.
For many middle-class American parents, it's hard to imagine their
family ever facing a situation like that. But a new HBO documentary
suggests that many seemingly prosperous parents are only a few
misfortunes away from dark houses and empty refrigerators.
The film,
American Winter,
follows the personal stories of eight middle-class families in
Portland, Ore., who were hit hard during the Great Recession. Once
financially stable, they now find themselves struggling. Emmy
Award-winning filmmakers Joe and Harry Gantz — known for their tell-all
series
Taxicab Confessions — show these families desperately
trying to make ends meet during the winter of 2011, even as headlines
everywhere indicate a recovery for America.
Diedre Melson, John Cox and Pam Thatcher are three of the parents
featured in the film. All three are college-educated and at one point
considered themselves middle class, a group the film refers to as the
most endangered species in America.
Melson, Cox and Thatcher
live in different neighborhoods, mingle in different circles and have
different backgrounds. But in 2011 they all had one thing in common:
Their financial struggle brought them to Portland's 211info emergency
hotline.
"My husband, Brandon, went out to look for work, and I
was stressing because I had very little diapers; I was worried about
formula," Thatcher tells NPR. She is married with two young boys, and it
was the first time she had found herself in need of assistance. "I went
ahead and called [211info] and I was actually looking for help with
rent or utilities."
For Cox, a housing crisis is what led him to seek help.
American Winter
shows him struggling to control his emotions when he has to ask his
father for help paying the bills. Before he was laid off three years
ago, Cox was an accountant who earned a nearly $60,000 salary. He had
never really thought about social services or public assistance.
"I
had a little bit of compassion for the folks [who rely on social
services], but I never thought it would happen to me," he says. "In fact
I was so oblivious to it, I didn't know how to go about getting the
assistance."
As for Melson, she sometimes donated her plasma and often spent weekends picking up scrap metal to make ends meet.
Public And Private Shame
In
American Winter,
all three of these parents express a sense of shame at ending up in
their current situation. "There's a stigma attached to people who ask
for assistance," Melson explains. "People have the tendency to believe
that there was something that you did to make yourself get in that
situation and now you're begging, when in all actuality I don't think
any of us here did anything particular to get into our situations. I
think all of it was based on each of us basically losing our source of
income."
Thatcher describes a different kind of stigma she felt during a trip
to a church assistance center. She says people were talking about her
wedding ring and her kids' clothing, suggesting that she was doing fine
and didn't really need any help. "They sat right next to me and they
were saying it as a normal conversation, as you and I are," she says.
"And it killed me. It's already hard; it is already degrading. And for
someone to sit there in a casual conversation and talk bad about you, it
hurt me so much more."
But public shame wasn't the only source
of pain for these unexpectedly impoverished parents. The sting of being
unable to afford things for their children was particularly harsh: At
one point in the film, Melson is shown talking with her son about a
wrestling tournament he was invited to. It's a national competition in
Nevada — and it costs $500.
"Unfortunately, he was not able to
make it," Melson tells NPR. "And that has to be one of the hardest
things as a parent, is to not to be able to provide those things for
your child. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity has gone by because you
can't afford it. You feel like a failure."
Thatcher felt a
similar sense of shortcoming around the holidays. "I know that we didn't
have a Christmas," she says. "I know that I couldn't buy one gift. That
was one Christmas that you can't buy your children anything, and that
hurts so bad."
With so much shame surrounding their situations, some might wonder why
American Winter's families agreed to be filmed.
"This
is hard," Cox says, "but we're not doing this just for us. This is not
happening just in Portland or just in Houston or just in Philadelphia.
This is happening nationwide. And a lot of people think it's just them."
Melson adds that she wants people to talk about their struggles
"especially if it's happening to them. We want them to become a
community and to feel OK looking for help. Nobody asked to have this
happen to them."
Still 'In Limbo'
Some
of the parents are in better financial situations now than they were
when the film was shot, but that doesn't mean they have regained their
spot in the middle class. Cox, for instance, has managed not to lose his
home to foreclosure — yet.
"We're still in the house," he
says. "But right now I'm in limbo. I don't know where I'm going to be in
30 days. I've never considered it my house; I've always considered it
my kid's house. Geral has Down syndrome, and I know I have to do
something for him for when I'm not around, you know, when he gets older.
And I gotta do things to make his life more comfortable. And I sit and
worry about my kid. What's going to happen to him in 30 years when I'm
not around? That is an absolute scary thought for me."
Melson and Thatcher murmur their agreement.
"It's
really demoralizing," Cox says, "even though I still have the ability
to, more or less, you know, keep my head up and think, 'Well, tomorrow's
another day.' "
http://www.npr.org/2013/03/26/175274579/american-winter-families-struggle-to-survive-fall-from-middle-class?utm_source=NPR&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=20130326
