Working Poor
Related: About this forumSuburbanites are becoming the new face of homelessness in America
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/10/suburbanites-are-becoming-the-new-face-of-homelessness-in-america/Suburbanites are becoming the new face of homelessness in America
The Guardian
14 Oct 2015 at 14:03 ET
People look at me and say, Youre not homeless, says Rita Sharratt, a 57-year-old grandmother of three. And I look right at them and say, Yes I am.
Sharratt is sitting at a table at the New Life Evangelistic Center , a homeless shelter in the heart of downtown St Louis. New Life is a 25-minute drive from Bridgeton, Missouri, the quiet suburban town where Sharratt lived until 2013. In her former life, Sharratt was a telecommunications specialist, earning an average of $50,000-$60,000 a year. In 2000 her husband fell ill, and as his health worsened she quit her job to care for him full time. They lived off his retirement money and Social Security until February 2012, when he passed away.
Thats when everything fell apart. Sharratt, now in her 50s, couldnt find a job in a St Louis economy decimated by the recession, and felt discriminated against due to her age. She burned through her savings, and in 2013 foreclosure on her house began. Sharratt discovered that her mortgage lender had sold her bank loan to another financial establishment, but had written it only in her deceased husbands name.
Bank of America would not talk with me to negotiate, no matter what I tried, she recalls. They said they couldnt because my name wasnt on the loan. In September 2013 they kicked me and my grandchildren out.
Aristus
(66,082 posts)and shock the hell out of a lot of people.
Between 2008, when I left the clinic where I had been working as a Medical Assistant to train as a Physician Assistant, and 2011, when I returned, the face of homelessness changed substantially. Previously, many of our patients had conformed to what most people think of as homeless; unkempt, bedraggled, wearing all of their clothes and carrying all of their possessions. Mentally ill, addicted to one drug or another, no hope of betterment, etc.
WhenI started providing care there as a PA, I was a little shocked by how many of my new patients were clean, well-dressed, well-educated, etc. They had been living one paycheck away from the streets, like a lot of Americans, and had had their lives devastated by the incompetent idiots on Wall Street.
People who know me, but don't share my liberal beliefs, know better than to disrespect the homeless around me.