Do you have any friends or family who have recently (within the last two years)...

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

become homeless due to loss of gainful employment and are now living in their car?

And secondly, do you see this as a real possibility for yourself in the near future?


----------------------------------------------------------

The New York Times writes: "Last year, William R. Alford started keeping a car cover over the station wagon where he sleeps. "I originally just had drapes, but the condensation on the inside of the windows was a dead giveaway," said Mr. Alford, who has been homeless here in the affluent Fairfax County, Virginia since May 2005."

The police are well aquainted with the growing problem of the mobile homeless because they are rousting them from their cars and arresting them for violating local ordinances against sleeping in cars.

The New York Times,"In 2001, officials in Lynnwood, Wash., a suburb of Seattle, passed an ordinance imposing penalties of 90 days in jail or fines of up to $1,000 against people caught living in their cars."

Peter Van Giesen, a code enforcement officer for the town, said that up to 20 cars a night were found with people parking near a park where there were complaints of people using the bushes as a restroom.

"Most of these people were trying to find work," Mr. Van Giesen said.

My own brother in law is a postal worker who delivers those unemployment checks to residents in an upwardly mobile affluent community here in the suburbs of St. Louis. He tells me he once he begins delivering the bi-weekly unemployment checks to residents behind the doors of these beautiful $500,000 homes, it's only a matter of weeks, at best months the family is moved out and a new family is receiving mail at that address. The previous family has fallen off the face of the earth, gone for good, without even leaving a forwarding address. Kinda scary, huh? A small epidemic of formerly affluent familes vanishing from the face of the earth. . . .

Source: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/4/2/93415/04852

[Snarkoleptic]

1. I'm working on it right now.

Had been in the mortgage industry since 1986 and was laid-off back in March.
After months of fruitless searching, I landed a gig at 50% of my prior salary.
Now I'm a 1099 subcontractor with no health insurance or 401(k).
I must say that I'm glad that the uber-wealthy have their tax cuts to fall back on.
I pity them for all of the gruelling decision making they must endure...yacht or vacation villa? Bentley or Rolls?

[CrispyQ]

5. I know several people caught in jobs they hate, but can't afford to leave.

My BIL takes incredible crap from his employer, who knows that all his employees are in fear of losing their jobs so the boss chooses to be a jerk. Sad, how our society upholds bad behavior as something good to do if you can get away with it. If you're rich you'll probably get away with it & if you're rich & famous, you will get away with it.

Good luck to you. I know lots of 1099 subcontractors. It's all part of our new YOYO society -- your on your own. "All Together Now: Common Sense for a Fair Economy," by Jared Bernstein, is a good book & a quick read. Here's an article written by him that sort of summarizes his book.

The United States Goes Yoyo
by Jared Bernstein

snip...

Protecting the rights of individuals has always been a core American value. Yet, in recent years the emphasis on individualism has been pushed to the extreme. When the answer for every problem is a market-based solution — a private account, leavened with a tax cut for the wealthiest — we are trapped.

The message — sometimes implicit but often explicit — is, You’re on your own. Its acronym, YOYO, provides a useful shorthand to summarize this destructive approach to governing.

The concept of YOYO isn’t all that complicated. It’s the prevailing vision of how the United States should be governed. As such, it embodies a set of values, and at the core of the YOYO value system is hyper-individualism.

That is, the notion that whatever the challenges we Americans face as a nation, the best way to solve them is for people to fend for themselves. Over the past few decades, this harmful vision has generated a set of policies with that hyper-individualistic gene throughout their DNA.

One central goal of the YOYO movement — the politicians, lobbyists and economists actively promoting this vision — is to continue and even accelerate the trend toward shifting economic risks from the government and the nation’s corporations onto individuals and their families.

more at link: http://www.theglobalist.com/DBWeb/printStoryId.aspx?StoryId=5437


Your screen name rocks, Snarko!! Welcome to DU!

:hi:

[OlderButWiser]

8. Everybody that I know

hates their job, at least most of the time.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

9. Best of luck to you...

...I know a number of people with substandard or no health insurance coverage.

[OlderButWiser]

2. the qualifier...

..."living in their car" will, most likely, cause a lot of no votes. Most people with family will move in with their extended family in a time of need. I certainly would never let anyone that I care about live in their car.

[Nikia]

17. I agree

My grandmother has told all of her children and grandchildren that if things ever get desperate like that, they are more than welcome to live with her. On the other side of the family, my mother and her brothers are doing alright and my grandfather would probably give them money if they weren't. All of them would let their children live with them or give them money for rent if they had trouble affording housing.
As for my friends here, we live in a low rent area, many places avilable under $400 a month. Most of the lower income friends with extra expenses are sharing a place with a roommate or two. If an actual friend desperately needed a place to stay, we now have a house with enough room that we could host someone without causing a major hardship for us.

[glowing]

3. For me, I don't have much. If I have more, I pay off more bills. I will

work 2 or 3 crappy ass jobs to make it work for my family and my husband will too. If it really came down to it, we'd have family to fall back on so at least we weren't in the streets. When you like simplicity in life and wealth in nature, family time, and the small things that make life real, instead of shiney, big objects that cost too much money, then you will usually be better off financially. That's not to say that I don't have debt. Believe me, there have been times that I've had to dip into the credit pool to make things stretch...

Some people just don't have a connection to fall back on. They don't have a family to take them in or their own family is stretched to thin. One thing I have learned from different people's is that family connection and bond is something to really cherish and work on and make strong. The other is with that with a close community, an environment is created that makes work places good, jobs strong, pay fair, and reliability to lean on one another.

[Th1onein]

4. I am partner in a profitable business......BUT

If the bottom falls out of the economy, the bottom will fall out for everyone. I am in debt, many people depend upon my income, and I am scrambling to pay off the debt so that if the bottom does fall out, I am left with something.

[CrispyQ]

6. Excellent commentary.

Thanks for sharing.

snip...

I think its easier to have lived your entire life in abject poverty than to struggle to work your way into the middle class and then suffer the indignity and humiliation of losing everything you own, but your automobile. I know because I've been there and back in the Reagan era. And if a sheriff ever shows up at my home with eviction papers again, he'll end up evicting lifeless corpse from my home. One can only live in "interesting times" for so long.

In five short years we've evolved a liberal democracy, to a neo-conservative oligarchy and the next phase of the Bush economic development plan is neo-Feudal barbarism.

Your social rank of persona-non grata in the neo-Feudal ecomony comes to you courtesy of a ruthless and spiteful aristocratic president who lives to serve the whims of the ruling corporate oligarchy.

===

We lost our home in the S&L crisis & I am so sorry for the pain that so many are/will be going through.

[OlderButWiser]

7. What makes you think...

...that if the bottom falls out they will let you keep your car?

[blues90]

10. My wife and I are heading for that life in the car if

Things don't change real soon . I recall two years ago seeing an older full sized car pull up in front of our apt . it had a wooden painted to match carrier mounted to the roof and an old man and women eating their bagged lunch , I knew all they owned was in their car and they lived a life in their car and it was sad .

Now I'm looking at this as our reality since finding any job at my age seems to be close to hopeless and I'm only 58 .

Neither of us has a family to go back to so we either have a hope of my finding work soon or an eviction notice to find two body's inside or a slow death on the street living in a small car . I wish I still had the old van we owned at least you could move around and hope .

It's a sorry situation for so many people and having laws and fines for those who have run out of luck is a crime in itself , who cares if someone sleeps in their car with all the cars parked everywhere . Sure place more of a burden on the broken people that's the american way .

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

11. It is appalling that municipalities can think of...

...nothing but to criminalize sleeping/living in one's car, rather than try to help people.

What kind of work do you do, if you don't mind my asking?

[blues90]

13. I have worked at ford dealerships for over 30 years

In the service dept as either a manager or service advisor and used to be a tech but can't hold up physically in that manner anymore > I was also a shop foreman .

I have tried every dealer , ford and all others with now progress , most others want their models experience even when they know I can do the job .

Mnay ford dealers have closed around here since of all the years of recalls and poor quality and ford is not hiring .

I know customer service but have not got any interviews in over a year . It's all knowing a product and dealing with customer concerns which I am good at . It does not matter if you fax or email a resume and the amount of jobs has dropped alot in the last year . Most are termed part time for some reason .

I have on hope since I know woodworking and have built my own guitars at a guitar shop next month went they return from their vacation from Aug .

If at least there were help wanted signs with walkin then I could at least sell myself but it's all computer with no phone contacts these days .

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

14. Building your own guitars makes you a fine...

...craftsman in my book -- I'm no woodworking expert (I've slammed a birdhouse or two together), but a guitar doesn't sound like a trivial project.

I'm just thinking out loud here, but if I had your craftsmanship skills, and in view of a falling dollar that looks like its going to continue to fall, I wonder if you could find an export trading company (ETC) that would be interested in brokering some items that you could fabricate. There are some things, like guitars, that don't lend themselves to the child labor assembly lines like they have in China.

I know it's easy for me or anybody to throw out suggestions (I hope you don't find it annoying) and I realize this would require some research on your part as to what kinds of things to fabricate and where they might fetch a decent price.

Your customer service background should readily transfer to many kinds of businesses and job titles. Sometimes walking in places that aren't advertising just to inquire pays off, if not immediately, later on if you leave contact information.

I wish I had something better to offer. The most important things I know about job searching are to be creative in selling yourself, don't screen yourself (let them do that), and don't give up. The last one is the hardest, but those who learn to become callous to rejection are usually the ones who end up landing something -- easier said than done, I know.

I wish the best of luck to you and your wife.

[undeterred]

12. Look in the Poverty forum

There are lots of us on the edge. I was almost there this summer, then I found a job in the nick of time. But its not really a good enough job. And every job gives you less and less in the way of benefits, and every corporation I trust less than the last one. They are a person, I am not.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

15. I will do that, thanks for reminding me of it. nt.

[Karenina]

16. I lived in my car. Datsun 280Z

The woman at the shelter turned me away saying I had no business there and would be safer in my car. From Z BUGR I dealt with getting a job that would allow me to be available to my son's school on short notice (he was diagnosed autistic and I'd gotten him mainstreamed at a Montessori. I'd been counseled to institutionalize him. He graduated from University in May.) It was more than 2 years ago so I'll take my leave now.