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It really isn't that hard to end up homeless... This is the scenario that happened to the lady who bought the house across the street from me:
Had a great business that she inherited from her family (the only business she ever knew), trucking. She owned a few trucks. Bought the house across the street from me and worked her business out of the house. Has 3 kids, ages 17, 12, and 3.
6 months later, her business went dead. Gas prices and a huge lull in manufacturing in Michigan slowed it to a halt. Business went bankrupt. As a result, her income went to 0. She immediately put her house up for sale,but due to the bum economy, housing prices had gone DOWN and she couldn't sell it for what she bought it for a year later. She couldn't pay the mortgage and couldn't sell the house. She ended up foreclosing and filing bankruptcy. She was looking for work, but with no skills other than trucking and three kids and a mortgage to pay, combined with a 7% + unemployment rate in Michigan, she had a hard time finding work. She had taken a job at Walmart, but that didn't cover the mortgage, utilities, food, etc. So, she lost her house, couldn't get an apartment because of her credit rating, couldn't get ADC because she was working (and what she would get from them otherwise was barely enough to cover day care). She ended up moving in, with her 3 kids, to her aunt's trailer.
If she didn't have a relative to move in with, what would she have done?? Some of you make it sound so easy, but the economists still report that 80-90% (depending on which report you read) of Americans are one paycheck away from bankruptcy.. meaning, if they lost their jobs, within one paycheck, they'd be drowning.
That said, I see both sides of the "raising minimum wage" issue. In the late 90's, when things were booming around here, nobody was paying minimum wage. They were begging people to work there. Now that the economy has crashed here, there are former professionals working 2 or 3 minimum wage jobs to make ends meet. It's the basic supply and demand theory and more places can get away with paying only minimum wage.
Also, the services and assistance that are available to people varies greatly from state to state, so you can't assume that someone who can get public assistance in your state can get it in another state. If you do not have children in Michigan, there is no public assistance. The job placement agencies are totally overwhelmed.
There are no easy solutions to these problems. If there were, they wouldn't exist. But don't be quick to judge. Would you be ok if you had to go a few months without a paycheck or if it was reduced by 75%?
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