By Nohel Pineda
Many families in the U.S. are affected by poverty, including mine. We are a family of four in my household. We’re currently living in San Jose, California, and it’s very rough living here mainly because of how expensive rent and houses are.
Both my parents are undocumented, so it makes it ten times harder to buy a house. My stepfather, Fredy Landaverry, is a mechanic. However, he is currently not living with us due to disagreements with my mother. He still takes my sister and me out weekly and supports us with school supplies, clothes, rent, phones etc. He’s still in our everyday lives; he’s just not living with us.
My mother, Mayra Velasquez, on the other hand, works two part-time jobs in order to help our well-being as a family. She was asked how much time she has spent in her current situation of working two jobs. She said, “Teniendo dos trabajos no me la paso mucho tiempo en la casa, porque hasta los luneses ha vierneses comienzo a las cinco de la mañana y salgo alas dos de la tarde. Cuando vengo a mi casa tengo como una hora para descansar, porque comienzo a las tres en el otro trabajo menos el tiempo que uso para comer y venir desde el otro trabajo para la casa y de vuelvo cambiarme y hacer la rutina de nuevo.” Translated, she said, “Having two jobs I do not spend much time in the house because until Monday to Friday I start at five in the morning and leave at two in the afternoon. When I come to my house I have an hour to rest because I start at three for my other job, minus the time I use to eat and coming from my other work to my house and I return to change and do the routine again.”
Mayra works in a cookie factory in her morning shift and as a cashier at Chavez Supermarket in the evening. Along the years she’s worked a variety of jobs and never managed to escape working minimum wage jobs. She’s always looked for a job that would pay the most in order to support her family. It’s been really hard for her knowing that she doesn’t spend too much time with her kids.
For years we’ve been trying to buy a much bigger house with a backyard, so that our dog can feel more free outside and so that we can all live together. But, it’s much harder considering the fact that both my parents are undocumented. Houses are very expensive in the Bay Area. As much as my family and I would love to live in a newer home here in San Jose it just seems impossible; it would take a miracle. The median home value in San Jose averages up to $1,089,500 and the home value has gone up 19.0% the past year. The lowest marketing value in San Jose for a home was $484k in January of 2012 and has risen up to 1.09M in September of 2018. Information provided by www.zillow.com. Rent is also ridiculously expensive. Some reasons reason why many people still live in San Jose and don’t move is mainly because you get paid very well here and people enjoy the climate.
My family's suffered a lot especially in San Jose because you will never have enough to maintain a decent life here. My mother works two jobs and in between her shifts she gets a one hour break in between. My family isn’t the problem.
Moreover, minimum wage jobs aren’t enough to support a family of four. According to an online article called “Living Wage and How It Compares to the Minimum Wage” from the source The Balance, “Since the national minimum wage wasn't enough, the city raised the minimum wage to $8.00/hour. This is enough for a single person, but falls short for a family of four, which requires $17.78 to cover the basic costs. Even if both parents work full-time, making a total of $16.00/hour, is not enough.”
That would be in Springfield, Illinois where the living wage is $7.89 hourly. The text also mentions “Even those making the minimum wage and living above the poverty level aren't making a living wage. For example, the cheapest city in the country is Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The MIT living wage calculator says that a single person must earn $8.11/hour to afford living there. That covers the average housing, medical, food, and transportation costs.” That’s very cheap if you ask me. Unlike other places in the U.S. like San Jose, California, rent is very expensive and unfortunately working a minimum wage job isn't enough to support one person, let alone a family.
We ask ourselves, “What can the government do to prevent this from happening?” Well, a study done by a Harvard economists Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren found that one's neighborhood directly affects you and your income. They said, "In the Moving to Opportunity experiment in the mid-to-late 1990s, 4,600 families living in public housing entered a lottery in which the winners were offered a voucher that enabled them to move to better neighborhoods.” This was used because in real life the chances of you being born rich or poor are basically like winning the lottery.
The economists grouped the families that had moved with a toddler and the ones that moved with a teenager. They found that “The children who moved when they were young enjoyed much greater economic success than similarly aged children who had not won the lottery. And the children who moved when they were older experienced no gains or perhaps worse outcomes, probably the result of a disruptive move, paired with few benefits from spending only a short time in a better neighborhood.”
This study shows that families who move in a better neighborhood have a higher chance of getting out of poverty than others. However, that’s not the only way poverty can be fixed. You see, Peter Edelman once mentioned that the government can “make the rich pay their fair share of running the country, raise the minimum wage, provide health care and a decent safety net.”
The key ways of fixing poverty are: the government can settle the poor in a better neighborhood where they can slowly build their foundation, or two the government can have the rich people pay more; that would help the poor and raise the minimum wages at work. The government should do more to prevent poverty and most importantly help these families.
Most families, very much like mine, are affected by this due to the fact that we spend less time with each other almost all of the time. It honestly saddens me when we don’t spend much time together as a family the way my sister and I would like to. My ten-year-old sister, Linda Landaverry, is affected by this because she’s not having the childhood she would receive if we were all living together and weren’t constantly at school or at work.
The reason why the poor remain poor is not because they are lazy, but because they have the lack of opportunity to escape the low class due to the governments selfishness. The government can do so much to help the poor from getting out of poverty but don’t do enough.
The numbers just further prove how resettling the poor in a new and better neighborhood increases their chances in succeeding than just not doing anything at all.
Many families in the U.S. are affected by poverty, including mine. We are a family of four in my household. We’re currently living in San Jose, California, and it’s very rough living here mainly because of how expensive rent and houses are.
Both my parents are undocumented, so it makes it ten times harder to buy a house. My stepfather, Fredy Landaverry, is a mechanic. However, he is currently not living with us due to disagreements with my mother. He still takes my sister and me out weekly and supports us with school supplies, clothes, rent, phones etc. He’s still in our everyday lives; he’s just not living with us.
My mother, Mayra Velasquez, on the other hand, works two part-time jobs in order to help our well-being as a family. She was asked how much time she has spent in her current situation of working two jobs. She said, “Teniendo dos trabajos no me la paso mucho tiempo en la casa, porque hasta los luneses ha vierneses comienzo a las cinco de la mañana y salgo alas dos de la tarde. Cuando vengo a mi casa tengo como una hora para descansar, porque comienzo a las tres en el otro trabajo menos el tiempo que uso para comer y venir desde el otro trabajo para la casa y de vuelvo cambiarme y hacer la rutina de nuevo.” Translated, she said, “Having two jobs I do not spend much time in the house because until Monday to Friday I start at five in the morning and leave at two in the afternoon. When I come to my house I have an hour to rest because I start at three for my other job, minus the time I use to eat and coming from my other work to my house and I return to change and do the routine again.”
Mayra works in a cookie factory in her morning shift and as a cashier at Chavez Supermarket in the evening. Along the years she’s worked a variety of jobs and never managed to escape working minimum wage jobs. She’s always looked for a job that would pay the most in order to support her family. It’s been really hard for her knowing that she doesn’t spend too much time with her kids.
For years we’ve been trying to buy a much bigger house with a backyard, so that our dog can feel more free outside and so that we can all live together. But, it’s much harder considering the fact that both my parents are undocumented. Houses are very expensive in the Bay Area. As much as my family and I would love to live in a newer home here in San Jose it just seems impossible; it would take a miracle. The median home value in San Jose averages up to $1,089,500 and the home value has gone up 19.0% the past year. The lowest marketing value in San Jose for a home was $484k in January of 2012 and has risen up to 1.09M in September of 2018. Information provided by www.zillow.com. Rent is also ridiculously expensive. Some reasons reason why many people still live in San Jose and don’t move is mainly because you get paid very well here and people enjoy the climate.
My family's suffered a lot especially in San Jose because you will never have enough to maintain a decent life here. My mother works two jobs and in between her shifts she gets a one hour break in between. My family isn’t the problem.
Moreover, minimum wage jobs aren’t enough to support a family of four. According to an online article called “Living Wage and How It Compares to the Minimum Wage” from the source The Balance, “Since the national minimum wage wasn't enough, the city raised the minimum wage to $8.00/hour. This is enough for a single person, but falls short for a family of four, which requires $17.78 to cover the basic costs. Even if both parents work full-time, making a total of $16.00/hour, is not enough.”
That would be in Springfield, Illinois where the living wage is $7.89 hourly. The text also mentions “Even those making the minimum wage and living above the poverty level aren't making a living wage. For example, the cheapest city in the country is Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The MIT living wage calculator says that a single person must earn $8.11/hour to afford living there. That covers the average housing, medical, food, and transportation costs.” That’s very cheap if you ask me. Unlike other places in the U.S. like San Jose, California, rent is very expensive and unfortunately working a minimum wage job isn't enough to support one person, let alone a family.
We ask ourselves, “What can the government do to prevent this from happening?” Well, a study done by a Harvard economists Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren found that one's neighborhood directly affects you and your income. They said, "In the Moving to Opportunity experiment in the mid-to-late 1990s, 4,600 families living in public housing entered a lottery in which the winners were offered a voucher that enabled them to move to better neighborhoods.” This was used because in real life the chances of you being born rich or poor are basically like winning the lottery.
The economists grouped the families that had moved with a toddler and the ones that moved with a teenager. They found that “The children who moved when they were young enjoyed much greater economic success than similarly aged children who had not won the lottery. And the children who moved when they were older experienced no gains or perhaps worse outcomes, probably the result of a disruptive move, paired with few benefits from spending only a short time in a better neighborhood.”
This study shows that families who move in a better neighborhood have a higher chance of getting out of poverty than others. However, that’s not the only way poverty can be fixed. You see, Peter Edelman once mentioned that the government can “make the rich pay their fair share of running the country, raise the minimum wage, provide health care and a decent safety net.”
The key ways of fixing poverty are: the government can settle the poor in a better neighborhood where they can slowly build their foundation, or two the government can have the rich people pay more; that would help the poor and raise the minimum wages at work. The government should do more to prevent poverty and most importantly help these families.
Most families, very much like mine, are affected by this due to the fact that we spend less time with each other almost all of the time. It honestly saddens me when we don’t spend much time together as a family the way my sister and I would like to. My ten-year-old sister, Linda Landaverry, is affected by this because she’s not having the childhood she would receive if we were all living together and weren’t constantly at school or at work.
The reason why the poor remain poor is not because they are lazy, but because they have the lack of opportunity to escape the low class due to the governments selfishness. The government can do so much to help the poor from getting out of poverty but don’t do enough.
The numbers just further prove how resettling the poor in a new and better neighborhood increases their chances in succeeding than just not doing anything at all.