Raising 5 Kids in a Tiny Camper? The Atrocious Ways America Treats Poor Women and Children

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/hard-times-usa/raising-5-kids-tiny-camper-atrocious-ways-america-treats-poor-women-and-children



Leaving her husband became the only option for "Stacy" after he became violent with the children. She returned to her hometown, Las Cruces, NM, with her 5 little boys in tow. Other than lacking an emergency family shelter, this is a pleasant mid-sized city. The family stayed for a while at the domestic violence shelter. Her time there ended without her finding housing, and she scrambled for a desperate, stopgap solution: her mother’s old, tiny camper.

For $300 a month, including utilities, the family could park their leaky camper in a park in her town. She had no money. We connected at the campground and made arrangements with the manager. Stacy didn’t have the prerequisite water and sewer hoses or electrical adapters.

For years, I've travelled the country meeting families in desperate straights. My 27’ motorhome teaches me how to live small, but I cringed as I left her and her under-9 troop of boys in their 13’ tin-can-home. She stalwartly said they’d make it despite sporadic child support, a host of legal and custodial issues swarming around her, unaddressed trauma lingering like storm clouds, and the challenges of raising a large family in miniscule space.

Much of what I have continued to learn about the inadequacies of our so-called safety net I’ve learned from families like Stacy’s. As with everything else, it’s theory and reality. The theory—resources are available to assist families in homeless situations—is dreadfully far removed from reality. Let me explain.

[Fridays Child]

1. k/r

[cali]

2. I certainly agree with the article's gist

but could we stop underestimating poor people?

I know more than a few families- headed mostly by single moms- who did great jobs with their kids despite the obstacles of poverty. And where are those kids now? Grown up in the 20s, 30s and early 40s and largely doing spectacularly well.

I'll give you one example: My friend Mary was a a high school dropout married and with a kid at 17. Divorced at 19, she met and married a man who was a serious alcoholic and abused her badly. She had two more kids with him. They lived without running water or electricity. She left him when her youngest was 3 and moved into a barn with her 3 kids. She got her GED, went to college got both her B.A. and M.A., became a guidance counselor. 2 out of her 3 kids went to college. One is pursuing a dual M.D. PhD. The one who didn't go to college became a skilled cabinet maker.

That doesn't mean that we don't treat poor people horribly in this country or that we shouldn't do a fuck of a lot more to help, but poor people can be amazing in their resilience and determination and they deserve huge credit for it.

[Fumesucker]

5. Class mobility in the US is among the lowest in the developed world

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality#Gini_coefficient.2C_after_taxes_and_transfers

[cali]

7. Yep. I'm not arguing that- though I hate that phrase "the developed world"

I'm just saying that we don't give enough credit to poor people.

[FBaggins]

8. Wrong link

Income inequality is not the same thing as class immobility.

[raccoon]

34. That refers to UPWARD class mobility, I presume. nt

[duffyduff]

30. Tell me, have you ever really done it, and I mean having worked for decades

in middle-class employment and then suddenly got shit on and illegally fired and then can't get ANY stable employment?

Don't hand me this patronizing nonsense that the poor are "resilient." Most cannot rise above it, and, by the way, the Horatio Alger myth is just that, a myth.

It's really an insult.

[Le Taz Hot]

3. So, where are all those anti-choicers now?

Hmmmmm???

[HiPointDem]

4. +100. But...

Spurred by my mentor and ferocious radical Mitch Snyder’s relentless hunger strikes and activism, President Reagan directed Congress to designate a modicum of money and administrative attention to address homelessness back in 1987. The McKinney Act, now the McKinney-Vento Act, is the supposedly comprehensive federal plan to address homelessness.

I think this is not a correct framing, nor is the framing of homeless assistance as things like emergency shelters.

Homelessness, as a national mass problem, was created under Reagan. Before that, it was much less common (speaking of the period roughly 1940-1980). It reemerged as the direct result of two things: the Carter/Reagan recessions and Reagan policy.

By the end of Reagan’s term in office federal assistance to local governments was cut 60 percent. Reagan eliminated general revenue sharing to cities, slashed funding for public service jobs and job training, almost dismantled federally funded legal services for the poor, cut the anti-poverty Community Development Block Grant program and reduced funds for public transit. The only “urban” program that survived the cuts was federal aid for highways – which primarily benefited suburbs, not cities.

These cutbacks had a disastrous effect on cities with high levels of poverty and limited property tax bases, many of which depended on federal aid. In 1980 federal dollars accounted for 22 percent of big city budgets. By the end of Reagan’s second term, federal aid was only 6 percent.

The most dramatic cut in domestic spending during the Reagan years was for low-income housing subsidies. Reagan appointed a housing task force dominated by politically connected developers, landlords and bankers. In 1982 the task force released a report that called for “free and deregulated” markets as an alternative to government assistance – advice Reagan followed. In his first year in office Reagan halved the budget for public housing and Section 8 to about $17.5 billion. And for the next few years he sought to eliminate federal housing assistance to the poor altogether.

In the 1980s the proportion of the eligible poor who received federal housing subsidies declined. In 1970 there were 300,000 more low-cost rental units (6.5 million) than low-income renter households (6.2 million). By 1985 the number of low-cost units had fallen to 5.6 million, and the number of low-income renter households had grown to 8.9 million, a disparity of 3.3 million units.

http://www.nhi.org/online/issues/135/reagan.html

Making note of it because so much of current discourse takes it for granted that homelessness has always existed and is a problem of individuals who are dysfunctional, rather than of a social organization that creates homelessness in its basic operations.

[Glitterati]

6. This is Paul Ryan's budget, writ large

it's what the republicans want for anyone not rich.

[RILib]

9. how about not having five kids?

Just a question from the 130% over carrying capacity planet.

[Glitterati]

10. How about reading the story?

The woman escaped the father of those children when he started abusing them. After he finished abusing her.

How about circumstances change AFTER one has had children?

Should a woman who has 5 kids in a marriage, husband killed in a car wreck on the way to work one morning, be equally condemned?

You make me sick with your snap judgements and holier than thou BS.

[demwing]

16. OP not concerned

With circumstances.

5 kids is apparently a crime against the planet.

[Glitterati]

18. Obviously

These folks think it would have been OK for her to "give" the abuser one of the kids to beat and kill. They think, at least then, she'd have a home and wouldn't be a burden on society. (With the added bonus that there's one less kid on the planet.)

Urrrrgh! These people make me sick, sick, sick. Paul Ryan wannabes.

[TheManInTheMac]

35. People who complain about excess

population never consider themselves part of the excess. After all, they're smart, and us dumbasses need them to tell us how to live.

[dixiegrrrrl]

23. It should be noted she also became pregnant again, with #6

after leaving the husband.

[Glitterati]

25. Your point is?

What?

Hopefully, it's that poor women have no access to birth control - they worry about FEEDING their children, not the pill.

Somehow, I have a feeling more "blame the victim" is on the way.

on edit:
I believe she started with 4 and had number 5, BTW. Otherwise, the title to the story might be "Raising 6...." doncha think?

[dixiegrrrrl]

37. I actually read the article, where it says....

"Leaving her husband became the only option for "Stacy" after he became violent with the children.
She returned to her hometown, Las Cruces, NM, with her 5 little boys in tow."
The family stayed for a while at the domestic violence shelter."

then further down in the story, after she and 5 little boys got the 13 foot camper,

"Stacy and her boys would not get out of their 13’ camper for a brutal 6 months......
In that time, because of the trauma she’s experienced that tends to make women vulnerable for bad relationships,
she became pregnant.
This loving mother didn’t consider another mouth to feed as a problem."

My post to which you replied said nothing about blaming the victim.
When you have been around DU longer, you will find that I tend to post facts,
and if I post my opinion I am clear about that.

[Earth_First]

11. You are more than welcome to jump off a bridge...

You can help the carrying capacity of the planet; starting with YOU!

[gollygee]

13. And we have the first post that blames the victim

She runs from domestic abuse, and has trouble getting even the essentials of life together in our society created entirely for the benefit of 1% of the population, but the real problem is that she shouldn't have had five kids.

[demwing]

14. you speak for the planet?

Cool job bro!

[grilled onions]

12. Sad When Her Living Space....

is less then the 1 per centers cars,yachts and their kids play areas!
How nice when the rules say Women pregnant--an asset, women with kids--a liability.
Women get punished staying in an abusive relationship.Women get punished, in other ways, when they leave an abusive relationship.
It's not bad enough when she feels guilty for her wrong choices but it must be so hard on her when she sees her children have to suffer. She can't help them and those that can ignore her very existence.

[gollygee]

15. I'm not in the 1%

But you did make me calculate their square footage to the square footage of my kids' play room, and it is close anyway. Thank you for the perspective.

[bullwinkle428]

26. I would wager the 1%ers average walk-in closet is considerably

bigger than the space this Mom is being forced to raise her kids in.

[Egalitarian Thug]

17. In a nation with more empty houses than homeless people. An obvious solution would be to take back

the empty houses that we've already paid for and put them to use, but of course that would mean doing the right thing by giving somebody something and we can't have that because some redneck asshole is going to bitch about it.

[Glitterati]

19. Now, you're just being silly

The house on the corner from mine is obviously worth something, even though it's empty, has had no maintenance, is not cared for, and is obviously owned by some bank. It's more valuable than a woman and her 5 kids!

Just in case, I need this

[Egalitarian Thug]

22. Yeah I know. I'm just an unrealistic, pony-wanting, bleeding heart, purist.

Putting the needs of people before greed, what was I thinking?

[Orrex]

20. It's all her fault for making bad choices

At least, that's the gist of what I read on DU several times each week from the progressive bootstrap crowd.


k/r

[abelenkpe]

21. This article next to the one about google execs

Making millions in bonuses.....


Our society is messed up.

[yellowcanine]

24. So why isn't the deadbeat dad being forced to provide housing and pay child support?

Our system of child protection is so screwed up. The dad should have to move out and pay child support so the children can stay in the house with the mother.

[Glitterati]

27. Did you bother to read the story?

For years, I've travelled the country meeting families in desperate straights. My 27’ motorhome teaches me how to live small, but I cringed as I left her and her under-9 troop of boys in their 13’ tin-can-home. She stalwartly said they’d make it despite sporadic child support, a host of legal and custodial issues swarming around her, unaddressed trauma lingering like storm clouds, and the challenges of raising a large family in miniscule space.

I'm certain she could push the support issue - because then, the abuser, living in a HOME she left to protect her children would take custody of those children so he could finish beating the hell out of them.

[yellowcanine]

28. So - your argument with my take is that the system is NOT screwed up?

To answer the question, yes, I read the story. And it confirms that our child protection system is really screwed up. There should be no question of an abuser not being allowed to have custody of children or having to move out of the family home and pay child support.

[Glitterati]

29. Didn't say that

Clearly, you have a comprehension problem, then as it was clearly addressed in the article.

Custody issues are the realm of the courts, not CPS.

[yellowcanine]

31. "Custody issues are the realm of the courts, not CPS."

Yes, and that is part of the reason the child protection system is screwed up. Courts and CPS need to work together to protect children. I am comprehending just fine. I am not willing to accept the status quo regarding protecting children. It needs to change so that children are in fact, protected. Systems which allow children to be homeless just because the father is an abuser and a deadbeat need to change.

[Glitterati]

33. Perhaps you need to have a conversation with your legislators

The courts did what they are empowered to do:

1. They obviously gave the Mother custody; and

2. They ordered child support.

They DID all they could to protect the children. Perhaps laws to go further, empowering the courts are necessary.

That would be on YOU and I to lobby for. Perhaps just complaining about the system on a message board isn't the most productive use of your time.

[yellowcanine]

36. Not mutually exclusive. The issue came up here. I commented on it because that is the purpose of

discussion boards. Discussing things here doesn't mean one can't do anything else on the issue. And the fact that the courts did all that they could do (debatable) does not mean that it is useless to suggest they should be able to do more.

[duffyduff]

32. I can't believe some of the responses here

This woman shouldn't have had all of those kids in the first place, the poor are truly "resilient" all the while upward mobility has been kicked out from under them, etc.

[Warpy]

38. And she was in a park. Colonias here are far worse

and equal anything you'd find in rural Mexico for squalor: derelict camper shells on blocks, no electricity, no water, no sewer, just a bunch of derelict boxes on blocks and full of marginal workers and their children.

You're allowed to fall a lot farther down in NM than you were in Boston.

[demosocialist]

39. K&R nt