Reply #15: I'm worried.

[juno jones]

I'm always working pretty much FT but I've never made enough to live alone (I'm a baker, I'm lucky to get $250-$300 a week before tax).

I've always had to rely on sharing rent, usually a spouse, but sometimes roomates. Right now not only my spouse can't find work, but he has repetitive motion injuries from 25 years of silkscreening and can't work the physical labor he used to. His degree is in Graphic Art. His and a couple of million other people who aren't employed either.

I'm ready to buy a travel trailer to move into, I've lived in vans and trailers in the past (while working FT, BTW) but the move is complicated by the fact that I am also now responsible for a teenage boy who ain't gonna fit into a 25' Airstream. And the complications have complications, like it would be all cool if he could work and all but the bus lines don't run around here much after 7 PM and I refuse to have him compromise his study (he's in Running Start here and getting a 3.6 GPA in his college stuff) for a pissant job as long as we can hold out...

And I have two of the coolest kittehs who will have to adjust because I'm not giving them up, and know no one who could take them anyway.

We got about 6 months. And then it looks dire if something doesn't turn around. But I will have a roof over my head, no matter what.

I would certainly like to ask people on the board who have a pretty much been middle class exactly what they thought happened to people who work their asses off for survival wages. Especially when times are shitty like this.

When you bite into that fresh artisan sourdough or French Baguette, think of the people who work weird hours not just doing jobs but loving them. Who do the things you don't want to do or would never know how to do. Who are treated with no respect in our culture because we don't seem to equate 25 years or so studying and producing food, say, to anything culturally important like laywers and the stock market. Lots of degrees amongst the people I've worked with over the years and many who seek to improve themselves, but how many people consider that...or care?

So hard to do much when you're homeless. Call me a socialist if you will, but no one who works for a living should have to go without a home. Hell no one should, working or no. It's like water and food.