Читать книгу Living on the Edge - Celine-Marie Pascale - Страница 17

In Northern Appalachia, my trip begins in West Virginia, and Southeast Ohio, just as autumn arrives.¹ The beauty of this region is breathtaking and seemingly unending. I take US 33, a two-lane road that winds through the wooded mountains of West Virginia. Much of the time there is a steep hill on one side and a drop off to the Little Kanawha River on the other. The narrow, winding mountain road is well-traveled by cars, pickups, and enormous coal trucks, all keeping pace with the 55 mph speed limit. For forty miles I search for a berm, a pullout, or a crossroad. There are none. My palms sweat every time I see a truck in my rearview mirror. Occasionally a small piece of land crops up between the road and the hillside, or between the road and the river. Single-wide trailers, and now and then a rambler, are nestled into these isolated patches.

This region was once home to many Native Americans, including the Shawnee, Cherokee, Manahoac, Monacan Chippewa, Delaware, Iroquois, Mingo, Miami, Seneca, and Wyandot. By 1843, all Native peoples had been forcibly removed from the region. By 1863, when West Virginia was founded, it was a racially segregated state in which it was illegal to register a child as “Indian” at birth.² And it remained illegal to indicate Native American ancestry on birth records until 1965, a year after the Civil Rights Act. In 2017, when my journey begins, census records identify the region as 90% white; the presence of Native peoples lingers only in the names of places – like the Little Kanawha River. There are no federally recognized Indian nations in North Central Appalachia today.

The winding mountain road is itself an historical site. Designated in 2015 as the Blue-Gray Highway, it became an official reminder of the numerous Civil War battles fought in the area. Although I don’t see mention of the battles, I count three Confederate flags on this stretch of road – fewer than I had expected. Even so, I find them unnerving. Carried today by white supremacists on their marches, the flag is an emblem of the Confederacy and feels like a warning.

Eventually, the landscape opens to a crossroad, and the Little Kanawha River joins the wide and winding Ohio River. Where West Virginia and Ohio meet, an enormous coal power plant rises from the flatland along the Ohio River and looms over empty grassy lots that line the street. The place could be a scene from the old TV show The Twilight Zone. It looks as if the houses were plucked up, leaving driveways, patios and lawns intact. Smokestacks from the coal plant that look like nuclear reactors quietly churn out billowing clouds as a lawnmower drives back and forth across the empty landscape. This had been the village of Cheshire; the power company polluted the town so severely they paid $20 million to buy out residents.³ I’ll return to this in Chapter 3, but for now the journey continues northward toward Athens. In minutes, a beautiful cable-stayed bridge takes me across the Ohio River to Pomeroy, Ohio. The $65 million bridge is stunning both in its modern expanse and its dissonance in relationship to the former village of Cheshire and the economically distressed town of Pomeroy, which it connects.

Pomeroy, the county seat for Meigs County, was once a mining town producing both salt and coal. Its claim to fame rests on its being the first town to load a coal barge onto the Ohio River. In the 1990s the mining industries shut down and the economic distress in Pomeroy is evident. Historic buildings with charming facades still line the streets, yet closed storefronts outnumber open businesses on the main thoroughfare. The town looks out onto the grand Ohio River and it’s easy to imagine this as a tourist destination, the historic buildings filled with cafés, restaurants, and specialty shops. But just across the river, in Cheshire, the Kyger Creek and Gavin Power Plant burns about 35,000 tons of coal per day. It’s rated as one of the most polluting power plants in the country.

The Pomeroy–Mason Bridge connects the former village of Cheshire with Pomeroy, Ohio.

Eventually, I reach Athens County, Ohio. It is one of eighty-three counties in Appalachia rated as distressed by the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC), and one of six distressed counties in Southeast Ohio.⁴ Counties designated as “distressed” face significant structural challenges and place economically in the bottom 10% of counties nationally. Before the pandemic, the poverty rate in Athens County hovered at 33%. In towns throughout the county the economic hardship is evident in the quality of housing, the number of cars that are falling apart, the number of shuttered businesses as well as in the kinds of businesses that remain open. Along some of the county’s back roads, ramshackle trailers and dilapidated houses rise precariously in the hollows and hillsides. On the surface, these communities resemble those I have seen on Native American reservations.

Athens County once prospered from its brickwork, including the renowned star bricks.

Unlike many Appalachian counties, Athens County is home to two colleges. Ohio University, located in the city of Athens, has approximately 23,000 students – equal to the number of local residents in the city and about one-third of the entire county population. The university has a big impact. Although the majority of students come to the university from red counties in Ohio, their presence at OU tilts the town toward more progressive politics than those of the surrounding communities. Out of eighty-eight counties in Ohio, Athens County is one of five blue counties. Students bring an influx of cash into the economy that supports restaurants and local businesses. They also push rents higher. Landlords can make more money by renting a house by the bedroom to students than by renting the entire unit to a single family. Affordable housing for locals in Athens County is rare. In addition, the large student body competes with locals for service industry jobs and arguably drives down wages in those jobs. As in most college towns, locals tend to view the student population as a mixed blessing. The town has a reputation for a drinking culture. On the main drag of Court Street, I count twenty-two bars in three blocks and quickly find fourteen additional places to go for a drink in side streets. All of them are successful businesses that operate all year.

With ARC support, Nelsonville, Ohio, is working to renovate and rebuild an historic town square in which they can host cultural activities for the communities in Athens County.

Just twenty minutes up the road from Athens is the second largest city in Athens County, Nelsonville, home to 5,300 people. There I find an emerging arts community thanks to revitalization projects funded by the Appalachian Regional Commission. Although the ARC is slated to be defunded by the federal government, its contributions to this community are clear. With ARC funding the gorgeous old opera house on the town square is being refurbished to serve as an arts and music center for the community. And, thanks to ARC cash infusions and an industrious core of volunteer residents, the town hosts car shows and a smoked meat festival that draw people from around the county.

Nelsonville is home to Hocking College, a small, two-year technical college with majors in areas such as equine studies, nursing, construction, and food service. The college adds about 2,100 students to the local population. As in Athens, and other college towns across the country, landlords here push rents higher by renting houses by the bedroom to college students. If Ohio University in Athens has not been able to shake a reputation for drugs and alcohol, Hocking has not been able to shake a reputation for scandal generated by sexual assaults, race-based hate crimes, and administrative mismanagement. Athens and Nelsonville are the largest towns in the county, which also includes eight small villages salted across 508 square miles.⁵

Michael Chase lives in Athens County and is working two part-time service industry jobs when we meet. With one white parent and one Black, Michael characterizes himself as American Black, “because when I say I’m Black, people ask me if I’m Ethiopian, so I’ll just say American Black.” Michael grew up in the area and has a high school degree. At age twenty-one, he is part of a generation that turns to the internet for news, social media, and impressive amounts of random trivia – like the history of straws. He is clearly a smart and engaged person, but college was never part of the plan for Michael. In his senior year, when he had his first conversations about college with friends, he realized he wanted to go, but he didn’t know what he wanted to study. Some families spend thousands of dollars on college prep courses, others spend tens of thousands of dollars on college-counseling services, and still others expect their child to walk in the front door of an elite university as a “legacy” acceptance. There was none of this for Michael. No one seemed to have college in mind for him. Not his parents, not his teachers, and not the school guidance counselors. His future seemed to end with high school. Now Michael is more aware of the hazards he faces in life than of the opportunities he might have as a college student. “I’ll say for right now, I’m only twenty-one. I don’t have kids. I’m not in jail or prison. I’m not out here doing drugs or drunk driving or anything. I like to just work, hang out with friends. As for my future, I don’t know.”

Michael currently works a night shift at the front desk of hotel and a day shift at a nonprofit – both jobs are in the city of Athens. He thinks of himself as fortunate because although his work schedules vary each week, his hours never conflict. Neither job guarantees Michael a set number of hours or specific days. He might work weekends or weekdays – he discovers his days and hours each week when the schedules are posted. Since he never knows how many hours will be available to him in the future, he scrambles for all the time he can get. This means that on some days he works an eight-hour shift at each job. It also means he can go for days without working at all. There is no economic security, even though these are permanent positions. The constant variability of his work hours also makes it difficult if not impossible for him to schedule any personal appointments in advance.

Between his two jobs, Michael earns less than $16,000 a year; he doesn’t have health insurance, sick leave, or vacation time. He shares an apartment with three other people – a situation he finds stressful – and still he worries at times about making his rent. When he works back-to-back eight-hour shifts for some length of time, Michael has been able to save as much as $500, which he tells me makes him feel quite rich. It also exhausts him. Days later he is still catching up on sleep. Despite his high energy and easy laughter, the dark circles under his eyes give away the pressure he is under. Almost everyone I meet in Southeast Ohio works multiple service industry jobs. In the area, it is common practice in the service industry to hire part-time workers. Locals believe this is intentional. It saves the companies a lot of money when they leave workers without sick time, health care, vacation time, or a retirement plan.

When I asked Michael how he would identify himself by socio-economic class, he said: “I would say for myself, I don’t know, I’m fine. … I don’t consider myself poor. I would say … I guess I would say I am struggling a little bit. I’m fine, I have all my stuff paid, I’m just not in a higher tax bracket. I guess I’m poor but I’m not – for me people who don’t have food are poor. Or, someone who can’t feed their kids, or you might not have running water or even electricity. I would say poor is when you just don’t got anything. I think if you’re poor, you don’t have the right things you need to even survive.”

The reality in Southeast Ohio is that everyone seems to know folks who are in far worse circumstances. For Michael and others, “being poor” means living in homes without running water or electricity or being unable to feed their children. A surprising number of Michael’s neighbors live in exactly this condition. In 2017, Athens County had the highest rate of food insecurity in the state of Ohio. Almost 27% of children in the county lack consistent access to adequate food and about 70% of residents hover around the federal poverty line.⁶ This sounds stark, and it is. In these circumstances, working families skip meals and/or reduce the size of meals, and/or rotate who gets to eat a meal, in order to make their food last.

Community food banks, once an emergency resource during difficult times, have become a weekly resource for families. As for access to running water, in 2014, when the US Census stopped collecting data on the number of households without running water, 1,000 homes in Athens County (1.5% of the population) lacked full indoor plumbing, while in neighboring Meigs County another 400 homes (1.7% of the population) had no running water.⁷ Given this context, it might be clear why Michael does not think of himself as poor. The more serious issue is that the federal government does not think of him as poor either. The federal poverty line in 2017 for an individual was $12,060. In that year, 17.6% of African Americans fell at or below the federal poverty line. As you notice, Michael does not.

By working two jobs, Michael earns something below $16,000. He does not have stable work, lives paycheck to paycheck, and struggles to pay the rent on a shared flat. Yet the federal government does not count him among the nation’s poor. This is exactly why it is important to understand the distinction between the federal poverty line and a self-sufficiency income. The Economic Policy Institute self-sufficiency budget puts Michael’s experience in a very different context. As we saw in Chapter 1, the EPI self-sufficiency budget is based on basic monthly expenses in each region of the country. For a single person in Athens County, the budget is $34,545.

Recall from Chapter 1 that the EPI uses the Fair Market Rent (FMR) calculation established by HUD. FMR was established to standardize payments for low-income housing. In any given housing market, about 60% of local housing will be more expensive than FMR. There is a wide variety of housing in Athens County. Yet typical rent for a decent one-bedroom apartment runs between $800 and $1,300 a month – a long way from FMR. In this regard, the EPI self-sufficiency budget, which allocates only $605, is clearly low for the area. However, even using the FMR calculation, the EPI budget is more than twice what Michael currently earns.

I am confident that Michael would be shocked by this self-sufficiency budget. If he accepted the EPI figures as representing a basic standard of living, he would see his income, and his efforts to get by every month, in a very different perspective. Like many others, Michael has normalized his inability to pay all of his bills all of the time, his inability to live alone, to take time off when he is sick or to afford health care. Not only is all of this ordinary to him, Michael is doing better than many around him. Basic self-sufficiency, as a standard of living, is not something he imagines as part of his life – and this suits his employers just fine. What has become ordinary for Michael is both completely unacceptable and unlikely to change.

Certainly, wealth and poverty are relative terms – there will always be someone earning less and someone earning more. Yet hunger and a lack of running water should not be the measure of poverty in any country – and certainly not in one that is among the wealthiest in the world. Michael did not end up in badly paid jobs because he lacks skills or intelligence. Nor because he chose a random “follow your heart” kind of dream. He applied for the entry-level positions that were available to him. If entry-level jobs once gave workers a leg up the proverbial ladder, the reality today is quite different. In the twenty-first century, low wage, entry-level employment often is what holds people in poverty. Part-time service industry work keeps people, and the families they support, in a very stressful and nearly constant economic scramble. Michael tells me he hopes to convert one of his jobs to full-time status soon, but even so he will still need to continue to work part-time at the other. The full-time salary won’t pay his bills, let alone enable him to attain economic self-sufficiency.

The situation is similar for Rose Taylor, a white woman, who has lived most of her nearly thirty years in Athens County. She describes herself as among the more economically privileged in the county and it is clear that her friends think of her as fairly successful. “I have had friends borrow money from me, because they need to pay their rent, or they need food. The majority of my friends, I would say, barely make it every month.” Despite Rose’s desire to help, she finds the situation a little stressful because she too can find herself financially strapped at times.

Rose holds an associate degree and works thirty-six hours a week as a certified nursing assistant (CNA) caring for an elderly woman with Alzheimer’s Disease. Her shift as a CNA is from 9 p.m. to 9 a.m. three days per week. If you know anything about Alzheimer’s Disease, you know that there are no “easy” shifts in care giving. Dementia care at any time of day is full of unexpected challenges as well as surprising rewards. Like Michael, Rose especially values working the night shift because it doesn’t interfere with the fluctuating schedule at her second, day job where she spends thirty hours a week doing body piercing. Typically, three days a week she is scheduled at both jobs, which leaves her just enough time between jobs to shower and go for a walk with her “fur child,” a sweet dog that she cares for with her sister.

Rose describes her life as unsustainable but tells me that for now she has to make it work. Between the two jobs, she works sixty-six hours a week and earns less than $23,000 – before taxes. Rose has no benefits at either job. Her income is almost double the federal poverty line. That puts her well ahead of the 12.9% of all women in the country who lived at or below the federal poverty line in 2017. Perhaps most striking is that after state and federal taxes, Social Security tax and Medicare tax, Rose’s income is less than $17,083 – and this is without any form of health care. Like Michael, she is above the poverty line of $12,140 but below the area standard for self-sufficiency income of $34,545.

With an after-tax income around $17,000, it’s easy to see why Rose cannot afford to live alone – even though she works over sixty hours a week. If she became lucky enough to find a decent one-bedroom apartment for $800 a month, Rose would need to spend $9,600 per year on rent. Flats on the higher end ($1,300 a month) would cost her $15,600 a year. In order to get by, Rose shares an apartment with her sister, who juggles three part-time jobs – two as a nurse and one helping her mother at a diner. Rose and her sister tend to work opposite days/shifts which enables them to share custody of their “fur child.” The dog provides great companionship for quiet walks in the woods, which have become an essential source of emotional support. “Life is incredibly stressful,” explains Rose, “and the stress never goes away.” Even without a crisis, life is a constant struggle for enough money, enough sleep, enough ease.

Rose has been trying to put money away each month. She tells me that if she can build a financial cushion, she’ll be able to catch a break. What would catching a break look like? She tells me it would be staying home from work when she is sick or having time to do something she likes. Yet the ability to put a little money away each month depends on nothing going wrong – and something always seems to be going wrong. Last month, her savings were completely wiped out because she needed tires for her car. “It often feels like I’m doing really well. I have like a little tiny bit of savings. But then something happens, then it’s like, oh, now I have to start all over again.” As she talks, it’s easy to see the deep exhaustion in her face. Rose’s life is itself a contradiction: on the one hand she calls herself “lucky” because she could afford the tires and thus keep working, yet on the other hand, in her daily life, she doesn’t feel very lucky. This is life in the struggling class.

“I recently went to the dentist. I have to have dental surgery next week, and I don’t have dental insurance. And so, it’s going to cost me like $600 to fix my tooth, and that’s something that like I wasn’t planning on obviously. Stuff like that stresses me out and it makes me like want to work more. But, at the same time, I need to protect my mental health as well. I manage anxiety a lot. I manage depression as well.” Low-wage work exacts a high human cost.

Like many other folks working very long hours at multiple part-time jobs, Rose has no health insurance, sick time, or retirement benefits. “I had Obamacare last year. I tried to sign up again but ended up taking hours on the phone. I just didn’t have time to like figure it out. Then the deadline passed. It was tricky because of my two jobs and two different incomes, and there was like a lot of questions.” She’ll try again next year but for now she’s planning on taking out a medical loan to pay the dental bill. Rose reflects for a moment and says: “It’s not even like a thing to ask about health insurance [when looking for work]. I know people that only have one job, they manage a bar or manage a restaurant, and they sometimes don’t even have health insurance, I want to say like 50% of the time.” Businesses with fewer than fifty employees have no legal obligation to provide health insurance. It’s no wonder that medical loans are a thriving industry. We’ll look at those carefully in the next chapter.

Rose is smart, hardworking, and broke. She describes her current level of work as unsustainable but even so she cannot afford the basics of being able to live alone, pay for car repairs, and cover medical bills. Rose worries about the future. “I don’t need food stamps, but there have been times in my life where I’ve considered getting food stamps, but, as of right now, I don’t need them.” Rose pauses for a moment and takes a breath, “but if I were to ever have a child or have anybody else depend on me, that would have to be a possibility.” It isn’t an easy thought. It is a desperate one. Without access to reproductive health care – including abortion – an unplanned pregnancy would end her ability to work and force her and her child more deeply into poverty. As we will see in later chapters, for low-wage workers, marriage does not always offer a way out of poverty.

The experiences of Michael and Rose in Southeast Ohio are familiar to others living in the area. Like millions of others, they are caught in economic quicksand. For low-wage workers, it is impossible to work your way out of poverty. Without paid sick time, just a bad case of the flu will throw their ability to keep a roof over their head into question. More than 1,200 miles away, at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, things are both quite different and remarkably similar.