Letter #117... Dear Mr. President... A Few Easy Steps to Becoming Homeless.

Letter #117

Dear Mr. President:

We live in what most would consider an upscale neighborhood, in the rolling foothills outside of Sacramento. I assume that most people in affluent areas such as ours understand that we are not only privileged, but lucky as well.

I use the word lucky because the road we traveled to get here involved a lot of luck, timing, and at a time when the economy was booming. Not everyone is so fortunate, and it seems to me that the economy and our current system actually ‘conspire’ against poor people, and here’s how it works.

Lets take an ordinary hourly worker just barely making ends meet. He’s driving home from work one night when he gets pulled over for a taillight infraction. He’s given a fixit ticket and a time frame to take care of it before it becomes a full-fledged ticket. He buys the bulb, replaces it, but cannot get time off of work to get the ticket signed off as being fixed. Failing to do that incurs the full ticket, which he receives in the mail, but he cannot afford to pay it so a warrant is then issued for failure to pay. Meanwhile fines are accruing while the ticket remains unpaid. Now it’s time to get his license renewed, but he cannot do it because of the unpaid tickets. Next he is stopped for out of date car registration, the officer asks to see his license, which is expired, he’s arrested for outstanding warrants for the unpaid tickets, his car is towed to the impound lot, he is released with a date to appear in court, he cannot afford to get his car out of impound, he loses his job because he has no vehicle. He falls behind on his rent and is evicted… and he becomes the next homeless person.

 Some may think this is far-fetched, but I can assure you it is happening all around America every single day in one scenario or another.

Other things that conspire to keep the poor, poor are:

·      Extra bank fees for not maintaining a certain balance in your account…

·      The average annual interest rate on a Payday loan is more than 400%...

·      Higher car insurance premiums if you live in a high-crime zip code area…

·      Fire Fees in some states that are in addition to taxes already paid…

·      Inner-city grocery stores that charge as much as 43% more for milk…

·      Federal housing subsides that favor households making more than $77,000…

·      Credit card late fees have risen by 194% since 1994…

·      Predatory tax prep lenders taking a huge percentage on early tax refunds…

This is only a partial list of how poor people are being exploited by a system that punishes them for just being poor. The old cliché of “The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer” is not a myth… this is why we have 99% of the people protesting the 1%... what is your administration doing to correct this egregious inequity?

Most Respectfully,

Marcia Reimers

Your Gadfly Granny