Joshua Sampson of Kalamazoo just turned 39 and works part-time for minimum wage ($8.15 an hour) at a fast food joint. He recently picked up another position paying $10 per hour, in a supermarket. Juggling the two jobs sometimes means putting in 14-hour days, but, "I’m hitting 40 hours in one week, which feels pretty awesome," he says. Sampson was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis a little over three years ago and occasionally misses work from its effects. He has no car, so he either catches a bus or walks to work—in blizzards, rain, anything. His paychecks, after taxes and child support for a 9-year-old son, amount to roughly $400-500 every two weeks now. But with his health issues, "I can’t work two jobs that much longer."
Meoshi Atkinson, 43, works full-time as a machine operator. She and her husband, a property maintenance worker, married in 2012. They earn a combined income of $45,000 to support themselves and her four children, ages 9 to 17, in Portage. "We live paycheck to paycheck," she says. "But we budget ... we don't waste. We cook more. We don't go out to eat as much. We find free things to do instead of spending."
Atkinson isn’t "poor" as defined by the U.S. government; Sampson probably qualifies, barely. Both belong to the population of struggling workers profiled in "ALICE: Study of Financial Hardship," a September 2014 report from the
Michigan Association of United Ways. ALICE -- Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed -- describes households that earn more than the official U.S. poverty level, but less than the basic cost of living for their community.
"ALICE households are working households," the report explains. "(T)hey hold jobs and provide services that are vital to the Michigan economy in positions like retail salespeople, team assemblers, truck drivers and nursing assistants. The core of the problem is that these jobs do not pay enough to afford the basics of housing, child care, food, health care and transportation." And we can expect to see more of them. Occupations with the most projected openings in Michigan are service jobs with wages below $15 per hour, and those jobs are predicted to grow at double or triple the rate of medium- and high-skilled jobs over the next decade across the state.
In its county snapshots section, the ALICE report defines a basic survival budget in Kalamazoo County (page 182) as $17,547 for a single adult; $52,786 for a family of four.
That’s a bare-minimum budget for a very modest and rather precarious life, with no savings for unexpected expenses. Yet it’s still far more than the defined U.S. poverty rate of $11,170 for a single adult and $23,050 for a family of four.
Not poor enough for aid
An estimated 17 percent of households in our county are living in "official" poverty, while another 24 percent are struggling to survive below the ALICE threshold. That lines up with the report’s finding that fully 40 percent of Michigan households struggle to support themselves day to day: Either they live below the federal poverty level or their earnings put them above the poverty line but below the ALICE basic-survival budget.
Complicating matters further, when a job bumps household income a bit above that poverty line, families often lose government aid, even if their wages are still not enough to cover basic needs.
Joshua Sampson’s new supermarket position means he’ll likely lose his remaining disability assistance, for instance. He already saw it cut in half when he got the fast-food job. (His disability check wasn’t enough to survive on, anyway, he says; that’s why he sought work.) He also expects he’ll lose the Bridge Card that helps him buy food for himself and his son, who stays with him on weekends. Sampson’s not even sure he can remain on Medicaid, which covers his many medications (one of them costs $1,400 a week).
If he quits the fast-food gig, "I can pay all the bills, but then I don’t have anything," he says. "I can‘t buy food now, or buy the toiletries I need, like toothpaste or deodorant. It gets like that once the state’s not involved, because you earn too much according to their rules and regulations."
As he tries to make short ends somehow meet, he feels awkward relying on family and friends for help. "As an adult, it isn’t a comfortable thing. … I don’t like asking, because I should be able to support myself. But it’s hard times, so I have no choice."
Like Sampson, Meoshi Atkinson knows the difficulty of staying afloat when doing the right thing – getting a job – means losing financial assistance that low wages can’t offset. As a single mother of two, she qualified for Family Independence Program funds after losing almost everything in 2002 following pregnancy complications.
"I essentially had no income for eight months," she says. "I lost my car and home. … I lost all of my savings." After being hired by her current employer in 2003, she no longer qualified for the aid and had to move her family out of housing subsidized by the Michigan State Housing Development Authority -- despite the fact that even with a job she still struggled financially.
Housing, debt, health issues hit hard
The ALICE report rates community economic conditions in three "viability" areas. Kalamazoo County scored "poor" for housing affordability and "fair" for job opportunities, but "good" for community support – not surprising, considering the wealth of people and organizations (and actual wealth) devoted to lifting up families and children in our area.
An apt example is Housing Resources, Inc. Both Atkinson and Sampson have benefited from HRI’s services over the years, when unstable finances affected their housing options. Atkinson even serves on HRI’s board now. The agency responds to thousands of requests in Kalamazoo County each year, providing an array of emergency, transitional and permanent housing, with the ultimate goal of seeing residents move from poverty to self-sufficiency. For low-income households, as the HRI website points out, "one unexpected crisis—an illness, a broken relationship, or a lost job—can mean homelessness."
In fact, says HRI’s executive director Michelle Davis, "Over 60 percent of the families experiencing homelessness who seek emergency shelter at our Eleanor House shelter have at least one household member who is employed but does not earn enough for safe and affordable housing." The accepted standard for affordability is that one should spend no more than 30 percent of one’s income on rent, Davis says. So in order to afford an apartment costing $800 per month, you’d need to make $15.38 per hour or $32,000 per year. Someone earning Michigan’s minimum wage ($8.15) would have to work 76 hours a week to afford it. (The Fair Market Rate in 2014 for a two-bedroom apartment in Kalamazoo County was $718, according to Davis.)
Without a cushion to handle extra expenses, many ALICE households wind up in debt. Beyond helping with shelter, HRI and other organizations like Kalamazoo Neighborhood Housing Services offer their clients financial management classes. For Atkinson, education in credit and budgeting were key to digging out of the debt she’d accumulated in rough times. Most of it was for her children’s medical expenses, plus student loans for classes at
Davenport University. (She didn’t complete a degree.) "I wasn't in trouble," she reflects. "I didn't drink. I didn't party. I didn't do all those things. I just wasn't responsible with my credit and didn't understand what it meant."
She persevered, though, with help from an Individual Development Account (IDA) – a matched savings account designed to help low-income families accumulate money for homeownership, education, job training or a small business. With an IDA, individuals who complete financial management training and save funds up to three years can get a three-to-one match for a home purchase from the
Michigan IDA Partnership. After saving and building her credit rating high enough to qualify for a loan, Sampson became a homeowner in October 2014. "I got the house I wanted, and it was so much worth the wait and all the pain that I had to go through to get there," she says.
Broke, but 'blessed'
Meanwhile, Sampson is trying to pay off a car he doesn’t have anymore. During a bout of vertigo, an early symptom of MS, he hit a mailbox while delivering newspapers for a previous job. He was fired and could no longer keep up with car payments. Despite setbacks like this, Sampson doesn’t pity himself or blame anyone else for his struggles. He got in trouble as a youth and served prison time; with a non-violent felony on his record he’s had difficulty getting jobs. He never finished getting a degree despite taking classes at Kalamazoo Valley Community College. He battled depression, his weight ballooned to 369 pounds and he wound up donating plasma for cash at one point. Yet he retains faith and a sense of gratitude. After being interviewed for this story, he texted an additional thought: "I would also like to add that without God in my life I wouldn’t be as blessed as I am now," he said.
Atkinson, too, has remained upbeat and focused: "$45,000 a year is not a lot when you're a family of six," she acknowledges. "It's really a challenge to have such a low income and survive."
She’s a resourceful parent. "The kids loved to be outside, so we’d do stuff outside. We would go to the free movies in the park, to the library, to any free event out there. We would clip coupons out of the paper. If we wanted to splurge, we would do something like Steak 'n Shake Happy Hour, where shakes are half price."
Keeping a clear goal in sight, literally, has helped Atkinson stay on track. She and her family create "goal posters" every New Year’s Eve. "Everybody in my house has to put one in their room. They have to look at it every day to remind them of where they're going and what they have to do."
Buying a house was Atkinson’s main goal for several years, and her poster was "a visual reminder, helping me being persistent and helping me see what I was trying to do for my children and how me and my husband needed to stay strong."
Higher education may be the key to better-paying jobs, yet neither Atkinson nor Sampson could afford to finish their degrees years ago. Atkinson says she’d consider going back to school someday. But for now, with her oldest daughter considering college and a son doing the same in four years, "I just don't want to try and do too much with the budget."
Once he gets his finances together, Sampson is set on getting back to KVCC. "I’ve just got to make sure I’m stable and paying my bills, and have a rhythm down. I’ve just got to find a flow."
He wants to attend the school’s new culinary program, and thinks he could maybe even start in the fall. For the near-term, "My goal is to find an apartment that’s a little easier on the finances ... and to obtain a vehicle so transportation is a lot easier." Not to ease his own commute, mind you, but to spend more time with his son: "All I get is weekends with him, and I’d like to actually pick him up from school once in a while, take him out to lunch or McDonalds, or let him stay the night and take him to school in the morning."
Sampson’s voice fills with pride as he lists his hopes for the boy: "I just want my son to graduate, have fun … enjoy school, and then whatever his heart desires I want to support him no matter what. Whatever he’d like to be, I will support him."
Atkinson and Sampson both say they’d tell others struggling with similar hardships to persevere. "No matter what, keep pushing," Sampson advises. "Something’s going to come along that’s really going to bless you." Make sure you have a dream and a goal poster, Atkinson urges — plus a group of friends you can admire and emulate. "Someone in your circle has to have it together: two cars, house, job, bank accounts, happiness and a marriage," she says. "This will help you get up when you’ve fallen and need to start all over again." And, finally, with "God, faith, prayer and persistence, you can complete anything."
•••••••••••••••
Next: What can a community do about low wages?
Cathie Schau is a freelance writer and owner of the communications firm GoodPoint. She lives with her family in Portage.
Photos by Susan Andress
Enjoy this story?
Sign up for free solutions-based reporting in your inbox each week.