Our local free paper put an article (http://www.providencephoenix.com/archive/features/03/01/16/HOMELESS.html) on homeless people. They tell about the case of a poor woman who lost her job and had to go to the shelter with her 10-yo daughter. The thing I didn't understand - they tell how she lost "lost her $30,000-a-year job, and there was no way -- even with the help of parents and others -- to keep paying the $1200 monthly rent". I personally think that as a single parent spending 48% of her PRETAX income on housing she is spending her daughter's future.
Where I live in RI the rents are about $500-$600 for a 1 bd apartment - should be just enough for a woman with a daughter. And it's not a bad area either. She could easily move to here and pay half the rent she was paying. Is ability to hear crickets and ducks, proximity to a "swimming pool, a playground, and sliding glass doors" worth extra $600/month? Even if you put the supposedly excellent public school her daughter was going to in the mix, I still don't think the high rent was justified. Her daughter could be getting a good education in Science but her lifestyle education would be far from good - she will learn that it is Ok to spend everything that you make and live from paycheck to paycheck; when you lose a job it's not your fault that you can't live where you used to and it's Ok to go to the shelter. I understand this woman is going through tough times but being unemployed myself I just can't see her as a victim.
Where I live in RI the rents are about $500-$600 for a 1 bd apartment - should be just enough for a woman with a daughter. And it's not a bad area either. She could easily move to here and pay half the rent she was paying. Is ability to hear crickets and ducks, proximity to a "swimming pool, a playground, and sliding glass doors" worth extra $600/month? Even if you put the supposedly excellent public school her daughter was going to in the mix, I still don't think the high rent was justified. Her daughter could be getting a good education in Science but her lifestyle education would be far from good - she will learn that it is Ok to spend everything that you make and live from paycheck to paycheck; when you lose a job it's not your fault that you can't live where you used to and it's Ok to go to the shelter. I understand this woman is going through tough times but being unemployed myself I just can't see her as a victim.