Topic: What if you were a single parent with a child. You work full time for $14.00 hr.

Something to think about....
What if you were a single parent with a child. You work full time for $14.00 hr. You bring home roughly $800.00 per paycheck (bi-weekly).
Your bills:
$1, 000 . 00 / rent
$150 .00 / electrical
$250 .00 / car payment
$150 .00 / car insurance
So let’s do the math :
You bring home about
$1,600 .00 a month & your bills average about $1,550.00 (give or take).
You’re making it, but barely.
This doesn't even include groceries, internet, cable, cell phone, etc .
(nor does it include child tax credit, or child support)
Now, it’s a really cold December and you get a power bill for $600 .00
How do you pay that?
To put it simply , you don’t.
Because you can’t.
So your power gets shut off.
But you know what your lease says?
It says you get evicted if your utilities are terminated.
So now you’re in court crying to a judge who doesn’t care, & you have 10 days to get out.
Well you’re in luck, because you found somewhere with 3 days to spare & it’s only $650.00 a month!
But to get in, you must pass a background & credit check. Which you can’t because you just got evicted.
You’ve never been a criminal, but even if you could pass it, you’re looking at $1300 to move in, after paying the deposit & first month’s rent.
Time’s up ....
Landlord shows up at 7am with the police & changed your locks.
So, now you’re living in your car with your 7 year old son & everything you need to get by.
You tried to get a storage unit, but you don’t have a billing address so they won’t sell one to you. So you could only take what would fit in your backseat.
You pay to shower at local truck stops & eat whatever can be cooked in a gas station microwave.Someone sees you & your son living like this & calls C.P.S; guess what happens next ? ? ?
They remove your child from your care.
As if this isn’t devastating enough, you lose your job too. (Because “an employee losing their child reflects poorly on this company .”)
So now, you apply for an apartment with the region where the waiting list is 3-7 years.
Then you go into Wal-Mart to put in an application.
When you get back to your car you see that your back window has been smashed & someone helped themselves to your belongings. Remember that it is December & really cold. Now you have damage to your only shelter.
You call your car insurance, who says your deductible is $1,000.00
~ AND ~ they’re going to increase your monthly rate since you’re now
“ high risk .”
You call the homeless shelter as a last resort & all their beds are full.
I’ll stop here .....
Because I think you get the point .
The people we work with everyday are these people .
WE ARE THESE PEOPLE .
We are all so close to homelessness & don’t even realize it .
All it takes is :
* one unexpected bill
* one fender bender
* one lay-off 
* one house fire  , etc.
Instead of talking trash about people who are poor, homeless, or need assistance, try being grateful that you’re not in their shoes ......
This is about staying humble & being kind.
ALWAYS BE THANKFUL FOR WHAT YOU HAVE  (copied)
 

While I understand the meaning of this post....suggest to your resident's rental assistance agencies. We have contacts that we can direct them to. You can't NOT evict someone because of a bad situation. We all have compassion and evictions are not the fun part of our job, but we have to be fair and consistent with all residents.

Yes! Im a property manager and hate this part of the job. We try everything to avoid filing eviction. I do realize sometimes things happen and it can't be helped but most cases I've been involved with could have been avoided.

These are the people the Government should be helping with rent relief!! Not the ones who have not worked in two years and expect the money to just be handed over

we have people getting it 2-3 times and others can't get that need it

This is why landlords require tenants make 3x the rent. Anything less than that is not affordable.

I’ve been in this industry for 20 years and I honestly after reading through all of y’all‘s comments after going through this very elaborate and heartfelt posting my synopsis is that you all just don’t get it ….we can look at the resident as a object and a work difficulty scenario, but we all have been in our life been the same as the object dealing with a hardship and so I feel like without getting berated by a lot of negative posts about whose right or wrong in our industry due to Covid and rent relief and government assistance let’s just take it back to a very humane and COMPASSIONATE stand and just realize you could be that exact person that was described in this post and how would you wanna be treated

Very well said. Sadly this probably happens more than we know.

And not to mention for the person that said 3x the rent , most of us work at a place we could not afford to live with the market constantly going up in price , and that’s why most lose the current apartment after the rent special ends

This is so sad. I have been very close to this situation way to many times. I was very fortunate to have angels sent to me during trying times that helped me and gave me a hand up. These are people. Just like you and me. Most of us are 1 pay check away from hardship. What would YOU do if your world fell apart? No way to shower. Get food. Get shelter. No body is gonna hire you if you are not clean and well kept. Think about it. You may be next. I'm not saying to not do your jobs. But just have some compassion for those who are not as fortunate as you are. I have been in property management for 40 years so I have seen a lot! It has made me very cold. But I still can be kind with what I have to do to NOT be that homeless person. Js.

This post is PERFECT for this page as we need to realize how our careers are more than just about numbers on a ledger, budget, or financial statement. We impact peoples’ lives and I would love for this industry to find more ways of making sure those impacts are positive.
That said, I think this post deserves to go viral. It is a much larger issue than just something our industry needs to understand and consider. We need all of society to wake up to these issues.
Mahalo for breaking it down this way and posting it.

Landlords are in business to have occupied apartments. I don’t know of any owners who WANT to evict. Not only the human aspect, it costs them money.
In fact, during Covid all that I have read is about owners and landlords going out pf their way to work out payment plans, help the resident find assistance.
That being said, we have a severe shortage of affordable housing.

This logic only applies at full market rates with zero assistance.
At that hourly with a dependent this parent qualifies for tax credit housing meaning either 50/60 % would be covered and they pay the rest. The site I managed (years ago) the rate would be $450-$600 depending on the designation.
Groceries would be covered with food stamps and or WIC
Cell phones are free for basic phone and plan along with Medicaid for insurance
Electricity companies can not shut off power with dependents in the home and will do payment plans
Evictions take 30 days not 10 but you get told hey we are filing so you have a chance to go before it hits your record
It’s all just a little skewed I’m saying

Wow! It could happen to any of us!

That’s where you step in. Give people resources before it’s too late. When someone is late on rent I used to give them a listing of assistance places and told them to call everyone. If they don’t have a phone, come to the office I’ll put you somewhere to call for assistance. But the resident needs to want to help themselves

Very thought provoking. Thank you for sharing. I’ve done very few full evictions during my career. The ones that went all the way through the process to curbside or now lockout were always the hardest because they were the ones that were really trying. Had they made bad prior decisions that caused their car insurance to go up? Maybe, but they learned from it. My heart always went out to them and would help or give advice when asked.
The people that know the system and just jump from community to community and live rent free, taking advantage of the system drives me nuts! They are the reason some of us have become so jaded, judge’y’ and opinionated.
But it’s not hard to spot the difference