Ann Patterson
Minneapolis, MN
“on Fridays I would just decide what bills not to pay so that we wouldn't become homeless”
When I was asked to give my testimony I was very excited because I have a lot on my mind and am carrying a very heavy load. Maybe this will help relieve my mind. I will start by saying I have always tried to be a hard working middle class woman, well I have achieved the hard working but not the comfort of being middle class.
I am a 33 year old woman who has worked at the same hospital for 15 years, married to my children’s father for 7 years, and a home owner for 8 years.
I want to talk about the home owner crap. I say I own my home but truly the bank owns it until I can pay the bank $120,000 or really when I am 65 and even then I will have to pay thousands of dollars in taxes.
I rushed into buying my house at 25 years of age because I had a child to support, I made 6 dollars and hour and my rent was 875.00 a month. So when I found out I could own a house and pay 375.00 a month I jumped at the opportunity.
But I was unaware of the problems that were about to come. A few weeks after living in the house a pipe broke in my kitchen and we had to pay 700.00 dollars to repair it. Soon after our cars broke down so we got two new cars we could not afford the payments on. We were good we had a house, two cars now—if nothing happens and nothing breaks.
Now we come to the birth of my second child Robert’s fourth child, so Robert had to quite a very good job in order to watch our girls. That meant that we lived on one income for all four of us for a month.
So like all good Americans we began living off credit cards well until they were maxed out and we could no longer afford the minimum monthly payments.
Our next step was going to be a loan unfortunately we got another nasty surprise welfare had been charging us 95.00 dollars a month interest on Robert’s 18 year old sons. 7,000 judgment from 1991 so now we owe 26,00 dollars plus all our other debts with a grand total of 190,00 and that’s a little steep when you have a combined income of 60,000.
Well then came the birth of my 3rd girl Shani who was and absolute joy but more financial stress my insurance changed. It went from 300.00 a month to 600.00 a month plus 10% of the total bill so our bills have been coming non stop $200.00, $40.00, $95.00 and on and on. So on Fridays I would just decide what bills not to pay so that we wouldn’t become homeless. I decided not to pay the gas bill. But then my gas bill backed up and too expensive to pay. We now owe the gas company 800.00 for two months.
I have to tell you, people who say poor people are lazy or that it is easy, are Crazy! Because to get my gas bill paid was a lot of hard work. I had to go during lunch hour to find out what I needed to do because when I would call, they would say we need to do it in person. I would ask, “what do I need to bring, how much do I need to bring
Anyway I went in only to find out I missed the last class and was told to come back tomorrow so I did. During the class they told us such helpful things like put your name on the name line. Everything has to be filled out or it will be denied. Then they started to tell us you need proof of this, proof of that… all things I had at home and could have brought, well oh well. So then I had to go home and get birth certificates, marriage license, bank statement and so on. Well, the only thing I didn’t have was Shani and Ruby’s birth certificates because I didn’t have $16.00 when they were born needless to say do I have $30.00 now but we went ahead and used the reserve line so now we come to the fact that they gave us a legal size envelope for copies of all this. $4 for the mailing envelope, $4 for the copies and $4for the stamps so $42 negative in the checking account but I had to do it for the $800.00 bill. So the moral of the story is if you have to sit down on Friday and figure out what not to pay, don’t skip the gas bill!
I will end by saying I probably am the only person that knows there is 13 pay days until Christmas.
Thank You.