six of one, half a dozen of the other.

Who tends to be more racist: NYC Italians or Boston Irish?

Uncle Luke demands a recount. *listens to scarred*

“As entertaining as that might be”

This is EXACTLY how my dad looks at the menu when we go out to eat. Pop, just get the chicken so we can get our food before the close.... 

$11 in California will buy you $5 worth of groceries elsewhere and this was a seasonal job. The house where this went down was supposedly low income housing. There was no working gas, electric, or plumbing. Oh, and the dozen or so menfolk that lived there bailed out when the cops showed up. So the actual number of…

Sorry, I just don’t agree with that. Not if we’re both talking about NYC here. If you happen to live in Manhattan, then yes, I might be more inclined to agree, I do not recommended living there. But there are LOTS of pros to living in a city that I think a lot of us take for granted. Like having VAST amounts of public…

Wrote more upthread, but here is a start:

The Atlantic has written fairly frequently on this topic. Here is a story to start with:

Almost fifteen years ago, in a college class, I read an article on this impending disaster. The article, written pre-housing bubble, was looking at gentrification pushing the poor further and further into cheaply constructed McMansion housing. It was terrifying.

Due to my mom’s mental illness, my sister and I lived for long periods without heat and/or running water, and were homeless for shorter periods. Our teachers never suspected. (Though I admit it was a bit easier for us to cover up because our problem wasn’t money, it was our mom’s health - so we weren’t as bad off. We…

If you actually read her profile, you’ll see that she was working her tail off at multiple jobs to try to support her six (!) kids. She surely needed a cell phone to be called in to work. It seems like she just went from one job to the other much of the time, leaving her kids with her family. She probably did not have…

Tragically, this might have been what she considered “moving up.” A house for her kids. Training for a job. Somebody noticing if she lives or dies.

The differences between urban poor and rural poor are striking. I would love to read more work comparing and contrasting the two plights, if you or anyone else on this thread has any suggestions.

My impression is that these people were basically squatting/homeless because of extreme poverty that most people can’t relate to. People think they can, but that’s most likely the self righteousness talking. These women, children, and pets were all suffering terribly and were still trying- even in the face of what…

Yep, that <$80 one-time cost for a tool that allows them to communicate with employers and coordinate child care would have been better spent in a single day for food for 20 kids.

Right? They should be wearing potato sacks and talking on tin can phones!

Yes, poor people often have the nerve to have cell phones these days. Which has nothing to do with how they treated their kids.