On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

I know in my home town some of the homeless weren't actually homeless, just scammers begging for money at pub closing time.

The thing that most people, including those in this thread, don't understand about poverty, is that the side-effects don't magically go away after you are an adult.

Reading the replies here, I do get the typical sense of "well, they are people who made poor choices, sort of feel sorry for them, can't relate."

In reality, many poor adults were poor children. The funny thing, is that in the glorious US of A, the main distinction is worse than in other countries - if you are poor, you go to a school district where 95% don't go to college and you get stabbed and hooked on something.

That aside - no one tells you to study for the SATs, no one tells you to brush your teeth with an electric toothbrush and floss, while not drinking pop which destroys your enamel. No one tells you to do your cardio and no one evaluates your postural imbalances. No one has you studying Deutsch and Fancaise. No one takes you swimming, and you probably don't do a martial art unless you get lucky enough to get into a ghetto boxing gym.

So, by the time you are 18, you have ruined health and an under-developed mind, and then everyone looks at you and thinks - what a careless, lazy, adult. He/she isn't even going to college - what an embarrassment. And while there is the military, the poor don't even get properly told about that and what's available.

Maybe in the old days not paying your last month's rent would be an option but not today.

Nobody who is truly poor would skip out on the last month rent unless they were desperate, because the landlord will find things wrong with the apartment and will charge you the most or all of the security deposit. Then they will file an unpaid dept claim, turn it over to a debt collection agency and it will hit your credit score. Which means in the future you have to rent in the really scary parts of the city, and if you don't want to rent in the really scary part of the city you'll pay your last month's rent. Also a lot of jobs check credit scores, a bad report could keep the author from getting hired.

In regard to the car, the author doesn't have the credit score or income level to even qualify for the lease let alone, "the cheapest lease deals", not to mention the author certainly doesn't have the $3K down payment. If you are thinking that they can just roll the down payment into the lease, well they only let you do that if you have the best credit score.

While I'm not suggesting your method isn't more economically efficient, it also requires time and money investment. When I was "poor", my parents would often both work late and it wasn't uncommon to not see them until later in the night if at all before bed. Many nights my brother and I would make our own dinners. Dealing with large cuts of frozen meat takes planning and skill that microwaveable dinners do not.

in one specific case I will willingly describe where that is precisely the reality that needs to be faced. (hardly gladly will I recount my experiences, I am barely past the stages of pure shock, I became homeless as the result of extensive almost decade long criminal harassment following when I accidentally uncovered a systematic fraud in government. ironically - actually I am pretty sure intentionally - the fraud is in housing and crosses the institutional walls between central and local government and into the world of QUANGOS and charities ostensibly helping the homeless but inextricably involved.

the systematic enfranchisement of fraud in east London public housing authority and agencies intertwined and inseparable from hard drug dealing, is maintaining a permanent and pernicious status quo where under housing in consequence is denied by individuals who are officially homeless and who collectively by reason of being sufficiently well financially provided for by exceptional and exclusive permissive authority, exist en masse as a block preventing both the most needy to get housed from the street and the eligible and worthy to move on into permanent housing that they can sustain.

the situation is naturally more complicated than this, but essentially these are the conditions that have such a deleterious effect on the public : the mode of cash money available for spending to the majority cohort is greater than the average free for spending cash income in London as a whole ; the percentage of technically "homeless" people who are housed ostensibly only temporarily but effective permanently on the doorstep of the City's financial center who are habitual beggars is greatly in excess of 50% and I can attest closer to 90 percent in my own experience ; income from begging frequently exceeds USD 1000 per week. ; organised crime is permeated throughout every corner of the entire environment these people - indeed any homeless person - encounters.

I'll simply respond to any questions rather than drown you in the details straight away. of course, into this vipers' nest fell lil'ol'me who was raised by a Great Depression banker and brought up learning accounting from my pay dissecting the over valuation applied to the pension fund of his newly commercialized thrift which was paying their former board manager and one time gm responsible for their greatest historic growth, just 82 British pounds a week supposedly index linked... this ain't over quite yet due to the pandemic messing with case progression, so you might hear more yet.. I can rout out plentiful public sources meantime if you're particularly interested although if you are please forgive me in advance for being rather circumspect about who is who and the whys and wherefores, because this is long ago passed into the physical danger territory for not merely me but including anyone who has helped..

edited by necessity of brevity, excerpted text in profile