Living with Little: Part 1 of 3

[SoCalDem]

Part 1 of 3 in the series




http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/local/8237221.htm
This is not new...but it is an excellent read...


Living with Little: Part 1 of 3


Getting by in Kansas City

By MALCOLM GARCIA

The Kansas City Star


In Kansas City alone, roughly one in 10 families lives in poverty. Over the next three days in The Star, meet three families as they confront Kansas City's worst proverty problems — low-wage jobs, teen pregnancy and a lack of affordable housing.

Thursday morning, Jan. 29

Payday, Mary Musso thinks, brushing back her short, reddish-brown hair. My money will be in the bank by midnight tonight. Thank God.
She cleans her glasses and spins in a swivel chair in the early morning silence of her cubicle at the Kansas City office of Missouri Probation and Parole. A sign above her desk reads, “How Much Can I Get Away With And Still Go To Heaven?” near a photograph of her grinning 14-year-old son, Dominick.He's the light of her life, Mary often says. The reason she gets up in the morning.Sunlight filters into the empty waiting area outside her window, a large, gray-walled room chilled from a frigid winter morning. Mary has worked here as a receptionist since 1999. In October 2002, she was named employee of the month. She starts at 7 a.m. and breaks for a cigarette at 10:30 a.m., before the phones really start ringing. She knows she shouldn't smoke. In December, she was hospitalized for pneumonia and then diagnosed with diabetes. But she has cut back, no more than three cigarettes a day now, thank you.

That's what she does, she thinks. Cuts back.

Working full time, Mary earns $19,300 a year, about $9.40 an hour. After taxes, she brings home $621.79 every two weeks. Not enough for a divorced, 54-year-old mother of a teenage boy. Not hardly.There's rarely a time she doesn't ask her brother Lawrence or her sister Patty to spot her $20. Sometimes that's the only way she makes it between paychecks.At least, she thinks, she has health insurance, a deduction of $16 from each paycheck. It doesn't cover everything, but it's better than nothing. She dropped vision and dental coverage because she couldn't afford them.

She dusts off Dominick's photograph with her fingertips. She hates saying no when he asks for some small treat like Slim Jim beef jerky. He can eat three of the long ones in one sitting. They used to be 99 cents but have recently gone up to $1.29. That's just too much. With that same money, she could buy three cans of soup, with a coupon.


snip.. for the rest...