I feel like people (other than on DU) don't get that the grid keeps you off once you're off [View all]

So, xchrom did an awesome OP quoting a Slate article about how hard it is to stop being poor once you start. The comments on the Slate article were so infuriating I had to stop reading them, but I thought I'd share the rather dark period of my past where that anger comes from.

Several years ago, I got out of the Marine Corps. That transition is difficult. And I didn't manage it as well as I might have. But I did more or less OK; I wasn't strung out or doing terribly self-destructive things. I just needed to get out of DC (where I had been stationed and then deployed from) and try something new, so I moved to Boston, having lined up going back to school again at BU and a job at U Mass.

The day my job was supposed to start, I found out I was misreading the parking signs. I found out because my car got towed to an impound lot. Fair enough. But I hadn't finished unpacking, and my birth certificate and passport were in the car. It was literally a question of which boxes I had pulled out of the car the night before.

Anyways, I went to the lot and tried to explain it, and no dice: I can't touch the car at all, until I pay $300. Well, I didn't have $300. I had just spent every cent I owned moving into this apartment (why does it take 3 months' rent to do that, someone remind me?). And every day I left it there, $25 was added to the total. When it reached a certain amount, they would sell the car and give me whatever the overage was (and any stuff I had left in there).

I asked if I could just give up the car now, because I needed my birth certificate a lot more than I needed a car at this point. No. It had to go through their process, which takes a few months (they want to build up enough of a charge that they don't have to give you any money they get selling the car). (10 years later, I still don't have any money or any of my stuff from those fucking parasites, despite leaving a forwarding address every damn time I moved.)

I talked to a cop my sister knew, who went down to the lot with me. He got really, really pissed at the lot owner and called him to his face the biggest piece of shit in the history of the world (which is probably hyperbole, I'll admit), but legally he couldn't do anything. (Think about the gall it takes to just tell a Boston PD sergeant to fuck off like the impound owner did...)

Anyways, long story short, I couldn't start the job, because I couldn't prove my citizenship. A few months later, my bank closed my account because it was out of money and didn't have a direct deposit set up. I was off the grid. This really opened my eyes. Once you don't have proof of birth or identity (and I at least had proof of identity), you basically can't get it again. This is why I'm so strongly opposed to voter ID: once you're off the grid, the grid keeps you off. I dragged along in classes for a while, cashing my student loan checks at a check cashing place and doing odd jobs off Craigslist on the weekend. I lost 25 pounds, and I learned about 25 ways to cook rice and beans ($2 will feed you for 3 days or so). I learned where the various frat houses left out bottles and cans after parties, because you could get 5 cents per at the liquor store or reclamation center the next day. I was competing with old Korean couples who did this for a living, but I did manage to figure out how to get $3 a day or so pretty reliably. My landlord was patient for a while (he was a really good guy) but eventually had to kick me out. I was really, really lucky that I had some friends whose couches I could alternately crash on. It is really, really demeaning to carry literally everything you still own (and you've pawned/Craigslisted most of that at this point) in a duffelbag from one friend's house to another.

Once you don't have a bank account, it's hard to get one. My credit wasn't "shot" or anything (I wasn't in debt), but there was the ding for losing the checking account, and suddenly I couldn't get one anywhere (apparently MA is particularly harsh about this; in VA Suntrust doesn't even run checks at all). When you don't have a bank, a lot of options that seem normal are just gone. You can't have a relative wire money; you have to pay to get a Western Union. You can't get a cell phone (other than pre-paid). It's often said that "the poor don't have money", which is true, but I did have money sometimes, like when I would do an epic amount of work over a weekend (I'm really good at moving and fixing things). But I would have $600 in my pocket, and I couldn't put it anywhere. It stayed in my pocket, or under my mattress, or in the hand of the guy who just mugged me. You get the idea. Once you're off the grid, the grid doesn't want you back.

Even if I did a job for somebody who banked with a bank that was nearby, it didn't help: if he cut a Bank of America check to me, Bank of America would charge me $5 to cash it there because I wasn't an account holder. Once you're off the grid, you're a sponge.

That's life off the grid. I'm very, very, very, very lucky. I got back on. But that wasn't because of me, that was because of family and friends who were both able and willing to help me out. After about 8 months of that I was incredibly depressed and had just basically given up on every having a "normal" life again, but a very fortunate series of coincidences (starting with my dad finding a loophole to pick up my birth certificate for me) eventually got me back. (And even that took another year and a half.)

Poverty is horrible. It makes you the unwilling but active author of your own undoing. It presents you a series of choices that screw you over in different ways. You have to choose which way you want to get screwed over today. Poor people do make bad choices, every day, because bad choices are the only ones they have most of the time.

Anyways, just wanted to share that.