The economic slump that so many people suffered through originated in the United States, with a regulatory failure of mortgages rated less risky than they turned out to be. As large numbers of homeowners proved unable to repay their loans, the companies that owned the loans (as well as their subsidiaries and shareholders) lost sizable amounts of money. The effects of these drastic losses soon spiraled into the U.S. job market as lay-offs and terminations. The rebound was slow in coming. Many people experienced long months of financial difficulties just like the character in this story.
Facing tenant eviction after several months of unpaid rent, Sue Johnson packed up whatever she could fit into her two-door automobile and drove out of town.
She wound up at a motel, putting down the $260 she had managed to scrape together from friends and from selling her living room set. It was all the money Sue had after her unemployment benefits had expired. She faced life as a migrant, a previously unimaginable situation for a woman who, not that long before, had held a corporate job in a metropolitan city and had been enrolled in a graduate business school.
Sue knew that, in all likelihood, she would end up living in her car. She was part of a hard-luck group of jobless people who called themselves “99ers”, because they had exhausted the maximum 99 weeks of unemployment insurance benefits that they could claim.
Long-term unemployment was at record levels. Modest payments of unemployment benefits were a lifeline that enabled people who were out of work to maintain at least an appearance of normalcy, keeping a roof over their heads, putting gas in their cars, and paying electric and phone bills.
Without the checks, people like Sue, who had once been a director of client services at a technology company, began to tumble over the economic cliff. The last remnants of their former working-class or middle-class lives were gone, and all of them faced unsure futures.
When Sue received her last unemployment check, she felt a wave of profound grief. With no income to deposit, Sue’s checking account went into a negative balance. Her car was on the verge of being repossessed. And, the constant harassment of the financing company for her car loan added to her daily stress. Each day, like a ping pong ball, Sue went back and forth between resolve and despair.
It was a sickening plunge considering that only a short year and a half before, Sue had earned $56,000 a year at her old job, enjoyed vacationing in places like Mexico and the Caribbean, and started business school at an excellent university.
Initially, Sue had tried to finish her university certification remotely, but finally dropped out because of the stress from her sinking finances. She applied for every possible job in the employment spectrum, from minimum-wage retail jobs to director positions.
Sue should have been evicted from her two-bedroom apartment for non-payment several months before she was, but, thankfully, the process was delayed by paperwork and bureaucracy. Eventually, the bureaucracy caught up with her, and she was given 10 days to leave her apartment for good. She had no choice but to comply.
That last day of her old life, Sue wept as she drove away. She wondered if she would ever again be able to reclaim that life of comfort and respect. She fell into complete despair and didn’t know what would happen to her next.
Friends came to her aid. One friend wired her $200 while she was driving away from her old apartment, enabling her to find refuge in a motel along the way. But Sue worried there wouldn’t be any more charity that she desperately needed.
Helped by gas cards donated by a church, Sue decided to return to her hometown. She figured the health-care safety net there was better, as well as the job market. She contacted a local shelter but learned there was a waiting list. Welfare was not an option, because she didn’t have young children. And, Sue knew that none of her three adult sons were in a position to help her.
“I knew the only help I was going to get was from me myself,” Sue said. “I thought to myself: I have to take care of myself. I really, really need to get work. I need a job. I don’t want to be seen as a parasite.”
Sue’s motel room was depressing. Lining the shelves underneath the television were her food supplies: rice and noodles that she mixed with water in the motel’s ice bucket and heated up in a microwave, peanut butter and jelly, a loaf of white bread – the subsistence of a desperate person. Sue’s days were spent surfing Internet job indexes and applying for jobs where the silent “No”, “No”, “No” led to a feeling of helplessness.
Sue had all new problems and obstacles to deal with, too, like what to do for an address for job applications. She worried about what would happen when her cell phone was cut off for non-payment, and calls to her number would disappear into an invisible world she could not reach.
Finally, an old friend sent Sue a ray of hope, a small miracle: $300 cash – just enough for another brutal week of financial struggles.