After reading all of the course material thus far, I cannot help but to keep thinking about how many stereotypes and stigmas about homelessness exist. I’m confident all of us have been told at one point not to offer a homeless individual spare change, because “they’ll just go and spend it on drugs.” It is tragic how so many people are led to believe that people are homeless as a result of their own foolish actions and that they are deserving of whatever happens to them. The Book of the Poor shatters that stereotype with the distressing statistic that “full time workers are among the poor including 2.6 million who work fill time.” (p.8). The sad fact is that many people who are legally and gainfully employed cannot afford to live off of their salaries and end up on the streets, sometimes even with young children. It is blatant that more needs to be done to aid people so that they do not end up without a place to lay their heads at night.

After reading Nickel and Dimed, I began to understand that one of the greatest causes of homelessness in America is how little companies and employers pay their workers. If minimum wage was raised and people were actually able to live off of their wages,  I certainly believe that homelessness would become less prevalent and more people would have an equal opportunity to live comfortably and safely.

After reading the book “Nickel and Dimed” by Barbara Ehrenreich, I realized that it is close to impossible to live on a consistent minimum wage job. For many people this was not a surprise, but it was for me. I have always been told that everyone in America can be living the “American dream” with whatever job we choose. I was programmed to think that we could have whatever job we wanted here in America, we could even start our own business. Unfortunately, for most Americans this is not true. Throughout “Nickel and Dimed” I understood that America is full of inequality, especially in the work place. Ehrenreich joined the low-wage work force to see for herself that it is hard, if at all possible, to live off these wages. Ehrenreich writes, “No one ever said that you could work hard-harder even than you ever thought possible-and still find yourself sinking ever deeper into poverty and debt” (Ehrenreich 220). With Ehrenreich’s enter into the low-wage work force she saw for herself that hard work does not always pay off, especially in America. This book gives examples of low-wage workers and their constant struggles of everyday life. Many of these workers had no way of getting out of their low-wage jobs because they needed the small amount of money to pay for rent at an apartment or food for their families. It is important to understand the inequality of the low-wage workers in America so that we can try to make it better. This book helped me to realize that not everyone can live this so-called “American dream” because of the inequality in jobs in America.

Calculating the basic needs of a single parent with two children and seeing how it matched up to a fulltime minimum wage job was very sad.  Looking at the areas of rent, utilities, transportation, clothing, child care, furniture, laundry, cleaning supplies, communication, medical, and entertainment was very eye opening because the two do not match up.  Living off of basic necessities for a parent and her two children costs more than the income of a full time minimum wage worker.  This explains the problem our people are having making it through the month.  It isn’t possible to have a comfortable life when working full-time at any location with minimum wage as the income.  So, these are full time workers, going in 5 days a week, yet they still have to go to food banks and shelters in order to provide their children a decent life.  The question is how do we fix this problem? How are we supposed to help people get out of poverty when even working full time jobs leaves them with basic needs unmet?  This doesn’t even begin to address the problem of people working part-time because they cannot find full time jobs.  A common response would be, well she or he should not have had children, but that is not a justifiable answer because there are too many single parents in this dilemma right now.  People have had children and they are now stuck, with no way to get out.