Jobless and Underemployed Live in Fear

BRISTOL, Va. – "It’s like you’re in quicksand, and the more you struggle and try to get out, the more you sink."
Darla Tolliver often spoke in analogies: What it’s like to forever be in a wheelchair. What it’s like for her husband to get a job, then lose it, get another one and lose that, too. What it’s like to get a foreclosure notice in the mail.
"My life is in that house," she said of their double-wide trailer on an grassy acre in Bluff City. "Everything I ever worked for is in that house; the thought of losing it is unbearable."
Darla and Jim Tolliver were sitting at a folding table in the Bristol Trail Station, sipping Cokes and awaiting the 6:30 p.m. Foreclosure Prevention Workshop at Bristol’s first Housing Fair.
Darla Tolliver is permanently disabled from a car wreck in 2005. Jim Tolliver put stickers on batteries at the Exide plant until he lost his job in October. Then he got an intermittent job at the U.S. Census Bureau, which employs him a month here and a month there about half of the time.
They bought their trailer in 2001 for $52,000. They have $28,000 to go.
But, for about a year, they’ve been making partial payments or no payments at all. Now they’re three months behind on their mortgage. They said they’d be just fine, if only they could get caught up.
"It’s a incessant roller coaster," Darla Tolliver said. "It’s either feast or famine, either on top or on bottom."
Local aid workers suggest the Tollivers are not alone: More and more area residents, strapped by job loss or cut hours, are getting eviction and foreclosure notices.
Area housing providers got together at the train station Tuesday night because of that increasing need for help.
"This is where we live," said Lisa Cofer, executive director of the United Way of Bristol. "These are the families we go to church with, the families we see at the grocery store. If there’s one thing Bristol’s known for, it’s taking care of each other in a time of crisis."
Spearheaded by the United Way and Bristol Tennessee City Councilwoman Margaret Feierabend, the housing fair showcased local housing providers, offering services ranging from emergency homeless shelters to permanent solutions. They offered three free workshops on financing homes, avoiding foreclosure, renters rights and housing help for the homeless. A few dozen people attended the fair and a handful sat in on the workshops.
Feierabend said she hopes the fair will grow with time, and expects the group will offer workshops throughout the year, although none have been scheduled yet.
The Tollivers met Debbie Perry, a counselor with the Eastern Eight Community Development Corp., a Johnson City-based housing nonprofit serving the eight counties of Northeast Tennessee, who thinks she can help. She said the Tollivers are "perfect candidates" for a new grant program in Tennessee funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, that gives homeowners $1,500 to get out of debt so long as they can prove they can take over from there. Perry said since the $1.5 million program began Oct. 1, she’s already set up 30 families.
Jim Tolliver said the United Way gave him a few job leads, too.
But the situation is even more dire for the snowballing number who have already lost their homes. Dreama Shreve, director of the Appalachian Regional Coalition on Homelessness, said more than 1,700 people are homeless in the region, and each month since May, 75 to 100 children have been added to those ranks.
In the Bristol, Tenn., schools alone, 150 kids do not have homes to go to.
The nonprofit distributes state and federal funds to charities and service providers.
"It’s not a hand out, it’s a hand up," Shreve said of the services ARCH provides the destitute. "If your train’s off the tracks, but the track’s not gone, we’ll just put your train back on course." For more information about ARCH services call (423) 928-2724 or visit www.appalachianhomeless.org.

cgalofaro@bristolnews.com | (276) 634-2531