Jobless and Underemployed Live in Fear
Published: October 14, 2009
Updated: October 15, 2009
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 http://www.appalachianhomeless.org.
| (276) 634-2531
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Due to the fact my last comment went,unsurprisingly,over the head of empthead I will say this…the article states that:“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.“ Michael Moore put it quite succinctly:“Capitalism is evil,“ he says, “and you cannot regulate evil. You have to eliminate it and replace it with something else…with democracy.“In my opinion a democratic socialism.
“For people without health care, who are LOSING THEIR JOBS AND LOSING THEIR HOMES, the love affair with the free market is already over. They may not know what the solution is, but many are ready to discuss the fact that capitalism itself is the problem.“
I’ve noticed recently in many of the right wing-nut,teabagger posts on this site they have collectively taken to accuse those of a differing(and more educated) opinion than theirs,of mumbling and rambling,and so forth.Sounds like the under educated,naive,Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck teabaggers are getting a little frustrated.Now,now emtyhead…...
While this is a terrible situation, the banks are as much at fault as anyone. Here is the scenario. Lets say a family loses their home to foreclosure. First off they dont have to be forclosed upon if only the greedy banks will work out a program with people facing job loses and reduced hours. Have a year long program to where the banks reduce the monthly payment while the family is out job searching. Normally in this bad ecnonomy this will give enough time for the family to find a job or jobs and then catch back up. This is a simple solution. Or banks could even tack on some kind of unemployment insurance in the agreement so if recession or unemployment occur the family is safe for a reasonable amount of time. I know banks have to profit as do all businessess but their are solutions to these trying times if a bank is willing to help or come up with solutions instead of throwing their weight around and acting like king all mighty. So your telling me that by a bank reducing the monthly payments for awhile or having some sort of unemployment insurance tacked on to the mortgage agreement, they would rather be stuck with an empty rotting house getting nothing at all. Goes to show you how dispecable a bank really is. Not to mention heartless. I know people have to pay their mortgage but there should be programs like my ideas set up for these kind of troubling times. If so everyone would win. Try it it just may prove to work. As for the homeless and forclosed families i really feel for you. It kills me to see people like this. But we have one entity to blame. THE US GOVERNMENT. You know and i know it.
fdr,
What on earth are you talking about. Stay with the topic and quit mumbling!
“More and more area residents, strapped by job loss or cut hours, are getting eviction and foreclosure notices”
There is a simple solution but greedy Banks and Greedy property owners will not do it. Allow the people to place the payments on the back side of the rent or loan. Or allow partial payments until someone finds a job.
For every home that someone is evicted from you have an empty house that will be eventually destroyed. It serves greedy banks and landlords right if the home is ruined before they find another renter or buyer rather than work with the current occupant. What is the point of eviction if someone is 1 or 2 months behind if the house will only sit empty for a year??
It’s just STUPID and GREEDY and CRUEL
This is very sad and getting more common. And, I bet you that neither one of these folks are counted as part of the 10% unemployment rate, which is closer to about 18%.
From Lee Sustar:“THE U.S. capitalist class’ strategy for escaping from the crisis boils down to making the workers pay for it—through trillions of dollars in taxes, cuts in wages and benefits, and reduced social spending.In short, the crisis marks the definitive end of the American Dream, in which most workers could expect a rising standard of living and still better prospects for their children. Instead, if capital has its way, the U.S. is being transformed into a low-wage country in which an already threadbare social safety net is shredded still further.
These trends won’t be altered by a more humane economic policy from Washington. They’ll require a shift in the balance of class forces through workers’ struggles.“"That means starting now with the work of organizing the sentiment for change in concrete expressions of resistance—and reimagining and renewing socialism as a part of the struggles that need fighting in every corner of society.“
Teabaggers do it,why can’t we as workers do it?
This is a sad story about our area and I am keeping you all in my thoughts.
I must ask though…what is the difference between jobless and unemployed?
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