Unemployed and on the Verge of Losing Everything: "I Don't Know How I'll Make It"

By Rachel Neumann, AlterNet. Posted July 6, 2009.

Perhaps the hardest part is that, on top of all this, Luz's back has started to hurt so much that she has to get injections to cauterize the nerves in her lower back just so that she can be mobile. For the last two months, friends and family stepped in and paid her health insurance premiums. But it looks like this next month she will lose her health insurance, which means she will no longer be able to afford her back treatments and medication. She also recently had two teeth break and a bridge come off. She put the $4,000 for an implant for one of the teeth on her almost maxed out credit card. Because the other tooth already has a root canal she can wait for that implant. "I just have to give up my vanity about having teeth missing when I smile.” Luz says, "I live in fear of losing my insurance and then having any future insurance refuse to cover my "pre-existing conditions.”

For now, Luz is surviving on help from friends, the housecleaning work, and credit cards, which she calls "middle class welfare.” But her credit card payments are spiralling, and while she follows the news about possible credit card reform, so far there is nothing that helps her and the interest rate on her balance has risen to 22 percent because of a few late payments. She has stopped being able to make her payments.

Luz has seen enough other people struggling to have some perspective. She says she spends part of each day reflecting "how lucky I am that my house hasn't been foreclosed on yet, that I have electricity and a little piece of land that belongs to the bank but that, so far, I still get to live on. I still have a car I can drive to job interviews. " In Austin alone, there are waiting lists of over 100 for women and children to get into shelters.

The day before we talked, Luz had started the morning with fifty dollars to last her for the next few weeks until payday. Then her son, in college in Oregon, called with an urgent need for her to wire transfer $30 so he could get his books for school and not to overdraw his account. She gave him $30.00. Then a family knocked on her door and the guy asked if he could mow her lawn for $20. They'd lost their house and were now living in their car. Luz explained that she now had $20 to live on till pay day. The family offered to do it for $10. So Luz split her lunch of fruit and cheese with them and gave them half her last twenty. Now she has ten. "I don't have regrets,” she says. "I don't have enough to live on, I'm not where that family is. That could so easily be me.”

These are the kind of things that makes Luz wish she could still call her mother. "I forget that she is not just a phone call away. I can't drop in on her and have tea and plan her garden.”

Luz has to end our conversation to prepare to go to another job interview. She goes to the bathroom and when she comes out her eyes are clear. She has wet her hair and smoothed it back and keeps her mouth closed to hide the broken teeth that she has not yet been able to raise the money to get fixed. I remember what she told me near the end of our talk, "I am afraid. I've used up all my resources and I don't know how I will make it if I don't get a job this month.” You wouldn't know her fear by looking at her now. She looks strong, composed, and capable. "Wish me luck,” she says and she heads out. But what Luz Guerra needs now is not luck, but a safety net, a society that will take care of its members who have given all they can and who now, without help, will fall.

See more stories tagged with: economy, welfare, recession, unemployment, safety net, joblessness

Rachel Neumann is Rights & Liberties Editor at AlterNet.

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