By Stephanie Coombs
A week of penny-pinching and wallet-watching left 72 Ottawa-area residents — who normally don’t have to worry about their finances — knowing more about what it’s like to be poor.
“It wasn’t easy,” says Centretown resident Pat Lawrence. “It got harder and harder each day.”
Most of the participants of last month’s Poverty Challenge, organized by the Centretown Community Health Centre as part of a poverty awareness campaign, had similar responses.
They were trying to live on $37 a week — what a single person on welfare could spend on food, clothing, entertainment, transportation and any other day-to-day expenses after paying rent and utilities.
“It’s the little things that I took for granted, like being able to grab a coffee on the way to work,” says Lawrence. “But I was pretty lucky, there were things that I could put off until next week, like getting my hair cut or doing my laundry.”
But while the participants were able to return to their regular lives after the week was over, more than 120,000 people in the region, and 4,000 families in Centretown, can’t. They live in poverty every day.
Candice Beale is a 31-year-old single mother of two children — Micheil, 4, and Brianna, 1 — who didn’t take the challenge because she experiences poverty every day. She receives about $1,000 a month in welfare payments and $280 for a child tax benefit. After paying $700 in rent every month, she doesn’t have much left over.
Since many of the poverty challenge participants were writing journals of their experiences, Beale agreed to write down what happens to her in an average week.
What follows are excerpts from that journal and from an interview with Centretown News.
Day 1
Micheil had to take his pledge form for the snowsuit marathon back to school … I felt really pathetic giving him only 25 cents but it’s going to be hard even coming up with that. If I could afford to give more we wouldn’t have to get our snowsuits from the snowsuit fund.
Beale does most of her clothes shopping, for herself and her children at Phase 2 in the Glebe.
“It’s more like a real store,” says Beale. “It doesn’t feel quite as pathetic as the Salvation Army. When you’re poor you feel left out of society as much as it is, you don’t go looking for more ways to feel poor.”
Day 2
Tonight I’ve got to use my child tax credit to buy groceries till the end of the month. After I’ve paid for Brianna’s diapers and the rest of the bills I’ve got about $25 to get us through . . . I don’t know how I’m going to pull this off. I may end up at the food bank next week for the first time since January of last year . . . I didn’t sleep well at all last night worrying about the bills.
When Beale receives her welfare cheque from the government, she sits down with her calculator and budgets every cent before heading to the grocery store.
“My list is prioritized,” she says. “My food is on the bottom, after everything I need for Micheil and Brianna. If I run out of money, I don’t get what I want.”
Day 3
[Micheil] wants to have his friend over to our house. This other kid’s parents are quite well off . . . I don’t want these people to see our run down house with the chipped paint, frayed carpets and piles of laundry I can’t afford to wash lying around. I hate this sort of thing.
Day 4
When I was coming home today I smelled the food from the restaurant across the road. There’s nothing good in the house to eat. I can’t tell you how much I wish I could go over there and eat.
Beale says she rarely gets out of the house, unless it is with her children. She says she regrets she isn’t able to take them to restaurants, movies, concerts or the circus.
“It’s kind of like being in jail,” she says.
Some of the poverty challenge participants felt the same way.
“I’m used to being able to meet friends for lunch, which I couldn’t do that week,” says Lawrence. “I never realized how isolating being poor is.”
Day 5
I’m tired of being cooped up in the house. I wish I could go see this new movie that came out. By the time I get any money I can spare, it won’t be playing anymore. Even if I could come up with the ticket price, I could never afford a sitter.
“I never have any money in my pocket,” says Beale. “The other day I had budgeted $5 to renew my NDP membership, but then I realized I didn’t need it.
“My first thought was I could buy some chocolate bars or chips, which I never get, but then I thought about the four garbage bags full of laundry in my kitchen. I can’t afford anything extra.”
Day 6
Well I think I have tonsillitis again. Yay. It’s a good thing it’s payday on Friday so I can get the $2 it will cost me for antibiotics . . . After I get the medicine it usually takes about two days for me to start feeling better. So I should start feeling better next Sunday. Only six more days of misery to go.
One family that participated in the poverty challenge also became sick. But although Beale has to work medicine into her budget, they didn’t.
“We started on Tuesday and I’m embarrassed to say that by Friday we weren’t able to complete it,” says Grace Vlacic, who did the challenge with her husband and two-year-old daughter. “The antibiotics really put us over the limit.”
Day 7
We have a meeting tonight. We got lucky. Someone is giving us a ride.
Beale is a member of the regional government’s task force on poverty, and through them she received a free bus pass in November. But up until that time, Beale and her children would walk everywhere, in all types of weather, because the bus was just too expensive.
Beale has been collecting welfare for seven years, and currently is not looking for a job. She says even if she found a job, she probably wouldn’t be able to afford babysitting for Micheil and Brianna.
She says she hopes the poverty challenge is teaching people a lesson and making them more aware of what it is like to be poor.
“I definitely will look at people with low incomes in a new light,” says Vlacic. “Before we did the challenge we thought they were kind of wasting their money, probably on cigarettes or liquor, but we don’t smoke or drink and still we couldn’t get through the week.”