It was late on a recent Monday night, 10 pm or so. On the
way home from a friend’s house in Belmont, I
stopped in at a late night gas station in Newton
for a soda. Standing behind the counter
was a very tired looking young man—mid twenties or so, maybe a bit older. His
name tag read “Antonio” and with a smile and a “thank you, sir”, he handed me
my change and I went back to my car.
I wondered what life was like for him, as I drove home to my
big suburban house. I thought about how completely exhausted he looked.
As a clerk he probably makes the Massachusetts minimum wage for such a job, $10
per hour. Work 40 hours and after taxes,
that’s about $17,000 per year. I wonder
if he has to work another job just to pay his rent, or maybe support his spouse
and children if he has any. Food on the table, clothes and shoes,
medicine. Or maybe he’s in school. How can he hit the books if he has to work 50
or 60 hours a week just to get by?
I wonder…how does he live, survive, economically? Especially
in the Boston
area. Must be very close to the bone,
that’s for sure.
Two recent Boston Globe articles make that reality
very clear. The first reports that Boston now has the
highest rate of economic disparity among the 100 largest American cities. More
than half of the Hub’s residents make $35,000 or less, per year. Like Antonio. Maybe he and his wife both work
full time jobs at or near the minimum wage.
There must be plenty of others like them. The woman who is a crossing
guard at the neighborhood school. The man who serves you coffee at the
drive-thru. The kind lady who takes care
of people at the nursing home. The
gentleman who works in a group home for the disabled.
I wonder…how can they find a decent place to live on that
kind of pay? Say, a two bedroom apartment.
Who knows? Because the second Globe article reports that Boston is also now the
fourth most expensive rental market nationwide.
Want that apartment? You have to make $58 an hour, or $120,000 a year just
to move in. Where are people supposed to
live when rents get that sky high? The Boston
area may be in the midst of a biotech boom with high tech entrepreneurs and
young people flocking to live in the city.
But it is also a place where the divide between the “haves” and “have
nots” is about as wide as it has ever been in recent memory.
I wonder…what can be done about this? Is anyone—Marty Walsh
or Charlie Baker or the Legislature—doing something to help the working poor?
Building more affordable housing? Ensuring that the city and this area that we all
love so much won’t become a place where only the few can live comfortably.
I wonder…about Antonio, as I write this. I wonder about him and all those other folks
whom I most often just do not see, really
see, as I go about my life. The folks
who work hard at tough jobs; who stand on their feet all day and put up with
cranky customers, who take care of our children and aging parents, who drive
our school busses and plow our driveways, who serve us lunch and pack our
grocery bags.
I wonder…if sometimes they
wonder if anyone really cares about them.
Sees them.
I wonder…what my faith has to say about all this. Jesus did once declare that the poor would
always be with us but Christians often read that passage without realizing Christ
was actually quoting an older, longer passage, from the Old Testament. The full verse says, “Since there will never
cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand
to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.’” I wonder why I seem to always
forget the second part of that scripture.
All I wanted to do that night was get a Coke for the ride
home. And then I encountered Antonio and
he made me wonder…about what life is really like for the working poor of Boston and its
suburbs.
I wonder….
No comments:
Post a Comment