Drive out of poverty with a car; no car makes it hard to get out of poverty (cars and kids)

[Liberal_in_LA]

http://money.cnn.com/2008/04/24/autos/carless_in_america/index.htm?section=money_mostpopular

Drive out of poverty with a car
A good, reliable automobile can make the difference in getting up from the bottom, and some groups want to give a leg up.

By Peter Valdes-Dapena, CNNMoney.com staff writer
Last Updated: May 5, 2008: 6:06 PM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- If filling your tank with $3.60 a gallon gas is a serious economic hardship, ask yourself this: What if you didn't have a tank to fill up?

Wendy Mitchell of Middlebury, Vt. is a single mom who moved there from Florida in 2006 looking for better schools. Within months, she said, her Chevrolet Blazer blew a rod and, without a job or much savings, she was left without a car at the beginning of a rural New England winter.

"I was totally devastated," she said.

Despite car-ownership costs, including insurance, repairs and fuel, the majority of even the poorest Americans own cars, according to U.S. Census data - and for good reason. In this country, life without one can be difficult at best and unmanageable at worst.

****

Cars and kids
Employers cite transportation problems as the second-most common reason for losing entry-level workers, said Waller. The number one problem is child care.

[OlderButWiser]

1. Partly because...

...many people refuse to use public transportation.

"In this country, life without one can be difficult at best and unmanageable at worst."

[Berry Cool]

5. That's a big part of the problem, yes.

True, many people live where public transportation is either nonexistent or really sporadic. But even those who live in places with really good or relatively good public transportation systems often wouldn't dream of using them unless they had no alternative. They much prefer the privacy and freedom of their cars.

As a result, the bias builds against riders of public transportation, with the assumption being that they're all extremely impoverished or creepy denizens of the criminal world. This only serves to scare away the car drivers further.

I don't own a car and never have. I can't tell you how many times people have stared at me in disbelief: "You don't have a CAR???? How do you LIVE????" :wow:

[Liberal_in_LA]

6. I get the same stares due to lack of cable TV.

[OlderButWiser]

14. Freak

(just kidding)

[Liberal_in_LA]

30. lol.

[cornermouse]

7. It's not just that.

If you have kids, you really need to spend as much time with them as possible. Public transportation and even car pools may not run on your schedule. Time spent waiting for the bus and the carpool can add up quickly, especially when you look at it in the context of a week. When you have a car, you can pick up groceries for a family for a week. If you have to depend on public transportation you're going to be taking more time away from your family to make repeated trips to the grocery store over the same time span. I don't know if you know how many bags of groceries it takes to feed a family of four for a week but it's more than you want to try to carry around via public transportation; at least it is in my experience.

[Berry Cool]

17. Grocery shopping is the worst thing about not having a car.

Even if you have no one to shop for but yourself. You feel as if you spend half your life schlepping heavy bags.

I was pretty proud of myself for figuring out how to do a decent amount of grocery shopping and fit everything onto my bike. One of the keys was doing self-checkout. Checkout clerks always seem to use as many bags as possible, assuming the shopper is driving the groceries home and therefore, the number of bags used doesn't matter. If you're carrying or biking them home, you bet it matters!

[Fumesucker]

12. It's possible to live without a car..

But the person I know best that has no car is very limited in where and when he can go places, and he is quite a wealthy person who just doesn't trust himself to drive after a couple of scary accidents.

[spinbaby]

28. People will use good public transportation

I'm tired of hearing about how Americans love their cars. The fact is, I'd give up my car in a minute if I could get places without it. I live in a town that has extremely unreliable bus service and that bus service only goes from town out to the big box shopping areas. I still see people walking the couple of miles from town to Wal-Mart. It's not a pleasant walk--the big box stores aren't built to be pedestrian-friendly. This is how bad our transportation is--people will walk in traffic and in ditches rather than take the bus. It's not that we love our cars, it's that our public transportation sucks!

I've traveled in countries with good train systems. Americans don't even know what real public transportation looks like.

[high density]

8. In New England...

...outside of Boston and its suburbs we do not have much of a public transportation system. There are a few more populous areas that have a local bus service. There's not much available when it comes to links between towns, and many of those of any distance take a painful L-shaped route through Boston.

[Edweird]

16. Hmm... 30 mins. on my motorcycle, 2 1/2 hours by bus. I wonder why nobody uses it.....

Could it be because it is so massively time consuming and inconvenient? Because it turns the smallest errand into an ALL DAY ordeal? People don't have time for that crap. And it's only going to get worse with the coming budget cuts.

[Berry Cool]

18. You're living in one of the places where the transportation is too sporadic to make it practical.

It's a shame there are so many places like that in this country.

[alarimer]

20. It mostly isn't available or available at the hours people need it to be.

If you have to leave work to take your kid to the doctor, are you going to take an hour bus ride to do so? Not likely. I lived in St. Petersburg, FL for a while. I tried to take the bus to work. It took two fucking hours to do what normally took me 15 minutes by car. So no way can I take public transportation. Now I can't take it because I have weird hours.

[GOPBasher]

2. This is one of the worst things about being poor in this country,

after the costs of health care. A car is extremely expensive (cost of the car, gas, repairs and maintenence, insurance) and yet it's an absolutel necessity. Our infrastructure should be built so that cars are a luxury, not a necessity.

[distantearlywarning]

3. Depends on what city you live in.

I am easily able to take public transportation to my place of employment, and I don't have to rely on a car. I live in the Northeast.

I lived several places in the Southwest before coming here, and I would have had to have a car in all of them to retain employment.

[Liberal_in_LA]

4. I could live in the subway having cities (excluding LA) without a car.

[Breeze54]

9. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but

I was the recipient of a donor car, as a single Mom, who was in college and working full time
and retraining for a new job in IT and I was soooo screwed as the little shitbox I had bought for $300.00 had shit the bed and it wasn't worth repairing and I lived where there was NO alternative transportation and if I hadn't been the lucky recipient of that donor Ford Escort, I would have been facing poverty to the extreme! that donation improved my life in the cold North East immensely!
I could cry about it now... it was such a sweet day for me and my family! :cry: :cry:

I am so grateful for that person's kindness and pro-active foresight!

THANK YOU ANONYMOUS DONOR! :hug:

[madrchsod]

13. why would you be embarrassed to admit that?

most people i know have had hard times and relied on the goodness of people to get them through...never be embarrassed i`d say you were blessed

[Breeze54]

15. Because I was brought up to stand on my own two feet

and when I was unable to do that, due to a lot of reasons, I felt like a failure.
But intellectually, I knew it was due to the state not collecting the child support
and I had a URESA Order but it didn't do much good and I was stuck and was forced
into having to ask for help and it just goes against my grain. Understand?
It wasn't an easy thing to do to ask for help but I had to swallow my pride
to make sure my kids would be OK and I did that. I didn't want to but I did.

[madrchsod]

29. yes i do....

been there and done that...

[Muttocracy]

25. many a 16 yr old kid gets a free car they don't deserve.

I'm guessing you'll pass your favor on some day. I didn't have a car until after college and had some gaps without on a few years ago. I try to be kind in giving people rides because I know how much it can mean.

[Warpy]

10. Life without a car can work in the city

and it might work in parts of California. However, this country has been specifically designed for people who own cars and people who don't are SOL.

For years, I'd just rent one when I needed it to get out of the city for one reason or another. It made moving from one place to another nearly impossible, though. Although I was cheeky enough to move furniture on the subway, there was a limit on how much I could heft.

Living without a car pretty much means all your worldly goods need to fit into 2 suitcases. That restricts you to furnished apartments and residence hotels/motels. Any more possessions than that and you face leaving them all behind if you have to move to another part of the country for a new job.

Living without a car also means a lot of discount warehouses are out of reach because for some reason, mass transit never goes closer than about a mile and a half to them.

Life is certainly easier with a car. I drove junk for years, but the cost versus the savings in time and aggravation was a close call.

[Berry Cool]

19. I have not found everything you say to be true.

All my worldly goods fit into a medium-sized van, not two suitcases. I have moved many times in my life. The earliest times, when it was local, I was able to get friends with cars/trucks to help me move. I have never lived in a furnished apartment or a residence hotel/motel, only unfurnished apartments.

I have also moved to a new city and another part of the country by renting a truck of medium van size and getting someone to drive it for me. In one case it was my sister's boyfriend, and in another it was someone who was recommended to me by a friend. I paid him well, including the cost of an overnight motel room because he couldn't have driven there and back in a day. But it was still probably less than I would have paid a professional mover. And I had to pay for the gas, too.

[Warpy]

23. Please remember I was talking about moves to completely

different areas. That's the case when poor people who have no cars will find it very difficult to move anything that doesn't fit into a couple of suitcases.

Greyhound won't let you bring the couch.

Forget about renting the van, if you're poor, you can't afford one.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

21. I was car-free for ten years in Portland, Oregon

and I moved twice during that time. There are such a thing as rented U-Hauls.

[kickysnana]

24. Thought you had to have a credit card to rent. n/t

[Lydia Leftcoast]

27. I guess I must have used one, but before I had one

I used to call upon friends who had vans or trucks.

[AndyTiedye]

11. It Was Also The Only Way to Get Away From Katrina

[Lydia Leftcoast]

22. Yes, I recall an NPR interview with a family in Alabama

that stayed in their home through the storm. One member of the family had a car, and he stayed, rather than abandon his extended family (grandparents, aunts and uncles, etc.), none of whom had a car.

[Muttocracy]

26. I seem to remember hearing about that in MN - cars for woman going welfare -> work? nt