Restoring Dignity to the Working Poor
Labor Day has lost its meaning. It’s time to remake this holiday from one dedicated to fun and the end of summer, to a day of commitment to restoring dignity to the poor in our community.
By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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Caley Adkerson Davis, who left the house he rented every day of his working life in bibbed overalls and walked to Erwin Mills — a textile mill that paid little and worked him hard — would not recognize Labor Day today.
For him, it was a day to remember the poor working conditions he endured his entire adult life, and the strikes he took part in during his working years to fight for dignity and safety in the workplace.
When he passed away in 1989, he had few valuables to his name. Yet, he had passed on those memories and values to his children and grandchildren.
Unfortunately, these values and memories are now being forgotten, too.
Working Poor
When Davis — my grandfather — passed in 1989, he was living in JFK Towers in Durham, North Carolina. A government housing project for poor seniors. Prior to that, however, he had lived next door to my family on Shenandoah Avenue.
We owned our house at 2513 Shenandoah Avenue; my grandfather rented his at 2511. His house, like ours, was small — just a little over 800 square feet — but he had enough land out back for a small garden, was able to own and maintain his Ford Fairlane 500, and buy the essentials that he needed.
My family eventually moved to the suburbs, along with millions of others in the 1970s. We gained land and better schools, but we lost the tight-knit human community that living in a neighborhood of closely built World War II boom houses provided. We knew, and depended on, our neighbors. The mailman was a friend. The local newspaper editor lived in the same neighborhood. And the local park was the gathering point for all.
Still, the move was a good one for my brother and me. We set our sights on the future; we forgot about those we left behind — save our grandparents, whom we regularly visited.
We watched that community crumble. We saw how the working poor were largely forgotten. And we watched as the ideal of neighbors helping neighbors that was dominant in the 1960s and into the early 1970s gave way to the pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality that took over America’s consciousness under Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and was furthered by the destruction of the public safety-net under Bill Clinton in the 1990s.
The remnants of that transition plague all of us today.
That community on Shenandoah Avenue still stands. The boom homes that my grandparents and my family lived in still stand, but today these largely unchanged houses sell for north of $400,000 to families with college degrees and an opportunity to earn more.
And the working poor? Forgotten.
Bringing It Home
In Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania, and Stafford counties, there is precious little space for the working poor.
In my three years reporting on this region, it is clear that we as a community are moving in the wrong direction.
Let’s start with a baseline of how many people in our community are among those struggling just to survive. People we no longer refer to as the “working poor,” but as households that are Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed (ALICE).
They hold jobs, but they lack the funds to meet their basic survival needs. Meaning they must choose monthly between rent, food, medicines.
In Virginia, 29% of households are categorized as ALICE, and 11% are categorized as poor. In other words, 4 out of every 10 households is struggling to stay afloat.
In Spotsylvania County, 33% of households are considered ALICE, and 10% are in poverty. In Stafford, it’s 29% ALICE and 5% in poverty. And in Fredericksburg, 30% are ALICE, and 14% are in poverty.
This poverty plays out in numerous ways, perhaps nowhere more cruelly than in evictions.
As Adele Uphaus reported on August 7, “Virginia, with just over 1 million renters, has an eviction filing rate (the number of evictions filed per 100 renters) of 13%. That’s the highest rate of the 12 states Eviction Lab tracks. The next highest is Delaware, with 11%.”
With no right to representation, these families are facing a court system that is stacked against them.
We also see it in the level of hunger. Dan Maher of the Fredericksburg Regional Food Bank told the Advance in July, “Going into the pandemic, we saw 20,000 to 25,000 people per year. Now,” he continued, “we’re seeing 45,000 to 50,000 people per year.”
We also see it in the housing crisis. In a scene that is becoming all too familiar, local residents like Tammy (not her real name) are finding their rents increased sharply at renewal time. In Cobblestone, where she formerly rented, her renewal letter came with a $337 per month increase in rent — from $1,593 per month to $1,930.
Even with a college degree, and a good job in Northern Virginia that she telecommutes to, she was unable to cover that increase and has returned to her family’s home.
A story in the Washington Post in August made clear that what was happening to Tammy wasn’t unusual. Since 2019, rents are up an average of 34.9% in Spotsylvania, 36.1% in Stafford, and 29.7% in Fredericksburg.
That rise, of course, is driven by the shortage of housing.
Across our region, efforts to build more houses, and in particular affordable housing, have been pushed back on by NIMBY neighbors and government leaders who fear that affordable housing will bring in residents who will shift the political balance in the area.
We have seen this in Stafford, where a planned community that would bring businesses, public spaces, and affordable housing has consistently met resistance from the Board of Supervisors. And in Fredericksburg, even modest attempts to increase density are met with significant pushback. Spotsylvania has shown itself no more interested in building affordable housing for the working poor.
A Commitment to the Working Poor
It was not like my grandfather to complain about what he was “owed,” or beg for wealth redistribution. What he did want was respect.
Giving the working poor their respect is key to the work that the Fredericksburg Regional Food Bank is committed to, as evidenced in the Order Ahead program we reported on in August.
Then there are groups like the Food Co-op, which likewise restores dignity in shopping with its Food For All program.
Dignity is central to the work of Habitat for Humanity, which makes affordable housing available.
These initiatives are crucial, and our community would be in far worse shape were it not for their extraordinary work, and the work of teachers and social workers and those who day-in and day-out work on levels large and small to deliver dignity and a future to all people.
However, problems like housing, which is consistently rated the most challenging in our area, are going to require an agreement among government, civil society, and everyday citizens that we are poorer when we don’t take care of the vast numbers of people who want nothing more than safe housing, affordable food, and work that allows them to pay their bills.
What we need is not a holiday. We need a day committed to coming together and strengthening the many coalitions of people and organizations that bring dignity back to the working poor. We need reminding that the working poor are not a burden, but the backbone of our society, and the great hope for our future.
It’s time to look back to the labor struggles of the past that my grandfather took part in and embrace a commitment to restoring dignity to the poor — something my grandfather had; something every human deserves.
Not just those who can afford it.
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