Safety nets strain to meet needs Tough times put area aid agencies, family support sy

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SUDDEN DESCENT
Safety nets strain to meet needs
Tough times put area aid agencies, family support systems to the test

Michelle Hanson did everything right and she still lost it all.

Just two years ago, the 49-year-old lived in a comfortable three-bedroom house she and her husband owned in South Toledo. It had a two-car garage and a finished basement with a kitchen, perfect for hosting her four grown children and their children for family dinners.

Today, she doesn't like to think too much about those days. The memories make her too sad.

After suffering a shoulder injury, she lost her job at a Pepsi warehouse. Then her husband left her with a mountain of debt. Then she lost the house.

For about a week, she sat around feeling sorry for herself. Then she decided to do something about it. She moved in with relatives. Went back to school. Hit the job market.

And still, it didn't work.

Her story shows the lightning speed with which people can fall into poverty in today's unforgiving economy. It also highlights a defining legacy of the Great Recession. After three years of brutal economic conditions, the infrastructure of social services on which people once depended, from family help to government assistance, has been largely obliterated. Life changes such as divorce or injury that once threatened to knock a person down a few rungs on the economic ladder can now knock the ladder over completely.

When Ms. Hanson found herself without a home in 2009, she moved to Virginia to live with her eldest daughter. Then she did what job-placement experts advise: She got advanced-skills training.

After a year-long medical assistant training program at Everest College in Newport News, Va., she wanted to return to Toledo, where her other children still lived. She was sure she would get a job.

She moved into her son's converted garage. It wasn't the Four Seasons, but it was temporary. She began applying for jobs but didn't get any calls back.

"I put in so many resumes," she said. "I would go to medical offices, but they all wanted two years of experience."

Eventually she settled for a part-time, third-shift job at Walmart in Perrysburg. She could afford some necessities -- gas, car insurance, food -- but that was it. She was making no progress at all toward getting an apartment of her own

Economy - Toledo Blade

Yet so many continue to blame the poor for their own condition. Slowly but surely, we are killing the middle class.