![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraSo, yesterday, as I was wandering around a utilitarian apartment complex, I ran into another National Counting Project employee!
Whoa!
It was like being an astronaut exploring the lost canals of Mars and suddenly happening upon a fellow Earthling!
We chattered for a few minutes.
She absolutely loathes the job: “They have me mostly up in Salt Point and Pleasant Valley. The people are nasty and rude. There is a pervasive and deep distrust of the government right now. Doesn’t really matter who you want to vote for in the coming election. Everybody hates the government. But the pay is great, especially considering it’s a job without educational requirements.”
Since she’s a single Mom with two kids, and approximately two-fifths of her weekly check goes to paying babysitters, I wasn’t exactly sure how that works out for her.
###
Earlier that morning, I’d had to meet up with Huck, my field supervisor. He's a slender, Puckish man, and I could tell he was torn between the rigid exactitudes of a bureaucratic job and the certain knowledge that more than half the job consists of complete bullshit.
He asked me how it was going.
“It’s hard,” I said. “You know, I’m the type of person whom other people like to talk to.”
“I can tell,” he said.
“So, when people don’t want to talk to me, when they slam doors in my face, it’s disconcerting. I try not to personalize it, but a certain amount of personalization is unavoidable.”
“I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but you have the highest conversion rate on the team,” Huck said. “You’ve gotten the most interviews.”
“How many people are on the team?”
“We started with 28. We’re down to eight.” He laughed ruefully. “And I shouldn’t be telling you this.”
Like I say. I’m the type of person whom other people like to talk to.
###
Late, late, late in the afternoon, I had a bunch of addresses in what turned out to be the erstwhile Livingston Motel.
Albany Post Road near the FDR Presidential Library is lined with these old cottage-style motels. As time passes, and fewer and fewer people come to worship at the great white sarcophagus that holds the remains of FDR and Eleanor, the demand for motel services has fallen precipitously. Thus, many of the motels have been repurposed. A week ago, I counted people at a motel that had been turned into a kinda Mad Max hostel for aging hippies.
The Livingston Motel has become emergency housing for the homeless.
In the parking lot, a group of kids were chattering animatedly, and one of them ran over to me, “Look what we found!”
Crum Elbow creek runs near the back of the property, and they’d found a little orange newt, which they’d captured and put in a little plastic container with some water.
They were so excited!
And so bright, and so happy, and filled with such limitless potential that it made me want to weep. They deserved so much better than this! But they didn’t know it yet.
The deal with the National Counting Project is that they don’t count people as of right this moment of time, no. They count people as of April 1. (April Fool’s!)
So, it was kind of ridiculous to knock on doors and ask, “Were you living here on April 1?”
Since most of them weren’t.
Emergency housing is by its very nature temporary.
So, I wandered down to the office and enlisted the aid of the resident support specialist in supplying me with the April 1 info I needed.
All the while thinking, The children. The children. Something has to be done to help them.
But what?
Honestly, I don’t know.
The walls of the cramped little office were lined with sheets of paper blurrily printed with helpful homilies like, Most American families are one paycheck aways from homelessness and Homelessness can happen to anyone—
Which, of course, it can.
It happened to Beau.
It almost happened to me.
Anyway, it dawned on me that I could investigate donating the Saturn Ion to this emergency shelter.
It’s so weird how the whole Donate Your Car thing has turned into a marketing ploy for car-auction houses. In most cases, when you donate a car to a charity, the charity will only get like 15% of what the vehicle brings at auction.
All I want is for the Saturn Ion to find a new home where it can actually help someone.
I don’t know why that’s so difficult to arrange.
Whoa!
It was like being an astronaut exploring the lost canals of Mars and suddenly happening upon a fellow Earthling!
We chattered for a few minutes.
She absolutely loathes the job: “They have me mostly up in Salt Point and Pleasant Valley. The people are nasty and rude. There is a pervasive and deep distrust of the government right now. Doesn’t really matter who you want to vote for in the coming election. Everybody hates the government. But the pay is great, especially considering it’s a job without educational requirements.”
Since she’s a single Mom with two kids, and approximately two-fifths of her weekly check goes to paying babysitters, I wasn’t exactly sure how that works out for her.
###
Earlier that morning, I’d had to meet up with Huck, my field supervisor. He's a slender, Puckish man, and I could tell he was torn between the rigid exactitudes of a bureaucratic job and the certain knowledge that more than half the job consists of complete bullshit.
He asked me how it was going.
“It’s hard,” I said. “You know, I’m the type of person whom other people like to talk to.”
“I can tell,” he said.
“So, when people don’t want to talk to me, when they slam doors in my face, it’s disconcerting. I try not to personalize it, but a certain amount of personalization is unavoidable.”
“I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but you have the highest conversion rate on the team,” Huck said. “You’ve gotten the most interviews.”
“How many people are on the team?”
“We started with 28. We’re down to eight.” He laughed ruefully. “And I shouldn’t be telling you this.”
Like I say. I’m the type of person whom other people like to talk to.
###
Late, late, late in the afternoon, I had a bunch of addresses in what turned out to be the erstwhile Livingston Motel.
Albany Post Road near the FDR Presidential Library is lined with these old cottage-style motels. As time passes, and fewer and fewer people come to worship at the great white sarcophagus that holds the remains of FDR and Eleanor, the demand for motel services has fallen precipitously. Thus, many of the motels have been repurposed. A week ago, I counted people at a motel that had been turned into a kinda Mad Max hostel for aging hippies.
The Livingston Motel has become emergency housing for the homeless.
In the parking lot, a group of kids were chattering animatedly, and one of them ran over to me, “Look what we found!”
Crum Elbow creek runs near the back of the property, and they’d found a little orange newt, which they’d captured and put in a little plastic container with some water.
They were so excited!
And so bright, and so happy, and filled with such limitless potential that it made me want to weep. They deserved so much better than this! But they didn’t know it yet.
The deal with the National Counting Project is that they don’t count people as of right this moment of time, no. They count people as of April 1. (April Fool’s!)
So, it was kind of ridiculous to knock on doors and ask, “Were you living here on April 1?”
Since most of them weren’t.
Emergency housing is by its very nature temporary.
So, I wandered down to the office and enlisted the aid of the resident support specialist in supplying me with the April 1 info I needed.
All the while thinking, The children. The children. Something has to be done to help them.
But what?
Honestly, I don’t know.
The walls of the cramped little office were lined with sheets of paper blurrily printed with helpful homilies like, Most American families are one paycheck aways from homelessness and Homelessness can happen to anyone—
Which, of course, it can.
It happened to Beau.
It almost happened to me.
Anyway, it dawned on me that I could investigate donating the Saturn Ion to this emergency shelter.
It’s so weird how the whole Donate Your Car thing has turned into a marketing ploy for car-auction houses. In most cases, when you donate a car to a charity, the charity will only get like 15% of what the vehicle brings at auction.
All I want is for the Saturn Ion to find a new home where it can actually help someone.
I don’t know why that’s so difficult to arrange.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-05 04:44 pm (UTC)I edited an article some years ago about a guy who established a microloan program in the New England area, intending it to be for people to start small businesses.... but what people really needed was personal loans--safe personal loans so they could buy a car so they could go to work, or pay an unforeseen expense, etc. So, to this guy's credit, he pivoted to that, and now the Capital Good Fund helps out lots of people through small, fair loans ..... not directly related to the homelessness story, or to the Saturn, but it came into my head.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-05 06:22 pm (UTC)The deal is, though, right now in New York State, the car registration process is ver-r-r-r-ry difficult. You have to drop the original title and other supporting documents into a lockbox, and wait until some invisible DMV employee completes the registration. Nerve-wracking!
The car's Blue Book value is under $1,000 although it runs perfectly well, and my mechanic says it will run well for anothe five years. Thing is I don't trust anyone whom I don't personally know to go through with the registration process for a less-than-$1,000 car. And if the new owners don't re-register the car in their name, then I am liable for any parking tickets or civil fallout if they happen to take the car on a tri-state crime spree.
Donating the car to a worthy charity was my way around that.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-05 07:16 pm (UTC)