How Does it Feel?The following excerpts are taken from interviews with people currently experiencing life at or below the poverty line and are from the ‘Giving Voice to Poverty’ study performed in 2011 by the Community Development Council Durham in Oshawa, Ontario:
“It’s the stress, constant stress of daily life. Grocery shopping [for example]...is not a fun time because I have to think about everything I buy. I have to think about what spending money on food means for the rest of my life...I guess other people do this too, but when you live on welfare, it can be a matter of paying your rent or not.” |
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“I can’t make my money stretch far enough. I go without so many things that others take for granted because I just cannot afford it...I struggle to make sure that my daughter has what she needs, to eat, for school. But I worry that she is not getting enough...I will not eat breakfast, or even dinner some nights just to make sure that she gets what she needs. I am not sure if she knows this...we don’t talk about it.”“I feel like I am always getting a cold, always have a runny nose. I don’t really have one thing that bugs me, but I just don’t feel well a lot of the time...I do think that it is related to my situation.”
“I am on my own a lot of the time. I can’t go out. I can’t get anywhere. I have friends but I don’t see them much. My family lives in Kingston, so I don’t go see them much because it is too expensive.”
“I feel so...excluded. Like no one sees me, like I don’t belong...poverty has excluded me from the world...”
“My neighbourhood is generally okay, but one night a few months ago there was a big fight outside the apartment. Someone was beat up bad. There was a lot of yelling and noise. It kept us all up.”
“I think that people judge those who are poor. They think that we are all lazy and drunk. They think that we are stupid and live the high life on the government’s money. I don’t think people really understand what poverty is and who the poor are in Durham.”
“I am on my own a lot of the time. I can’t go out. I can’t get anywhere. I have friends but I don’t see them much. My family lives in Kingston, so I don’t go see them much because it is too expensive.”
“I feel so...excluded. Like no one sees me, like I don’t belong...poverty has excluded me from the world...”
“My neighbourhood is generally okay, but one night a few months ago there was a big fight outside the apartment. Someone was beat up bad. There was a lot of yelling and noise. It kept us all up.”
“I think that people judge those who are poor. They think that we are all lazy and drunk. They think that we are stupid and live the high life on the government’s money. I don’t think people really understand what poverty is and who the poor are in Durham.”