We need more housing in San Francisco, plain and simple, and we especially need more affordable housing for our low-income households, seniors, teachers, formerly homeless people, veterans, and middle-income residents.
There was years when my father didn't even make a hundred grand - or barely made a hundred grand - and sure, we had a maid, but she only came twice a week. What do you think happened the other five days? You think those dishes washed themselves? You think those clothes got themselves in the hamper?
No, not rich. I am a poor man with money, which is not the same thing.
Most poor people earn more than minimum wage when they are working; their problem is not low wages. The problem comes when they are not working.
It's good to give seniors more choices and more options, let them choose a plan that's best for them and target assistance to the lowest income people.
What we're seeing is that even in high poverty neighborhoods, the average cost of renting is quickly approaching the total income of welfare recipients and low wage workers.
Poverty is not a lack of character. Poverty is a lack of cash.
When I started, I had nothing. Because my family was really, really, really poor.
We must encourage those who earn less than $200 per month and cannot afford to nurture and educate many children never to have more than two... We will regret the time lost if we do not now take the first tentative steps towards correcting a trend which can leave our society with a large number of the physically, intellectually and culturally anemic.
I'm still hungry. I'm still striving... You have to understand: my mum has worked hard to look after her children, but we have always been poor; we have always been at rock bottom. I want to change my family history forever.
Living on $6 a day means you have a refrigerator, a TV, a cell phone, your children can go to school. That's not possible on $1 a day.
My family was mostly unemployed working class.
Drag a $100 bill through a trailer camp and there's no telling what you will find.
When I hit my 20s, I struggled to make it. I got married at 19, and my daughter, Je'Niece, was born a year later. I worked blue collar jobs during the day and comedy clubs at night, and I was earning about $25 a year doing stand-up.
The federal government spends about $2.51 per child per day to feed them lunch. Out of that, you have to pay for labor, facilities, and administrative costs, leaving about a dollar for food. Imagine trying to feed yourself a nutritious meal every day with only a dollar. Very difficult.
I didn't have parents I could take a million dollars from. We were a lower-class family.
I've been around low-income people all of my life. I mean, growing up, low income, the community where I've chosen to live, low-income.
I wasn't rich.
Poverty is not a disgrace, but it's terribly inconvenient.
In her whole life Mom never earned more than five or six dollars a week. Being without a husband, it was hard for her to find any place at all for us to live.
There is a deep connection, when we're talking about certain market forces and a legal structure that inhibits low or moderate income families from getting ahead. Eviction is part of a business model at the bottom of the market.
I was living on a loaf of bread a week.
Anyone who can walk to the welfare office can walk to work.
It was such a struggle for me to make it off welfare. I was getting $630 a month for myself and my children with no support from their fathers. The rent was $600 a month, and if you got a job, they took it out of your welfare.
Especially for the young and the lowest-skilled, minimum wage becomes a toll that prevents many from entering the work force and gaining the skills that can make a low income or middle class worker a high income worker. This is so obvious that one wonders why liberals keep championing the minimum wage cause.
