Vin­cent M. Pel­le­grino was a for­mer uni­ver­sity admin­is­tra­tor who just went through a year of unem­ploy­ment. Dur­ing the time he was unable to receive unem­ploy­ment insur­ance through a loop­hole in law. He also had his home and car repos­sessed and almost got arrested for being unable to pay for gas.

In Pellegrino’s essay that we found at Min­nesota Pub­lic Radio, he details some of the expe­ri­ence and what he learned.

The year has been a jour­ney through unem­ploy­ment, bank­ruptcy, car repos­ses­sion and fore­clo­sure. I found out the hard way about a pecu­liar law, meant to apply orig­i­nally to elected offi­cials, that applies, as well, to uni­ver­sity admin­is­tra­tors. I was not eli­gi­ble to apply for unem­ploy­ment insur­ance, they said.

The mes­sage came in an e-mail. It stopped me cold — not even a call. Where was the con­stituent ser­vice? How could this happen?

I am a father, tax­payer, voter and vet­eran. Where’s the safety net? How will I feed my fam­ily, get their flu shots, den­tal care, school sup­plies, hair­cuts, pull-ups for my daugh­ter? How will I con­duct a job search and keep the fam­ily safe through the winter?

The moments with thoughts like these seemed to last for months. It was all I could do to get job appli­ca­tions out the door. I felt the very next moment would be the one to par­a­lyze me.

With mind­less grit, I made my way to Health and Human Ser­vices seek­ing health insur­ance, and we were pro­vided with food stamps. OK. Later the fed­eral gov­ern­ment came for­ward with heat assis­tance. Hmmm. The schools pro­vided reduced-price break­fasts and lunches. Thank you. We applied for and received schol­ar­ships for children’s activ­i­ties. Wow.

These things kept us grounded through the indig­nity of hearing,“No, we don’t deal with EBT cards here.” I thought: This is no way to treat a vet­eran and a tax­payer. But what did I expect? I was a poor vet­eran and tax­payer, sub­ject to bad pol­icy and bad law. This is what peo­ple in poverty know well.

After three months of job search­ing and with no hope in sight, I asked the bank and loan com­pany to stop auto­matic with­drawal of my car loan and mort­gage pay­ments because we had run out of cash.

When check­ing goes to $0, the auto­matic deduc­tions for car pay­ment and mort­gage con­tinue, and the over­draft fees mount. The calls and let­ters rain down daily.

I explained that I had tried to get the auto­matic deduc­tions stopped — but you, car loan com­pany, blamed the bank, and you, bank, blamed the car loan com­pany, and now after six calls to each of you I will sur­ren­der the car to repos­ses­sion and the home to foreclosure.

They were nice when I took out the loans. The minute I could not pay, they turned Scrooge on me. I had lost a job — not my val­ues and sense of com­mit­ment.
…

Liv­ing this way has helped me under­stand the effects of poverty on chil­dren and the fam­ily. We value each other more than ever, but our per­cep­tions have changed.

We do not trust finan­cial insti­tu­tions, credit card com­pa­nies and state poli­cies for health and human ser­vices. We don’t value a house and a car in the same way. At the end of each 12-hour day, I am reminded that the house is only a shell, and the home is defined by grandma’s linens, grandpa’s hat and Uncle Marvin’s chair.

There is a post­script to this story: I used my expe­ri­ence to do post­doc­toral research with chil­dren in poverty, and take a look at how state pol­icy is shaped around their care and prepa­ra­tion for school.

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