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Wednesday, Sep. 10, 2008

Family makes do in squeezed home

Mother, grandmother, four kids and an itinerant 18-year-old share 500 square feet

LE GRAND -- Jo Hernandez harbors no delusions about the 500-square-foot Le Grand home that her children lovingly call their shack. She admits they're right.

The one-bedroom, one-bathroom house that she, her five children and her mother all call home was built in the 1920s from the scraps of an old barn. It has no heat or air conditioning.

The walls of its cramped, dimly lit kitchen have no insulation. They are made of unfinished wood, as is the floor, which more closely resembles a backyard deck.

The kitchen also lacks electricity. The stove is fueled by propane. When the tank behind the house runs empty, Hernandez cooks for her family outside on a grill.

The kitchen table is warped. Its chairs don't match.

The floors through the rest of the small, chaotic house are a mish-mash of green, pink and brown carpet, flattened and stained by years of wear. The walls of the narrow hallway leading to the living room -- which actually serves as a second bedroom -- are bright yellow, chipped and spotted with holes.

The bathroom has no door. Instead, a hanging curtain provides some privacy, though probably not as much as Hernandez's teenagers would like. The bathroom also has no sink. The kids brush their teeth using the tub.

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"It's not my dream house," jokes Hernandez, 39. "But it's all we have."

It's all they have because it's all they can afford.

Hernandez is one of roughly 50,000 Merced County residents and nearly 40 million Americans living in poverty, so her family's struggle is far from unique. But that doesn't make it any easier.

"I wish I could give my kids more," she recently said. "I try to make up for it with love. There's a lot of love in our house. But it's still hard to tell them that I can't take them somewhere because we're out of gas or that there's no money for back-to-school shoes this year."

Hernandez works full time as an office assistant in Merced at Medi-Cab, a government-funded service that provides transportation for the elderly and the disabled. She got the job through a Merced County welfare program about a year ago.

She makes more now than she did when her only income was government aid, but it's still far from what she'd need to get out of the ramshackle house she moved into eight years ago.

"If we could afford it, we'd move," she said. "Or at the very least I'd fix the place up more."

But at $280 a month, her mortgage is hard to beat. And it's all she can manage on her income.

Medi-Cab pays Hernandez $8.25 an hour, or about $1,200 a month. She gets another $600 a month in aid and food stamps.

Her mother, 64-year-old Donna Higgins, gets her own government check. She has her own bills and she pays them herself, but she doesn't have enough to contribute to the household's income.

Hernandez's husband doesn't contribute either. After 14 years of marriage, he moved out about a year ago. "We're separated," Hernandez said. "It should have happened a long time ago. He wasn't treating the kids right."

So Hernandez's $1,800 a month in cash and food stamps must cover the whole family. "It's a tight budget -- very tight," she said. "My kids get what they need, but that's about it. They know the difference between needs and wants. And they know not to ask for too many wants. They know there isn't much point in it."

Things have gotten worse in the last couple months. With the state's budget now more than two months late, Medi-Cab isn't getting its usual allotment from Sacramento. So Hernandez isn't getting paid.