Help Leslie and Kaiya!!

The Chicks On The Right are sponsoring a fundraising effort for Leslie Whalen and her daughter Kaiya.  Proceeds will be used to assist Leslie with paying off her car. If you would like to send Leslie household goods/clothes/other items, please send an email to [email redacted] and I will forward it to her.  Otherwise, you can make a cash donation here, and this money will be collected and sent straight to her car loan company!

Leslie's letter to the Chicks:

This is something that I felt compelled to write....please excuse any typos, I am typing in the dark so I don't wake my little one who is sleeping next to me.

 

I am very conservative. I am a Christian who is very staunch on my beliefs. But...I am also a member of the "working poor" of this country.

 

I work 32 hours a week, grooming dogs, for $8.00 an hour. I also go to college part time, seated and online. I am a single mother of a precocious 5 year old girl. And, right now, we are homeless. I cannot afford any healthcare for myself as bringing home approx. $210.00 a week, I make too much for Medicaid, but not nearly enough to afford to buy it. Thankfully, in NC, my daughter does have Medicaid.

 

We also get around $200.00 a month in EBT (or food stamps). I also get a partial daycare subsidy, as $150.00 a week for daycare is way out of my price range. Yes, I am on the system. But, I am also 47 years old, and have paid into this system for 30 years. It took a long time to accept that I am in the position that these grants were originally created for. Am I proud to be on this system? Hell no. But I do it for my daughter. I do it because there are not enough jobs that pay more than minimum wage. I have no family. It is just my daughter and myself. I have nobody to help me watch her so that I can work nights or weekends. And, to be honest, I don't WANT to work then. This child I have is a miracle, and one that came later in my life. I am already missing too much of her life by dropping her off at daycare at 7:20am and picking her up at 5:30pm. By time we get back to the house we are staying in at the moment, we have about 30 minutes together before I have to get her ready for bed. I am missing too much of her life as it is, time I will never get back. So, I want to work days. But, decent paying jobs in this town are few and far between. Being a town that centers around the largest military base on the east coast, most working women here are dependents, and they are just supplementing income. Also, turnover is so high here with families relocating constantly, that employers do not feel they have to raise wages, as there will always be someone to fill the positions.

 

So, I am working until I am in pain, going to college trying to do better, raising a child alone, and struggling beyond anything I ever thought imaginable. This is our second bout with homelessness. In Dec, 2011, we entered a homeless shelter in another part of the state, as I had lost my good paying job while caring for my terminally ill mother. After Mom passed we had nothing and after a few nights sleeping in the car, we entered the shelter on Dec 20th. We moved to this section of the state NOT because I have a great job, or great home, but because this county was the last county in the state that had no waiting list for daycare subsidy. Where I was, I had lost my voucher when I lost my job. And  if I had gotten another job, I would have been on a waiting list 8-12 months long. You can't get a job if you don't have daycare, you can't get daycare if you don't have a job. As it is, 12 days after we moved to this county, they went on a waiting list. That list is now 9 months long and growing. 

 

The place we were renting was horrific and dangerous, but it was a roof, until I could not longer afford it. Now I am in the position of not having enough money to even look for a place...but I have to keep my job or I will lose our voucher. I am stuck. We are currently living with a friend from our church, but this will not last, and I am actively looking for another home, but, honestly, I cannot even afford $400 a month as it is half of what I take home. Add in power, my phone (prepaid...I did NOT take the "Obamaphone" Even though I qualified for it), daycare, car payment, car insurance, gas for the car (which increases daily), tithes and basic essentials, and I am already in the red. All places I have looked at for roommates do not want a young child in their home. So, I am basically stuck.

 

Obama and his policies have ruined things. There are no incentives to help someone who is working hard and trying to get ahead. There are no incentives to give any hands up at all. It is all hands out. I was flat out told if I quit my job, I would be "entitled" to more help, including rental, food and Medicaid. But, what am I teaching my daughter by doing this? I will not sit on my ass with my hand out, I am just asking for a hand up. But I have seen FIRST HAND, people who have come into this country, do not even speak the language, come into DSS and walk up to the counter and ask for a translator, and get walked in back.They get Medicaid, they have kids in this country and get all sorts of help from our country, while putting nothing back into the coffers. There are even FREE clinics that provide medical care to the "undocumented" while I, who have paid taxes for 30 years, and NEEDS medical attention, cannot get any care. Remember, that even though I am on the system, I am still paying into it as well. I see people at the DSS who drive MUCH nicer cars than I do, wear MUCH nicer clothes, wear jewelry that I would never dream of owning, and talking on iPhones. While I drive up in my 2003 Neon that still is not paid for, in my Goodwill jeans and $6.00 shoes, and struggle with my sadly out of date phone to find a signal. 

 

And this fiasco that is Obamacare....

 

As someone who makes far below the FPL for a family of 2, I would have been one of the ones covered under the Medicaid expansion. But, since NC has now opted out of this plan, I will probably have no insurance and yet still have to pay in my taxes. And, newsflash, even though we were promised our taxes would not go up, my taxes did indeed go up! Now, $8 a week may not sound like much, but that comes to $416.00 a year....or, half a months worth of wages. When you are living penny to penny as it is, that amount DOES make a difference. Now, I would not be adverse to my taxes raising if there was something positive to show for it, but there is nothing. 

 

Sometimes when I see my fellow conservatives going on about the system and people who use it, I cringe. I was once one of those people. God drastically changed my circumstances and now I see it from this side. I am not proud of having to be where I am, but I am not seeing any way out at the moment. I wish I could move to an area where there are more opportunities, but it would just be more of the same. I think we need to make things easier to help people get up...but the current state of welfare is actually devised to keep people dependent. All the things I have seen from this side, we need to stop paying people to be lazy and help those who are trying to do better. But the liberals want to keep the poor poor, (funny, that's what they say about the conservatives). The poor just cannot see how they are being made to be more and more dependent upon this government. When they finally do see, it may well be too late. It is a game of control, and they are being led to slaughter.

 

So, here I am....lost at sea. 

 

But I am still on the right. I still believe in this country. I still believe we can recapture the glory we had. And maybe the system can be restructured to be what it was intended to be: Something to help people who have fallen to get back up, and not give to those too lazy to get up. Or those who cross the border with their hands immediately out. 

 

We are a small number of conservative poor...but we are here. 

 

Thank you for listening,

 

Leslie