Families struggle with economy

Jul 03, 2010

By: Oakland Press staff

By KAREN WORKMAN
Of The Oakland Press
Now often being referred to as the “Great Recession,” today’s economy has left millions of people across the country facing challenges and hardships they’d never expected.
While some are beginning to put their struggles in the rearview mirror, others, such as Oakland County resident Nina, are still left to wonder what the future may hold.
“Right now, the despair is starting to creep in,” said Nina, choking back tears. “It’s a living hell.”
A year ago, Nina was earning an annual salary of $81,000 working for one of the automotive companies, traveling overseas with a $15,000 expense account and feeling good about the 24 years she’d spent working for the company. Her job was terminated, along with the jobs of several of coworkers, about a year ago.
“You go through a grieving process,” Nina said. “It takes a long time to just get your mind wrapped around what just happened and what to do next.”
A year later, she’s found part time work for $9.50 an hour, has gone through bankruptcy and expects to foreclose on her home by fall. She has no idea where she’ll live.
“Now I worry on a daily basis about how I am going to find a place to live that I can pay for, whether my 9-year-old car with 176,000 miles on it will get me to work and if Congress will let unemployment benefits expire over and over and over again since they can’t seem to figure out how to really make a change,” Nina wrote in an e-mail.

Middle-aged workers hardest hit
Nina, who asked that her last name not be used, describes the round of job terminations at her company as happening to a “slice right in the middle to people in their late 30s to 60.”
Now unemployed at age 49, Nina believes her age has played a huge role in why she — an experienced worker with a variety of skills — hasn’t landed a single job from the nearly 400 resumes she’s turned in since January.
In addition to sending in resumes, Nina has frequented many job fairs and been disappointed with what she finds at them.
“Everybody wants you to sell their insurance,” she said. “There’s so much phishing. If someone calls me or sends me an email twice from the same company to set up an interview, it’s a scam.”
While the scams abound, Nina said it’s been just as difficult dealing with real companies.
“I’ve had interviews but you just know, you know they’re not looking for a 50-year-old ex-automotive employee,” Nina said. “They’re looking for somebody who’s a 30-year-old, fresh out of college go-getter with a master’s degree.”
Nina was motivated to write a letter to the president and suggested that incentives be offered to companies who hire workers ages 50 and older who are equally qualified for a position.
“They can slap a five grand incentive on a car, why can’t they slap a five grand incentive on an age group?” Nina said. “There is no mistaking there is age discrimination in the termination and hiring practices today. Why can’t they turn it around?”
She added: “I think we’re kind of a silent group because for a long time, we lived on our severance pay. Now we’re on unemployment and the money is dwindling fast, and I think there’s going to be another wave of foreclosures and financial hardships coming.”
At 52, Jim Berkau of Madison Heights may be part of that next wave. His unemployment ran out in May, leaving him unable to make his mortgage payments.

‘I would rather be working’
Berkau worked as a licensed electrician for 25 years. For a long time, he did contract work at the automotive plants and paid union dues so he could be part of the UAW.
“All the Big Three started closing doors for the tradesman,” Berkau said. “I couldn’t afford to keep paying union dues and in 2000, I lost the house. I’ve been homeless not once, but twice.”
“I can’t even find work at McDonald’s,” he added. “I would rather be working.”
He’s cashed in annuities to keep himself afloat, but that money ran out. Berkau’s last unemployment check was given to him on May 13.
“She said to me, ‘You’re all out,’” Berkau said of the woman at the unemployment office. “I said, ‘I thought that’s why we were getting these emergency extensions, because there’s not any work out there.’ Her final word was, ‘Oh well.’”
While he’s not sure what the future will hold, he knows one thing for sure — he won’t be separated from his dogs, Shela and Jona.
“One is 9 and the other is going to be 11. They’re my best friends,” Berkau said.
In fact, when Berkau was homeless, he chose to sleep in his sister’s unheated pole barn through a frigid northern Michigan winter rather than give up his dogs.
“These guys are what keeps me my sanity. Nobody likes to be alone,” Berkau said. “I wouldn’t get rid of them.”
Through it all, Berkau said he’s a Christian man and he’ll keep attending church every Sunday.
“I don’t know,” what will happen, Berkau said. “I’m trusting in God that he’s going to make a way somewhere, open a door. I’ve done all I know how.”

‘It took a tremendous toll on us’
Linda and Jeff VandeVoort of Rochester Hills had twin toddlers and just found out another baby was on the way when Jeff, a contract worker at Chrysler, received a layoff notice in 2007.

Jeff and Linda Vande Voort with their children, (from left) Calvin, 4, Isaac, 4 and Selah, 2, at their Rochester Hills home. Jeff lost his job in 2007 and has been looking for a job ever since.

Linda still had her job as a teacher, but adjusting to one income with a mortgage payment and their third child on the way was difficult. The couple knew they needed to get their adjustable rate mortgage modified, but Linda said that in 2007, there wasn’t a fraction of the help available that there is now.
“I felt like I was honest with our mortgage company, we were proactive. But when all was said and done, they basically told us ‘There’s nothing we can do to help you,’” Linda said. “In early 2008, we knew that we were going to lose the house. It was really hard.”
Jeff went through different programs designed to help displaced workers find jobs, but it was to no avail. Instead, he took a job working at Target.
“He’s been there for three years now, just trying to make ends meet,” Linda said.
By 2009, the couple realized they’d have to go through bankruptcy too.
“It was a really humbling experience because a bankruptcy, in my mind, was always for somebody who spent carelessly and didn’t pay their bills and for us, we worked really hard trying to make our ends meet. We felt it was the last option we had,” Linda said.
She added: “It took a tremendous toll on us financially and emotionally.”
In the worst of times, the couple had to turn to their church and other local groups for assistance with food and childcare.
“With my salary, we make too much money to get help that might be offered to other people — I didn’t qualify for WIC or food stamps or Headstart because I made too much money, even though we went through a foreclosure and bankruptcy,” Linda said.
The family found a rental in Rochester Hills and this fall, Jeff, who has a physics degree and a master’s degree, is going back to school to become a teacher.
“I am not going to be ashamed of what we went through. I feel I did what I was supposed to do,” Linda said.
She added: “It’s not about the finances. It’s not about living up to and keeping up with everyone else. I basically count my blessings and be thankful for what I do have, because there are people out there who have it worse.”

‘We had to become stronger’
Tamara Bauer and her husband, Macomb County residents who both now hold jobs in Oakland County, are lifelong friends who married, bought a home and planned to start a family.
Unfortunately, the young home buyers were persuaded to get an adjustable rate mortgage.
“Things were going really well, then in 2008, I lost my job and right around the same time, the mortgage readjusted and it just kept going up and up and up,” Tamara said.
At the time, the couple tried everything they could, even cashing in 401-K plans, to save their home. Making the matter more dire was some big news for the couple — Tamara was pregnant.
“We were willing to give everything we had to save our home, but we should’ve seen the writing on the wall. It was inevitable,” Tamara said.
With a newborn in tow and their home foreclosed on, Tamara and her husband moved in with his parents. But his mother was ill and their crying, crawling infant made it a difficult situation for all. So, Tamara and the baby moved in with her parents, but there wasn’t room for her husband to join them.
“It was probably one of the roughest days ever,” Tamara said of moving away from her husband. “I think it was very, very rough for him — he missed some of those most important days of her life, like when she took her first steps.”
The couple lived apart from each other for about two years but were finally able to move back in to a rental together in the beginning of June.
“We had to become stronger,” Tamara said. “We’re in this together.”
She said they’ve learned a lot about making good financial decisions and feels they’re better off for what they endured.
“Now, we’re very economical. We drive to work together, clip coupons and bring our lunches to work. We have one credit card with a $300 limit and we don’t use it,” Tamara said. “There will be no way we can go back to that other way of being. We’re perfectly aware of what can happen.”
William MacPhee, an 85-year-old Royal Oak resident and survivor of the Great Depression, said the financial struggles his family went through during the depression continue to have an impact on the way he lives life.
“I’m always looking for the cheapest deal I can get and there’s nothing I enjoy more than sitting down and paying bills, writing the checks and mailing them,” MacPhee said.
He also says he holds on to items so long as he sees value in them, like an old shirt.
“My wife says ‘That’s going out of style, why do you keep it?’ But if it’s comfortable and it looks OK, I keep it,” MacPhee said.
Tamara hopes the experience will help her teach her daughter about making good financial decisions as well.
“We’ve become better not only to each other, but to others too,” Tamara said. “Your life is more than things.”

Editor’s Note:
This is the last in a three-part series looking at how the economy has affected local residents.

PART ONE: Auto family reinvents itself is here.
PART TWO: Economy forces workers to reinvent themselves is here.
Contact staff writer Karen Workman at (248) 745-4643 or karen@oakpress.com. You can also find her on Facebook and @KarenWorkman on Twitter.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 3rd, 2010 at 2:03 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.