(12-23-2024, 10:36 AM)mikesez Wrote:

(12-23-2024, 10:08 AM)flsprtsgod Wrote: My parents were just barely upper lower class in Manatee and Samoset, formerly blue collar towns now rundown neighborhoods of Bradenton. In my childhood my dad worked for Publix, PET dairy, and then construction. My parents divorced when I was 12 but before that we always lived somewhere a few blocks around the Tropicana plant where my mother worked. In my first 5 years of life we moved about 6 times, in the mid-70s some kind of housing assistance program started that my dad qualified for, I don't remember the name of it, but it got us enough for a 2 bedroom house adjacent to the Rogers Project off 13th Avenue and 1st Street. My life was fine as a kid, but I grew up with and went to school with the kids from the Projects, and those kids had it terrible. The crime waves of the 70s ruined the projects then the drug problems of the 80s ruined the people. Our neighbors, the Ruby family, were Cuban expats and my best friend's dad ran a small market that created my love of their culture and food. The Mixon family across the street ran a donut shop, Spudnut, that made potato-based donuts. I grew up with families fighting to stay above that poverty line, and for the most part (not always) they succeeded, but my "experiences" with being on government assistance are close and real. We had food stamps from time to time, hell, I remember when the government cheese thing happened but I don't remember details other than we got this massive block of processed cheese every month. It was like a 5 pound rectangular block of imitation Velveeta imitation cheese that came in a brown cardboard box stamped "government cheese", lol. If you'd care to see what that life looked like, check out 1709 6th Ave E and 2508 5th Street E in Bradenton, those are the two addresses I remember my grandparents and parents had when I was a kid. I spent my middle and high school years in the 5th street house and walked to Southeast High about 15 blocks away. The houses are still there, though my parents never let them look like they do now. So yeah, I know poor buddy, I've lived it.

This is a good post.
We need more posts like this.  
What do you think your youth would have been like if not for government assistance (for your family) and projects (like the ones your classmates lived in)?

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(12-23-2024, 10:25 AM)Sneakers Wrote: Adios amigo!

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Why do you assume that everyone who is poor is on government assistance?

I definitely don't.  I already said most illegal immigrants don't receive it, and most of them are poor.

More to the point, I'm trying to start a conversation about government assistance, not poverty in general.  I'm allowed to try to steer conversations without being accused of assuming things about people.  Stop playing gotcha with me, homie.

I know what life was like before the projects, Bradenton still shows the marks of segregation even now. My grandparents, and even my parents to some extent, still refer to parts of town as "the quarters", the ramshackle neighborhoods where black people lived without lights or running water. For those people the projects were a Godsend, and that was just in the 1960s. Now 50 years after that those Godsends are Hell on Earth.

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