For over twenty years, Sheila worked at the same fast food restaurant, making salads for little more than minimum wage. After all that time, she earned just a dollar an hour more than the day she started. When a cut in her hours brought her to Crisis Assistance Ministry seeking assistance, her path began to change.
“Economic mobility” is the centerpiece of nearly every Charlotte-centered conversation these days. Wondering why? Here’s the report that started it all: “Where is the Land of Opportunity?: The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the U.S.”, by researchers at Harvard and UC-Berkeley.
When her husband walked out on her, Patricia and her 15-year-old son Jamil were plunged into an unfamiliar world of financial distress. Fully disabled after a surgical mistake years earlier, Patricia had relied on the income from her husband’s job to pay the mortgage and other bills. Left with only her monthly Social Security disability payments, she soon found the situation unmanageable.
