Story Archives

by Leroy and Melissa Moore

It’s a New Year but nothing is new for homeless entrepreneurs, low income, middle class folks, artists and other people trying to live, survive and thrive in the Bay Area.

We are all in a boxing match with the Bay Area’s muscle bound housing market. This endless match has caught many young entrepreneurs with a one two in the gut and an upper cut to the chin but we duck and dive the blows and hang on to the ropes for support. The San Francisco housing market could whip Muhammed Ali and Mike Tyson’s butts.

What’s so sad is that many entrepreneurs and artists have been knocked out of the ring and given up on their careers in order to take on more than one job, just to live in this city. This situation has hit the Moore family in more ways than one.

Melissa and Leroy Moore are young African American entrepreneurs trying to make a difference in the most expensive city in this country, but they find themselves consistently on the borderline of being homeless and having to close their businesses.

For more than ten years, Melissa has provided day-care in the Potrero Hill district of San Francisco. She has raised many babies and has hired one or two employees to help her with the kids. However, during these ten plus years as a day-care provider she has experienced wrongful evictions, at times living with friends across the Bay or sleeping in her car with her dogs.

The boxing match began when Melissa was living on DE Haro Street. After two years of renting out and fixing up a gorgeous though run-down house, she read that the house in which she lived was being sold, and the open house was about to happen that afternoon. She found out about the open house in the local newspaper, not from her landlord. This started the cycle of living on a boot string.

Melissa’s next door neighbor, a 90-year old lady, saw Melissa’s big heart at work with the kids at her day-care and her consistent helping hand in the neighborhood community. So this elderly lady and her daughter invited Melissa to move her business- and herself- into this kind lady's basement. It was a great opportunity for both parties. Melissa watched over the elderly lady, and Melissa could set up shop in her basement.

One evening, Melissa went upstairs as she used to do every night to check on the eldely lady and found her face down on the floor. Melissa called her daughter, and that’s when everything changed. Once again, Melissa was hit with a low blow. The elderly lady’s daughter changed her mind about Melissa living there, wanting the house to herself after her mom passed away. After a month of verbal abuse Melissa got a lawyer. When it was all over, Melissa found herself out in the cold again, scrambling for a place to live.

Now, almost two years later, Melissa is still providing top notch day-care five days a week, but is living in her car with her three dogs. She is down to garbage bags full of her clothes, dog food and other basic needs. At 6:00pm she cleans her day-care, packs her stuff, feeds her dogs and looks for a quiet place where she can park her car and go to sleep.

Police and people in many neighborhoods have told her that she could not park and sleep in their neighborhoods. Many people complain about her dogs barking or being left in a car all day. The complaints got so bad that one day after work she discovered that her car was towed away and the dogs were taken to a shelter. Although times are rough for Melissa, one thing keeps her going, her baby, her own job which means seeing the smiles on the kids faces every morning.

Melissa’s brother, Leroy, has followed in her footsteps of being his own boss and also has faced the endless boxing match of being on the edge of homelessness. It all started in 1997 when Leroy decided to quit his job and start Disability Advocates of Minorities Organization, DAMO, the only organization in California that is run by and for disabled minorities. For almost three years Leroy and others have build this organization with no financial backing causing Leroy to do consulting work just to pay bills and keep DAMO going. Although Leroy is a home care provider to a young disabled teen and gets room and board in exchange for his duties, he is consistently walking a thin line between his government benefits, lecturer fees, consultant work and his small salary from the first grant that DAMO received this year.

With the reality of his sister being homeless, Leroy decided that he and his sister should put their resources together to find a place where Melissa can live and keep providing day-care and where Leroy could continue working on DAMO, his consulting, lectures and writing, the only problem is the prohibitive cost of housing . On top of everything else, Leroy, a college graduate never wanted to relay on government cash benefits. He is in danger of making too much in a month for disability benefits and his goals has out reach the confine rules of government disability benefits. The common advice Leroy always receives is to get a real job but if he does that it would eat into his organization, lectures and writing.

So what’s going to happen to the Moores? Like many young entrepreneurs, they will find another avenue to balance their careers with the brutal reality of living in a boxing ring called San Francisco. If you can help keep them from being homeless and keep their doors to their businesses open, please give us a call.

by Kaponda

Like the proverbial hen, my grandmother would always lay an egg in the refrigerator for each of my six sisters and brothers and me to fry before we went to school. After we had consumed our egg with a buttered slice of toast and a healthy episode of the animated television cartoon, Mighty Mouse, each of us would then fly upstairs to the bedside of grandmother to beg for a nickel for candy. Her weary eyes hardly ever opened as she groped for the small purse which she would set on the end table after coming from work at the Mariott Bakery at 5:00 o'oclock every morning.

More than three and one-half decades have past since those childhood days in Washington, D.C.. As I reflect back on her dutiful adherence to the welfare of her seven grandchildren, I sometimes wonder how she kept such a large family together on a minimum-wage income and a monthly government check. Clearly, without the support of that low-income job and welfare check the bottom would have come out from under us during those years. We probably would have become another case for the Child Protective Service.

In fact, government assistance has allayed many anxieties of parents since the federal government responded to a national cry of relief in 1932. Although welfare has always been a subject of taboo outside the partitions of official business, it has kept many poor families together. Welfare has been ridiculed by middle- and upper-class America, and those who have been too young to recognize the sighs of relief by the many fragile vessels whose tears have been kept from spilling over into the streets.

However, the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program was restructured. Instead of its original mandate of January 17, 1935, which provided for the welfare of poor families, in 1996, Congress enacted the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. This shrewd initiative placed time limits on entitlements and replaced AFDC with a Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program with a proviso that after five years TANF must be reauthorized.

The reauthorization of TANF had seemed unproblematic until a blustery, biting storm out of Madison, Wisconsin blew into Washington, D.C. on Saturday, January 20, 2001. Now, the severe restrictions which were imposed upon low-income and poverty-stricken families by Congress in 1996, have been threatened further by the past policies of the new Health and Human Services Secretary, the former Governor of the state of Wisconsin, Tommy Thompson. Welfare advocates around the country have begun to mobilize support for not only the reauthorization of TANF, but what they view as necessary improvements in the current version. Furthermore, many welfare advocates see Tommy Thompson as an axman selected by President Bush to slice the current time limits and language of TANF even further.

Usually garbed in a stark, clean blouse with a milky backwrap, grandmother would fasten her hair with a headband as she prepared for another around-the-clock day of work. There were no limitations on her determination to provide for the children of her daughter. A time frame on the entitlement which helped achieve this, however, would probably have amounted to a loss from which she could never recover and certainly would have deprived us of both our bread and butter.

"On Tuesday, August 22, 2000, we launched a program to develop ideas that would jump-start the political campaign to institute necessary changes in the reauthorization of the TANF legislation in September of 2002. A follow-up conference is scheduled for February 18, 2001," stated Martina Gillis of the Coalition for Ethical Welfare Reform (CEWR).

A former recipient of welfare and now the director of CEWR, Gillis views welfare as critical aid which "sets up a system that supports families through hard times." Since there is currently one in seven children throughout the country who experiences these hard times, Gillis is especially wary of the sophisticated welfare policy of the Health and Human Services Secretary. It is a policy characterized by complex and highly complicated reforms that are fraught with stringent criteria for eligibility.

A native of Elroy, Wisconsin, Tommy Thompson was elected Governor of Wisconsin in 1986 on a strict reform platform. He has claimed victory over dependence by reducing the rolls of welfare by 74 percent across the state, which includes 73 counties. His policies will not come as a surprise in the city by the Potomac, where the cherries blossom. In fact, his welfare policy guidelines between 1986 and 1996 influenced much of the TANF legislation of 1996. If it is true that form follows function, then privatized welfare delivery, after the form of the Wisconsin welfare reform, will become the federal status quo under the new Health and Human Services Secretary. The nation will see a competitive bidding process whose chief criterion will be to drastically reduce caseloads in a short period of time. Thompson will bring to the seat of government the basic assumption that the size of the caseload of welfare recipients is the principal measure of success.

"The reduction of welfare rolls is not the measure of success," stated Gillis, "Rather, it should be reducing and eliminating poverty."

How has this policy propelled Thompson to his current status if, as many advocates believe, a policy implemented to encourage the wholesale reduction in caseloads is insensitive and expedient? In fact, according to a report by Workfare Watch , there were "numerous complaints" about the performance of for-profit welfare delivery companies. Some of the complaints included cases of recipients being closed without any contact with the families, cases where group rather than individual assessments were conducted, and cases where a failure to respond to telephone calls of recipients created further problems.

The complexities of the Wisconsin reforms were the central reason for their success and the success of Tommy Thompson. Complexities which included the denial of education and training to welfare recipients, while utilizing the "dissuasion" effect of work requirements. By operating their reform initiatives and requiring most new applicants to find private-sector, low-wage jobs, or perform community-service work shortly after enrolling in welfare, Wisconsin drastically reduced the number of recipients on the rolls of welfare.

There never seemed to be a "family hour" in our household because grandmother was either at work or exhausted from her household duties.

A recent study, according to Ruth Todasco, an older mother and new grandmother, was done in Los Angeles county with poor working mothers. The study discovered that poor working mothers only get to spend 30 minutes a day with their children...."

"Welfare reform is insulting...." continued the Texas-born Todasco, in an interview with my editor, Lisa Gray-Garcia. "It is saying that the 24-hour job mothers do of raising all the people of the world is 'nothing.' Government policy says the years of raising children are the zero years." Ruth Todasco is a member of Every Mother is a Working Mother Network, which is coordinated by International Wages for Housework Campaign, organizing and advocacy groups for mothers. "Furthermore," Tadasco continued, "We oppose welfare reform because it denies that every mother is a working mother." Todasco, along with 250 other mothers, presented six demands to the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles during the summer of 2000, to be carried to Tommy Thompson and Congress during the upcoming reauthorization hearings in September of 2002.

My grandmother needed no other reward for her parental excellence except that her grandchildren were properly fed, clothed and educated. But the history of the voracious appetite of the incoming Health and Human Services Secretary of devouring the welfare entitlements of the neediest families in America through reform is an unconscionable punishment.

by Lisa Gray-Garcia

I was cold. The February wind whipped up and circled through the invisible holes in my pants. It was dark. I could barely see the phone I was holding. The chill was starting to get to me. I was standing in my house.

It had been 24 days since the PG&E worker had lumbered into the lobby of our apartment building carrying his globe-sized Orwellian time clock and asking everyone in a voice that reached up through six flights of stairs and out through the fire escape, "Where is apartment five? I’m here to turn off the utilities for nonpayment...."

I considered pretending not to be home. Perhaps that would delay the inevitable. But instead I chose a direct, desperate plea. I ran downstairs to the foyer, motioning to him furtively, trying not to look at the crowd of neighbors that had gathered.

"So, Miss Gray-Garcia, are you prepared to pay your bill or should I proceed with the shut-off?"

"But we asked for a five-day extension-my little sister is sick . We can’t be without heat...aren’t you a public utility?" His eyes stared down at me, then closed once before resting at half mast.and proceeded to pronounce very loudly, "We are a business..... Ms. Gray-Garcia, not a social service."

24 days later the suffocating odor of rotting milk products from our shut-down fridge permeated the air of our dark, cold hallway as I stood shivering with the phone receiver in one hand. Thirteen calls later to advocacy agencies had elicited one of two constant refrains, "We have no more funding for utility subsidies" or; You are no longer eligible- you already applied once..."

That experience happened last year, I was working - but still barely able to afford utility bills- now I am scared. As the executive director of POOR magazine, I am still low income- and as I watch an already high utility bill skyrocket to an even higher utility bill, I wonder how I and my fellow low income bay area residents will be able to pay these rates - most of us will not be able to afford the luxury of heat and lights- Most of us will in fact, be forced to decide whether to pay for rent and food versus the luxury of a warm shower or a light to read by-

I have listened extensively to the rhetoric of the corporations, trying to offer rationale after rationale for this situation- and profering the concept of "conserve, conserve, conserve- POOR folks have always conserved - we share bath water and limit our showers to 45 seconds- we turn off the heat and warm our hands over the stove- we buy blanket after shabby blanket- but that is definitely NOT the answer- We all know - even the least informed among us, that so much is so wrong with how this whole thing happened.

Consumer groups like Global exchange and TURN have offered the only light ( no pun intended) at the end of the tunnel, with a group of possible solutions for concerned consumers 1) "reregulate", i.e, to address the very reason the utility companies are proceeding with these actions is because of the "deregulation legislation" and to revisit that with a new form of "regulation" . 2) folks should organize and demand that their city create their own form of municipal power such as the kind that the city of Alameda has.
3)Finally, that consumers should in effect "strike" PG and E and Southern California Edison by paying their utility bills based on the old rates-

I am not sure which one or all of these things myself and all of the poor Bay Area families, elders and children will be able to do. Everything, including daily survival, will be difficult, as we sit shivering in our apartments, scared and confused and dreaming of a home cooked meal or maybe even a cold glass of milk

by By The Associated Press (courtesy of The Homeless People's Network)

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (AP) _ Homeless living in cars and campers may be
getting help from the Board of Supervisors: Special sleeping zones in
parking lots.

With rents at an all-time high and more people taking refuge in cars, the
board will consider a proposal Feb. 27 that establishes sleeping zones in
the parking lots of designated churches and public lots.

Supervisor Gail Marshall proposed the law at the request of homeless
advocates. One plan allows three cars per night to park legally and
rent-free in the parking lots of public and private facilities.

A similar program in Eugene, Ore., is serving as a model for county officials.

``It's an issue that needs to be addressed and we agreed to initiate the
discussion,'' said John Buttny, aide to Marshall.

Hundreds of people live in their vehicles on the South Coast, many of them
living on $700-per-month disability checks, officials said. Public sleeping
and camping is against city and county laws.

by Staff Writer

Hi folks, I thought of cloning and framing it as a pro/con discussion but for many people including myself its full of moral and ethical quicksand and I wish not to sink in either direction.

The Basics of Cloning: making an exact copy of a living organism.
Twins are split embryo egg cells that gestate and in nine months or less are born together, seconds, or minutes apart. The infant twins are from a females split egg and male sperm naturally born, some people would call these siblings clones. Applied Science is speeding towards the cloning of human’s whether it has been accomplished already or in the process is speculation but knowing our species we will keep trying in secret as private government/public industry projects.

The Bad News:The technology is here, cloning human’s can be banned, slowed, but cannot be stopped. We are economically, scientifically connected globally. Do we really think other countries especially ones with a dictator and a population ready to leave or worse overthrow said dictator(s) will not use this new ‘tech to make ready made “clone soldiers” under a dictators control and what if one their researchers found ways to “serial clone” parts or place the original neural electrochemical imprint [personality] of the dictator into his clone skull overlaid on a new brain and body! You not only have replaceable, non reject internal and external body parts but the potential for a near immortal dictator(s) renewing themselves when possible. And unlike Xerox copies as the technology improves cloning gets cheaper, better, and those cloned bodies last longer.

The Good News: This breakthrough can enable adults, children, the elderly to replace defective organs, blood with healthy ones. See how genes can be improved, make better synthetic genes that are better than our original ones. We’ll be able to control our evolution not for the next generation but in our own. Prevention and cures for many human ills.
We have time to slow the pace, place guidelines, speed is deadly on this and other sciences coming together we must take the time an safeguard our selves.

Here are a few Questions I’ve answered for myself

Are clones human? Though created asexually [without two parents]
if they gestate and grow normally they become normal looking humans, being a copy is the original human’s problem not the clone’s he/she see themselves as normal.

Do they have souls? If a clone is made from skin cells, develops in a female’s womb or artificial one, normally ages the same way most infant do, becomes a toddler, child and hopefully grows up. If they have religious lessons and are taught right from wrong they’ll believe they have souls if not like some normal birthed children they may become psychopathic.

As we all know even the best parents with all the love and protection given their child he or she might end up psychopathic killers... There is no way to know.

My View: If I wants spare parts then my clone should be separate from its brainstem so as not to have a living being suffer. With brainstem, nervous system, and other internal/external organs on-call I’ll have replacement parts ready including replacements for neurons and synapses.

Having a child grow, learn who and what purpose they were created is a cruelty that makes the original human souless not the innocent unknowing clone.

As for “Serial Immortality” [replacing old cloned bodies with new ones].This could be possible for wealthy people or lotto second life winners which can win only once! The problem is everytime this is done it must be perfect each time. I’m thinking A.I. [Artificial Intelligence] medical surgical techniques on the molecular level for gene, cell, and hormone copy and improvements.

I may trust human surgeons but for possible ongoing near immortality by serial cloning give a high tech ‘molecular mechanic to work on me from my first gene sequence to last neuron human hands and brains have to many flaws for me to trust them to. Anyone have positive or negative views on your own personal view on cloning, its challenges and pitfalls just sound off.

by Aaron Selter

Has the San Francisco Chronicle become the National Enquirer? In the
Chronicle's initial report on the truck driver who crashed into the state
capitol, its editors chose to publish unconfirmed reports on the front page
concerning a supposed grudge between the driver and Gov. Gray Davis. These
"unconfirmed reports" turned out to be false, yet the Chronicle waited unitl
page four of the next day's edition to correct its statement.

Michael Bowers, the deceased truck driver, had written the governor a
letter in which CHP Commissioner D.O. "Spike" Helmick characterized as
"non-threatening". The subject of the letter, the unacceptable facilities
and treatment Bowers was receiving as a patient in the Atascadero state
mental health hospital, can now be seen as a threat or challenge to correct
a system which was failing and individual. Though, the governor did not
choose to see the issue in this light when he received the letter.

In 1986 Bowers was incarcerated for the first time. Over the next
several years he was sent back to prison for various parole violations. His
family states that over this time Bowers had spent a total of two years in
solitary confinement. When the state corrections department was asked for a
response they stated that they could not verify the claim. Is this becasue
they do not know what is occurring in their prisons? Or are they afraid
that the truth may be detremential to their status quo?

"He used to like to sing, dance, ski," Robin Bowers, the victims sister
said. "When he came out of prison, he wasn't my brother anymore. He was
different."

Bowers was sentenced to six more years of prison in 1991. The first
three years were spent in prison, then Bowers was transferred to Atascadero
state mental health hospital. One state mental health official said that a
transfer such as this indicates that Bowers, "had a severe mental disorder
that was not in remission and represented a substantial danger or physical
harm to others."

Bowers was eventually shipped to another state mental health facitility
where he stayed until an opportunity for parole came up twice. Both times
Bowers refused to sign the parole papers because they incorrectly stated
that he was a heroin addict and required methadone treatments as a condition
for parole. Did the state think the methadone would have cured Bowers
mental health problems even though he was not an addict? Or is the system in
such disarray that they can not process paperwork correctly?

Despite the urging of the prosecutor and psychologists that Bowers was
a danger to society, a jury decided that he no longer posed a threat and
released him in 1999.

Every governmental agency that Bowers encountered failed him.
Beginning with the solitary confinement in prison, to the substandard
treatment in the state mental health facilities, to the media who falsely
characterized him. The combined collapse of the system resulted in the loss
of a citizen. In order to protect itself and deflect criticism the system,
who should be held accountable, placed the blame on the individual.

The popular solution is to build a wall around the capitol, closing it
off from the people it is supposed to serve. Nobody has suggested breaking
down the walls that prevent change in our correctional and mental health
facilities.

"All the people in the world wouldn't have prevented what happened,"
Helmick said.

I disagree. The system could have prevented this tragedy. Many
people, who make up the system, had a chace to help Michael Bowers but they
failed; and now a life is lost.

by Jewnbug

Poverty bought my lottery, ticket.

writing uplifted hurting, emerging.

searching through books to rescue stories buried deep in shame.

poverty gave social services my name.

Time trys to trap my rhyme, won’t b a mime 4 da 9-5 ride.

Stress needs rest, rethinking how to organize mess of past relations with press, my ex.

moving on to the next , I press.

Incarceration epdemic sickens nations with investations of violations.

Police canceled yo lease, ceased possessions, release demanded from zoo cages.

Words fly with birds not just nerds, unlocking the will to flirt again , again.

Poverty locked me in a cage.

Words fly with birds release my RAGE!

by Joseph Perryman

1/24/2001

THEY SAY THAT I AM FREE

BUT THEY WON’T LET MY HANDS GO

THEY TRY TO KEPT ME WITH AH BLIND FOLD

AND SAY DON’T GO WHERE THEY GO

TRUTH BE HOLD IS THE TRUTH REALLY BEING TOLD

NO MATTER WHAT IT MAY BE

YOU TOOK SOMETHING FROM THE PEOPLE NOW GIVE

IT BACK THREE TIMES FOLD

I’M SO HOT I COULD SCOLD

I’M FEELIN BIG THAN BOLD

YOU SAY WO WE’VE BEEN HERE BEFORE

BUT IT'S NOT LIKE THE FIRST

THE MATTER HAS GOTTEN WORSE

WE NEED TO DO MORE THAN CURSE

WE GOTTA HIT’EM WHERE IT HURTS

WE NOT STEPPIN ASIDE

WE STEPPIN N STRIDE

WE CAN NOT HIDE FROM THE FACT

WE THEY AIN’T TO HAPPY CAUSE WE BLACK

THEY WANNA SEE US ON OUR BACKS

YOU CAN BE STRAPED

BUT IS THAT REALLY THE WAY TO GO ABOUT IT

YOU CAN SCREAM AND SHOUT ABOUT IT

BUT DO THEY HEAR IT

OR FEAR IT IF YOU GET NEAR IT

by Irma Jean Lewis-Epps

Micro- economics. I don't want or need this word to be defined
for me by a dictionary. I live this everyday on the money I recieve
from San Francisco's Dept. of Human, Services (D.H.S.) also known
as WELFARE. I am defined by D.H.S. , along with my daughter, as
a single-parent head of household, plus one. Technically we represent
a unit of two, therefore we are entitled to the micro-economically
deprived sum total of $493.50 per month. We spend every waking hour
(as the parent this is my task) attempting to make this amount last
from momth to month. This can only be done on paper as a matter
of theorectical application. On my block we smilingly refer to it
as a waste of paper.

Tonight my child and I are once again in search of someway to
survive another day. We are part of a fortunate few being given
the opportunity to participate in government subsidized program
that will ,eventually help us transistion off welfare to work. This
particular program is the Bay are IDA collaborative program. The
East Bay Asian Local Develpoment Corporation is comprised of thirteen
different organizations that serve low-income individuals . The
main idea is to help all of us low-income and close to no-income
set up a savings program. The way the system is set up now you can
easily be penalized for having any savings, IDA's are attempting
to change that way of thinking.

George Loew was the E.B.A.L.D.C. representative at the orientation.
Along with the basic information he was dispensing he also intimated
that there may be cause to plant seeds of hope. IDA's can be used
for job training or education, business start-ups, up to $600 and
first-time home ownership (not all participants will qualify), up
to $1,920. At this meeting we get information as well as applications
to be filled out in order to determine eligibility. Now of course
all of us low slash maybe no-incomes know about forms and the absolute
need to first determine eligibility, after which if we meet the
necessary requirements we proceed to the next step which is to make
an appointment. If we make it to the next appointment, we bring
along with us the filled out forms to a one on one meeting with
E.B.A.L.D.C. If accepted into the program you attend five weekly
sessions on money management, attend other training specifically
related to your individual goal. For those of us trying to stretch
our meager monthly income the concept of savings is so strange and
alien that we truly need the assistance of others to familiarize
us with something left over to be "saved". At this point we are
then shown how to open an Individual Development Account at a designated
financial institution ,make monthly deposits and attend monthly
"peer savers" club meetings. This is a good idea.

As we all know by virtue of it's being a good idea, it does not
have a snowballs chance in hell of being actualized. They are presently
compiling the statistical data necessary to present to government
(on the Federal level)the need for this program, a.k.a. enough numbers
to get funded. Now back to reality, word on the street is that knowledge
is power. I say power is an action , Knowledge is only power if
you use it. What happens if not only you don't use it cause you
don't know it, but you are having trouble confirming it cause you
never heard it. In order to have acess to this program you must
be referred through one of the thirteen organizations comprising
E.B.A. L. D. C. As soon as I get a list of them all you will be
the first to know. I am presently a part of Poor magazines WE WILL
BE HEARD NEW MEDIA JOURNALISM STUDIES PROGRAM. If I were not a part
of this program I would not have ever heard of IDA's. In my particular
class there are less than a dozen students , fortunately for us
chosen few Poor Magazine is enpowered to allow us entrance into
the hallowed halls of participation (if we meet the eligibility
requirements) . If you don't have acess to the knowledge, you sure
as heck won't be using it, and you can trust me on this one , you
will lose out on a lot by not knowing. In this program your personal
savings held in an IDA account are matched by the Bay Area IDA Collaborative
Program, two dollars to every one dollar you save. Your matched
savings are kept in a parallel account managed by the IDA Program.
You will recieve monthly statements from your banking institution,showing
your personal savings & fromthe program showing your earned match.
You will also recieve matching funds for savings used towards your
designated savings goal. If you have any questions pertaining to
IDA's contact George Loew at (510)287-5353 ext.436, or e-mail Gloew@ebaldc.com.

As I sat there listening small rays of hope began to tinge the
edges of my reality. Not those big rays you may associate with sunshine,
but tiny tingles along the edges because along with them came the
realization that only a hand full of us will be able to take advantage
of this cause only a few of us know. So my real contribution to
the cause will be to let you know that in order to get info on how
to get a referal , reach out to Poor Magazine attn. Lisa Gray-Garcia.
CAll (415) 863-6306 and ask Lisa about IDA's . It has been my experience
that it costs a lot to be "poor" in San Francisco and now thanks
to Poor Magazine I have taken another step away from low-income.