Making Betrayal into Lemonade, Part 11
By: Joy Ellsworth
Tags: This Happened To Me, Poverty, Housing Crisis, Geriatrics, Housing

This was our first time really knowing bone-deep stomach aches as people who live the realities of chronic hunger know stomach aches. Luke and I were losing weight, choosing not to eat as much or at all, instead of the alternative, which would mean serving lesser portions of food to Tora. (Hey—losing weight wasn’t altogether a bad thing for either of us.)

Because of the drafty windows and the expansiveness of the floor plan, we never seemed able to beat the cold inside the Stinky House. We were all constantly battling respiratory illnesses, using over-the-counter medications to suffer through them, since we did not have insurance. At first we didn’t know it was possible to receive medical care without health insurance, but when we found out about free health clinics, we resisted the idea of going. We weren’t sure we wanted to get acquainted with the image of uninsured sickness in other families quite yet.

The locals who paid me to consult on business and nonprofit operations noticed there was something up, and they started asking questions. I explained a little bit about our situation. That, of course, led to more questions. I didn’t want to paint anyone in a bad light, so I brought out the silver lining and expressed our hope for success at founding the trade school.

This family lived in the Ozarks in the 1940s. They are standing on a porch in front of their log cabin home—an architectural vernacular learned from the area’s native peoples and modified to fit settler housing preferences.

My clients had families who had been in the Ozarks for generations. I was an outsider, and I was obviously lacking in monetary means, so I expected rejection. Patty and Bob had told me that if a person didn’t grow up in the Ozarks—or even if a person did grow up in the Ozarks but didn’t claim Ozark family lineage at least two generations back, then that person would be deemed an outsider, and wouldn’t be trusted. With that knowledge, I was sure to experience some conflict between myself and my clients, eventually.

For our entire three-year residency in the Ozarks, instead of experiencing rejection and mistrust from the locals, what I got was friendship and support.

In stark contrast to Bob’s and Patty’s stories, the locals had their own stories about the type of outsider who was usually worthy of a little mistrust. They said most people come to the Ozarks to escape something. For some outsiders, that thing they were escaping seemed to be their own malice. But in true form for residents of the ‘Show me’ State, locals seemed to take people’s actions as evidence of their true colors.

As we met more native Ozarkians, more caring voices were tenderly suggesting to us that we go on public assistance. Whether the suggester was rich or poor, every one of those suggestions was done with pained expressions and acknowledgement that taking that embarrassing step would send us into a social group, a social experience that we had never experienced before. We heard multiple times, “This is only temporary.” We finally took the plunge and applied for food stamps, WIC and housing assistance programs that would help us with the price of rent.

As part of our new role as assistance recipients, Luke and I had to attend a mandatory housing assistance training to participate in the Community Action agency program that provided rent payments for people living below federal poverty level. We were disappointed to discover that Bob’s house was ineligible for a rental assistance agreement. We expected that, if anything, we would be the reason for not qualifying, but it turned out that the Stinky House was the source of the problem.

There were too many health hazards. The worst offenders were the persistent presence of mold and the use of a wall-mounted propane space heater in a carpeted room. The mandatory training was a measure meant to notify us about the risk to our health when those conditions were present in a potential rental home, but we were in a home where we intended to stay. If we tried to push paperwork through anyway, the inspection that would happen before the start of the contract would disqualify the house. Sadly, there was no way forward with that program if we stayed in the house.

There were all sorts of fun things for Tora to do outside, even when it was cold!

Though I didn’t bring up the house’s federally recognized health hazards, I did discuss our lack of money with Bob. I let him know that there would be no rent payment for the coming month, merely because we wouldn’t have the money to afford it. His first reaction was that of contemplation. Bob was never unkind in his demeanor, which has me still convinced that he honestly never meant any harm to us, even considering he strangeness of his eventual proposed solution.

One evening Bob called me wanting to meet, this time at the local bowling alley, which was also a pizza joint. He didn’t want to go bowling, and he didn’t want to talk about the missed rent payment right off. He wanted to talk about Ward.

“Did Ward tell you about his living situation right now?”

“I haven’t talked to Ward at all, beyond our trip to Mansfield,” I reminded Bob. His memory wasn’t so good anymore, ever since he was hospitalized for Lyme disease after moving down to the Ozarks.

“Well, he’s in a similar situation to you and Luke. He’s been watching over an old woman’s farm for her, over near West Plains, and she’s gone and died on him. Now her sons are selling the place, and he has nowhere to stay.”

I was a little put off by Bob’s comparison of our family with this man, but I stayed my opinion to listen to the rest of the story.

“Since you and Luke are having trouble affording rent, I asked Ward if he would be willing to help you pay rent. He has decided he’d like to help you with $200 per month. What do you think?”

I thought for a second. “Ward is in need of shelter himself. Why doesn’t he just keep that money to make sure he can get a good place to stay?”

Bob corrected my misunderstanding: “Oh, no, nothing locally is that cheap. At least nothing that’s appropriate for living in.”

I’m not sure if I was successful at stopping an eyebrow from raising.

Bob continued, since I obviously still wasn’t getting it. “Ward will need to live with you. He says he can sleep in the garage or on the back porch.”

Snowmen, graduated to full size.

“With us?!” This was a new one. Bob seemed to be unaware of any reason that I should be alarmed at his suggestion. Being from the city, not a year of my life had gone by without hearing about someone who was hurt by a person who had access to them in their home. Whether it was a friend or acquaintance, or something I’d heard through the grapevine, or something I’d seen on the news, it was clear to me. The home was a sacred space worth protecting, especially in cases where small children were at home. I felt my blood pressure start to rise. “I really don’t think that’s a good idea, Bob.”

“Well, I don’t know that we have any other option here. I’m already letting you live there while paying less than my mortgage payment on the house.”

Our negotiating position was admittedly weak. At that moment I felt the full weight of living a five-hour drive from any of our family or friends, with no money, with no employment, no medical coverage, and now, no plan to get out of this arrangement. But, as I was learning to do in so many other areas of my thinking in the Ozarks, I took a step back from the way I thought reality was supposed to be, and accepted the actual current state of things.

“Bob, he can’t sleep in the garage or the back porch. With no insulation in there we’d wake up one morning to a frozen dead man. The only appropriate place for someone to sleep in that house is the guest bedroom.”

“Well, that’s very nice of you. I’ll let him know. He should be moving in next Monday,” Bob smiled, satisfied that he’d helped us, and that he’d still be getting a full rent payment.

My daughter’s face was flashing in the forefront of my thinking. I still couldn’t dismiss the fact that by letting this arrangement happen, I could be jeopardizing my own daughter’s life.

“Wait a minute, Bob. The guest room is right next to Tora’s bedroom. That opens up a whole lot of possibilities that I don’t even want to think about. I really think that my answer has got to be ‘No’ in this case.”

“I’ll talk to Ward about it. Maybe we can find another possibility, but really, I just can’t afford that home to not be rented.” Bob got up to pay for his meal at the cashier station.

Luke rigged up different ways of getting wood to the wood pile near the house, usually involving the SUV.

Later that weekend, Bob called and explained, “Listen, I think I can get some living quarters constructed in the factory. Ward wants to function as the factory’s security guard, and we’ve always been meaning to make the upper floor of the administrative wing into a private apartment.”

This did not jive with our prior plans for space use, but it wasn’t my factory

Bob further explained, “Ward wants to live close to our machine shop so he can continue testing his patented invention. I think it has a potential market.”

I was glad he was planning a place for Ward to be that wasn’t in our private living space.

“It’s going to take me some time to renovate that living space, so for now, I think we’re going to just have to house him in your guest bedroom. It shouldn’t last long. I’ll be done with the apartment renovation in just a few weeks.”

My heart started pounding hard. I knew I was treading on thin ice with the man in control of our only current housing option when I calmly said, “I really don’t think that’s going to be a good idea, Bob.”

“I know, Joy, and I’m sorry. We’re just going to have to make do with what’s available to us right now, and nowhere else is available.”

He was right about nowhere else being available. We immediately started looking for adequate housing, and came up dry. There was plenty of completely inadequate housing, less safe than our Stinky House, but nothing that would qualify for the rental assistance program at Community Action.

Patty had told us of numerous occasions when visitors had stayed at the house that Bob had built on his forty acres in Peace Valley, a twenty minute drive south of Mountain View. Once, one of her boyfriends had moved up into the area to apply for jobs (and failed for a while, like us.) He had lived in her house during his entire job search. Luke and I figured that Bob was finally getting tired of helping Patty’s friends who were in transition.