Not long ago, Linda and her husband, Chuck, believed they had the American dream firmly in their grasp.
Chuck had a good job as a mover, and Linda worked for a railroad company. Together, they made ”very good money,” as much as $80,000 a year. That was enough to buy a home in Elmhurst, where they raised their three daughters.
Then the dream began to slip away.
In 1989, Chuck got hurt at work and had to take a sales job at his firm that paid only $200 a week in commissions. Then Linda lost her job in a company buyout. She, too, was forced to take a lower-paying office job. And the bills began to mount.
First, they turned to their savings, managing to keep the mortgage paid for months. Then, when the savings began to run out, they sought help from a federal housing program to lower and stretch out their mortgage payments.
But after seven months of waiting, they were turned down, in part because they had waited so long to apply.
Foreclosure proceedings began early last year.
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Then last week, the utility company came out to turn off the water. Linda, who filled the bathtub before leaving for work that day, avoided the shutoff only after doing what she never dreamed: She called a local church group serving the poor and begged for $120 to pay the bill.
”It`s very embarrassing to me to ask anyone for help,” said Linda, 38, who asked that her last name not be used. ”I don`t like people in the neighborhood to even know. But I wonder, `Where will we be a year from now?`
”
Her story of prosperity vanishing might have been unusual a year ago. But today, in pockets of affluence from Schaumburg to Wheaton to Oak Forest, growing numbers of families who once thought they were beyond the reach of the recession and hard times are discovering they are not.
The suburban numbers are small in comparison to the hardcore poverty of Chicago. In Du Page County, for instance, 5,749 residents are now receiving state Aid to Families with Dependent Children. But it is the growth rate that is the most alarming.
In the 12 months ending in December, the number of those receiving welfare assistance such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children has risen an average of 16.4 percent in Chicago`s collar counties. That is more than twice the 7.8 percent increase posted in Cook County, according to the Illinois Department of Public Aid.
Altogether, 1.35 million people are receiving such aid in Illinois, an all-time high and the highest percentage-about 11 percent of the population-
”since the Depression of the 1930s,” said Dean Schott, a spokesman for the state Public Aid Department.
The demand for state medical assistance has been especially high in the suburbs, rising an average of 50 percent as workers lose their jobs and accompanying medical benefits, Schott said.
And throughout the suburbs, food pantries, township general assistance programs, church aid groups, medical aid programs and organizations for the homeless say they are being swamped by requests from those who just months ago never would have believed they would be on the taking end of charity.
”There`s no doubt about it. We`re not talking about hard-core unemployable,” said Bob Pechous, supervisor of Berwyn Township, which has seen a big increase in demands for help. ”We`re talking about people who have enjoyed a good style of living met by their own ingenuity and skills. Then they lose their jobs, fall back on underemployment, lose their assets, tap down their savings. One day, they have no choice but to make that phone call.”
”It`s being visited on people who never experienced it before,” he added. ”There`s no umbrella of sanctity over any community, no matter how affluent. The haves are becoming the have-nots, no doubt about it.”
There are several kinds of problems facing middle-class families caught by the recession, experts say.
The kinds of secondary jobs that workers once fell back on in hard times- food service, delivery jobs and the like-also are disappearing in the recession as fewer people eat out or take advantage of services. For people over 50, the prospect of finding any new job is particularly tough because few employers want to face paying pension benefits in a few years.
The newcomers to the welfare lines are unfamiliar with the public aid system and simply don`t know where to turn for help, aid workers say. Most, certain they will find new jobs, wait too long to seek aid, then find themselves desperate and confused when savings and help from family and friends run out.
Further, the welfare system, which traditionally has served the long-term poor, is not geared to meeting the needs of this new class of welfare applicants. Often, the newly needy are forced to get rid of some assets like cars-needed to find and get to new jobs-before they are eligible for state assistance.
Most important, these new welfare seekers are handicapped by enormous embarrassment, shame and loss of self-esteem when they are no longer able to provide for themselves.
”It`s more than humiliation. It`s close to devastation,” said Nanci Vanderweel, president of the board of directors of Northwest Community Services in Elk Grove Village. ”This is the thing that could not happen. They think, `We`re out in the suburbs, we have a home or a condo or a nice apartment, this isn`t supposed to happen to us.` ”
Vanderweel`s social service agency, which serves seven northwest suburban townships, said the number of requests for help from people on public assistance tripled in December. Altogether, 49 people sought help in finding a job or shelter, compared with a dozen in a typical month before the recession set in.
”We`re not talking about the typical unemployed, but people who are educated, people who have had responsible positions,” she said.
Workers at Together We Cope, a social service agency in south suburban Oak Forest, have been seeing similar clients, with the demand for help up 68 percent between July 1990 and July 1991, they said. In the first six months of this fiscal year, demand rose an additional 20 percent.
For Robert and Betty of Wheaton, the recession means they are now living in the basement of their son`s home after losing their jobs about a year ago, he as a research engineer and she as a new car saleswoman. Unable to sell their own home or pay the utility bills, they have simply shuttered it.
But because they live with relatives, they were turned down for food stamps and other public aid. Their unemployment insurance has run out. The Veterans Administration has not replied yet to a recent request for aid. And because both are over 50, they have had enormous difficulty finding even minimum wage jobs.
”You just can`t imagine it,” Betty said. ”Here when you should be starting to enjoy life, you`re starting all over again.”
If the recession continues, many people may have to get used to seeking and taking help.
Aid workers encourage the newly unemployed to look into their options early, to contact utility and mortgage companies about revising payments and to look into applying for state medical or family assistance even while they look for other jobs, just in case.
Losing a job and having to get assistance ”is extremely difficult psychologically. It hurts your pride,” said Helena Batycki, director of the Homelessness Prevention Program of Little Friends Inc. in Naperville.
”But,” she said, ”it could happen to anyone. People have to face that.”
For Mary, a divorced mother from Roselle who asked that her real name not be used, the recession means she has lost three jobs since July and all of her medical benefits, just as an adult son with cancer moved home with her.
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The first layoff came in July, when her $21,000-a-year job as a receptionist for a construction company ended after 14 years.
”I really wasn`t expecting to be laid off; there was no indication,”
she said. ”It was very devastating. One minute you have a job, and the next minute you`re gone and what are you going to do?”
After the layoff, the cost of keeping her company medical insurance rose to $270 a month, more than she could afford to pay and still keep her town home. She dropped the coverage and now, ”I`m absolutely hoping to God I don`t get sick,” she said.
After losing the receptionist job, Mary, a high school graduate in her 40s, worked for an employment agency until that company was sold in September. Then, in November, she got another receptionist`s job but was again laid off in December.
Now she receives $206 a week in unemployment insurance from the state, and her 21-year-old son gets $90 a month in medical assistance. Just this week, they turned to the Schaumburg Township welfare services office for a one-time emergency grant to pay their overdue electric bills.
The embarrassment and shame of standing in line to ask for help, Mary said, is the hardest part.
”I don`t like the idea of going for any kind of assistance, but I do because of (my son),” she said. ”I do it because I have to, not because I want to.”
In the unemployment line, she said, ”We`re all standing there and saying, `How could this happen to me?` ”
According to Chris DeSmedt, a welfare caseworker with Milton Township in Du Page County, many of the people seeking help at her office say they don`t want a grant, only a loan to get by until they can find work again.
”They always say, `If we get back to work, we`ll pay you back,` ” she said. ”They always want to volunteer. That`s the type of people we`re getting.”