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Comment by irishcoffee | Hacker News Reader

> If these people just "move jobs", they're out a paycheck for weeks and may lose their car, their home, not be able to eat, etc.

This gets floated around a lot. At least in the US I can't imagine a scenario where not paying bills for 1 or 2 months results in homelessness and a repo'd car.

Being both a homeowner and a landlord, I could not pay my mortgage for a year before legal processes kick in, and if my tenants don't pay rent for a month or two there isn't much I can do about it. I most assuredly can't kick them out.

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>This gets floated around a lot. At least in the US I can't imagine a scenario where not paying bills for 1 or 2 months results in homelessness and a repo'd car.

>Being both a homeowner and a landlord

You're in a totally different economic situation, and probably have little to no economic struggles at all. I'll call this out of touch as well.

A lot of the problems encountered in poverty are due to ignorance; of how things work, where to get help, where the line is, it actually makes a lot of sense that low-wage workers think that being without a job for 1 to 2 months is a death sentence.

The real problem though is that "just get a new job" may or may not be possible, but if it is possible, the mechanics of how to do that are not available to low-wage workers. It doesn't really matter that there are plenty of jobs out there if the people who could work at them are not aware they exist, or how to apply for them.

Education, as per usual, ends up being a barrier.

So my current economic situation dictates my past economic situation? You're comfortable making that assumption?

> Being both a homeowner

I'd wager that the vast majority of these people are not homeowners. I'm personally not a homeowner and if I missed a rent payment, my apartment complex could start eviction proceedings against me.

Now I've personally got more than enough in savings to be able to move jobs if I so desired, but when a large percentage of this country has little to nothing in savings, they don't have the same luxuries that you and I enjoy.

I got an eviction notice on my door once for being late with rent. I had the money, I think in that case my auto-pay had expired, so it wasn't transferred. My first notice that I was late was the eviction notice.

Er.. your imagination must be weak if you can't imagine that. Every state has different landlord laws with different thresholds....

There's a ton of people that live in crap motels with weekly rent.

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