© 2024 Maine Public | Registered 501(c)(3) EIN: 22-3171529
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Scroll down to see all available streams.

What Is It Like to Be a Woman in Maine Living in Poverty?

Jay Field
/
MPBN
Jennifer Stratton, cooking in the kitchen at Hospitality House in Rockport.

Last spring, a legislative study commission found that while the number of women in the Maine workforce has increased over the past ten years, they still experience much higher rates of poverty, homelessness and unemployment than men. And when they do work, it's often part-time and for lower wages.

We continue our series on poverty in Maine this week with the story of Jennifer Stratton who's struggling to make ends meet in midcoast Maine.

We all hear about poverty in Maine but what does it actually look like?

"It's not your typical people sleeping in dooways, or people pushing carts or rummaging for bottles and cans, but it is. It feels like that on the inside," Stratton says.

On a weekday morning, just before Thanksgiving, Jennifer Stratton is getting ready to head off to her daily shift at a supermarket in Rockland.

"Because I work, because I'm well dressed, people don't perceive that I would be someone who is living in poverty," she says.

But Stratton, who's 42, is living in poverty and it's not the first time. And when she's there, in that place, the most consequential and commonplace parts of daily life are profoundly altered.

It's an hour before work now and Stratton is leaning over a gas range, making Cajun sausage and rice for lunch. There are two kitchens at Hospitality House, the homeless shelter in Rockport, where Stratton is living. One kitchen is for mothers with young children. Stratton shares the other with a fellow adult resident and her 17-year-old daughter Erin, a senior at Camden Hills Regional High School.

"I usually wake up when my daughter gets up for school," says Stratton. "Her alarm goes off at 6:30. She gets picked up by a taxi at 7:30."

Stratton usually skims the news for a bit, then heads downstairs for breakfast.

"Breakfast is a struggle, because I'm not a people person in the morning," she says. "So sometimes I'll go without breakfast to avoid talking to people. That's one of those things, not being in your own house. Cause my kids all know" don't talk to mom until mom talks to you."

Stratton, who has two other adult children, says she went through a difficult divorce in New Hampshire in her late 20s. She was left with nothing and maxed out her credit cards, staying in motels. She ended up homeless and eventually moved back to midcoast Maine, where she grew up. With help from extended family, Stratton slowly got back on her feet. By 2012, she had her own apartment in Friendship and a full time job at a call center. But Stratton left the job, when the company relocated to Rockland. She moved to Rockport, so her daughter could go to school at Camden Hills. The family rented the top floor of a friend's house in Rockport and Statton got a job, working the deli counter at a Circle K for $8.50 an hour. But the living situation didn't work.

"There were just too many disagreements on how I raise my daughter and now they wanted to run their house," she says. "So they kicked me out and I had three days to leave. And that was in July."

Stratton got a better job, the one at Hannaford, which pays a better hourly wage but couldn't find a place to live and ended up at Hospitality House in October.

"When I left Circle K it was $8.25," she says. "And I'm making almost $3.00 an hour more at Hannaford."

Stratton works 25-28 hours a week. She doesn't receive food stamps or any other financial assistance from the state, but is trying to sign herself and her daughter up for Maine Care. She's worked two jobs a different times in the past.

"With out a car, two jobs is really almost inconceivable right now," she says.

Stratton lost her car to a broken axle over the summer, but continues to pay auto insurance in the hope that she can come up with the money to get it repaired. She has roughly $1,200 a month in income to work with, as she looks for a new place to live on the the midcoast, where rents have been steadily rising.

"We filled out an application for pretty much every subsidized housing in Rockland, Thomaston, Camden area," she says. "Then also applied for Section 8. One came through, it was in Lincolnville, it was in the middle of nowhere. Because I don't have a car, I didn't take it cause I don't want to lose my job."

Stratton continues to look for a place to call home.