‘You wonder, “How can $300 be a crisis?” But it is’
Last fall, finances grew shaky for Erica Payne. She’s a home health worker who cares for two people — her mother and a client, a woman in her 50s who was paralyzed as the result of an accident when she was a teenager.
Ms. Payne gets paid nothing to help her mother and collects an hourly wage of about $12 to assist her client a few hours each weekday. To make ends meet, Ms. Payne drives for Uber and GrubHub on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. The pandemic took a big bite out of that work. Paying the bills became a challenge.
By February, things looked brighter. Ms. Payne’s driving and delivery work picked up as people again ventured out of their homes.
Then came trouble. Ms. Payne noticed disturbing noises while driving her car. She had known she needed new brakes. Now, it had become something she could no longer ignore. She drove her car to a mechanic.
“It was $300, and it needed to be fixed right then,” Ms. Payne said. “My car is how I make money. It was a scramble. Which bills will be paid? Where will I find the money? Borrowing from others? Taking it out of my savings? I don’t want to touch my savings, ever. You wonder, ‘How can $300 be a crisis?’ But it is.”
Ms. Payne never made muchmoney, despite holding two degrees — a bachelor’s in criminal justice from Point Park University and a master’s in social work from the University of Pittsburgh. After finishing graduate school in 2013, she worked for a nonprofit agency that helpedchildren and families.
“We were on call 24/7, working with people in crisis situations,” she said. “There was illness or loss of jobs.” Some families were dealing with drug and alcohol issues. The most she
made was a little more than $16 an hour.
Then, two things changed her life.
In 2016, she suffered a head injury in an automobile accident, which limited her ability to manage the crisis situations she encountered at work. She began looking for another job in which she could use the skills she’d learned.
At the same time, her mother’s health declined to the point that she needed professional care, either at the family’s Elliott home or in a facility that would provide long-term assistance.
“My first thought was, ‘I want my mom with us,’ ” Ms. Payne said. But if her
mother remained at home, who would provide the assistance? Ms. Payne decided she would do the work herself. That meant giving up hope on a full-time job, since she would need a flexible schedule to work around her mother’s needs.
“When it came to deciding how I was going to work around her and involve myself in my work, which I love to do, I was very lost,” Ms. Payne said. “It’s very hard. You feel like you’ve lost something. You don’t have a purpose.”
Onceshe made the move, finances became an issue. Ms. Payne’s parents do not qualify for home health care assistance — their income rises
above the limit, which, Ms. Payne said, hasn’t been raised in decades. She says a lot of people are in this situation of having to care for aging parents, which can seem like a full-time job, and maintain a jobto pay the bills.
“These are working-class people,” Ms. Payne said. “They made a good income but not a substantial income. They paid taxes for services for those who don’t make the money, who qualify for these services. Now that they need the services, they can’t get them.”
The help Ms. Payne provides to both her mother and her client is detailed and intimate. Her client is paralyzed from the neck down
and has limited use of her hands.
Ms. Payne’s mother is 73 and suffers from heart disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a longterm lung condition. She’s a “serious fall risk” and needs help walking, Ms. Payne said. She cannot make her own meals or do her own laundry.
On weekends, Ms. Payne’s father and brothers step in to help provide care so she can drive for Uber and GrubHub.
“I don’t love driving and deliveries. It serves a purpose, but it’s not enough. I want more meaning. I want to help more people. And in the long run, it does not
cover my monthly expenses. If I continue this way for 2030 years, it’s not going to work out well for me. I have $210,000 in student loan debt.”
As the population ages, Ms. Payne believes, more people will face similar circumstances — stay at home and care for an elderly loved one or continue to work and send that person to a facility.
“It’s not an unusual story,” she said. “We’re entering the ‘silver tsunami.’ By 2050, three generations will be retired — baby boomers, Gen Xers and Gen Y. That’s a lot to put on millennials, who are just starting to work now. Something needs to change.”