Low-Income Neighborhoods Suffer Disproportionately During the Pandemic
By Grace Zhang ‘23
It’s a warm, Wednesday morning at St. Marianne’s Boutique, a charity boutique in Utica, NY dedicated to providing goods and services for its low-income clients. They had closed due to pandemic protocols, and are only just reopening for business. Clients are from upstairs to downstairs, and even out the door, all clamoring for a chance to receive the critical supplies from St. Marianne’s that they have been missing the past few months. The relief is palpable.
The boutique offers a range of goods and services, anywhere from shoes to haircuts to children’s toys. While these may not be the first items people think of when they think “critical supplies”, these items are among the most necessary for the residents of West Utica: shoes, because these residents often can not afford cars and spend long periods of time walking as they run through their daily errands; haircuts, because appearances and impressions are some of the biggest hindrances to their interview and hiring successes; children’s toys, because children should always be able to receive enriching and interactive experiences that promote smart development. The fact that the boutique was forced to close due to pandemic protocols is one of the few reasons why the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has a K-shaped recovery curve.
The K-shaped recovery curve refers to the behavior of the two legs of the K: one going up, and one going down. The leg going up is the recovery of the upper-class: with access to cheap debt, corporate bailouts, and stock market recovery, many of the richest people in America were able to add to their growing fortunes. Billionaires, as a whole, have increased their net worth by $637 billion. However, at the same time, 40 million Americans have filed for bankruptcy. Those 40 million Americans represent the lower leg of the K. A majority of flexible workers, whose flexible hours and work schedules often result in their lack of stable income, saw their income amount decrease by more than 50% following the COVID-19 outbreak. Those who say they no longer feel financially secure has nearly doubled. Due to a lack of resources, a lack of jobs, and a lack of general aid, the pandemic has hit this population extremely hard.
Going back specifically to West Utica and St. Marianne’s, for example, many residents shared a similar story: they depended on St. Marianne’s for most of their small expenses, like clothing and toys, and put their income towards rent, or tuition, or other big costs. However, after March, taking both a hit to their income due to unemployment in the recession AND seeing an increase in expenses due to the shutdown of St. Marianne’s Boutique, it became extremely difficult to make ends meet. Even now, many of them are struggling to climb back up to their pre-COVID conditions.
The pandemic has only furthered the divide between the rich and the poor, making the American Dream even more mythical than it has already been. In a country of iniquities, where there is such relief to be able to go to a charity boutique so that you no longer have to choose between a warm coat for winter or putting food on the table, being poor is nearly a death sentence.
