Sonya Bateson: Poverty is a circumstance - not a character flaw

"The more people we can lift out of the poverty cycle, the better all our futures will be," writes Sonya Bateson.

Opinion

It’s funny to think of fire engine sirens as a harbinger of happiness, but that’s how it was in the small town I grew up in.

Every year, in the weeks before Christmas, the town’s volunteer fire brigade would pick an evening to drive around every street in town, chirpily bleep-bleeping short bursts on their sirens to warn everyone the pantry scramble had begun.

In a mad rush, we’d pull spare cans of food from our cupboards and sprint outside to join the waves of people moving to the kerbs, toting everything from a single can of baked beans to plastic bags full of pasta or baking supplies.

Children would wave excitedly at the fire engines as they drove past. Neighbours would chat to each other while waiting for their turns. The volunteers would collect each donation with a friendly smile and a cheerful “Merry Christmas!”, and we’d all turn around and return to our homes in jolly spirits.

It was, of course, our town’s annual food drive.

There was always such a community feel to it – everyone took part, or at least it seemed that way.

I’ve been involved in other food drives since then, namely the ones in Tauranga and Rotorua, and they’ve always had good turnouts – albeit nothing like the town-wide efforts of my childhood.

Maybe it’s a small-town thing. I doubt a city would have the ability to field enough emergency vehicles to drive every street in an evening, after all.

Back in my reporter years, I used to help organise the annual Christmas appeal and I would hit the streets in a different suburb each week to knock on some doors and collect donations of non-perishables.

It was laborious work, but fun. And most people were kind and obliging.

Except for one fellow, anyway.

I knocked on the door of the well-manicured suburban home and greeted the man who answered with a smile and a well-rehearsed spiel.

He looked back at me with an unusual expression – kind of nervous, defiant, and anticipatory all at the same time – and replied: “No, I don’t support the foodbank.”

Shocked at his unwillingness to utter even a polite white lie, I asked him: “Why?”

“I don’t support hand-outs,” he replied.

“Oh. Well, that’s really sad,” I said, and bade him farewell.

I could see him out of the corner of my eye watching me as I approached his next-door neighbour’s door. I may have even made a show of slowly placing the neighbour’s generous donations in my bag and loudly thanking them warmly for their kindness at Christmastime, too.

That was quite a few years ago now. But I often wonder whether this man ever changed his tune as the current cost of living crisis dug its claws into our neighbourhoods.

Probably not. It’s been my experience that people with this kind of mindset see poverty as a character flaw rather than a circumstance. As if poverty is a choice that people walk into with their eyes wide open. As if it’s something they could leave at any time.

There’s an adage we should keep in mind: Poverty begets poverty.

It’s a cycle. A trap. And one that is incredibly difficult to escape.

And it’s my guess that the longer the crisis continues, the more families will become permanently entrenched in poverty.

Worryingly, it’s not hard for that to happen.

All it takes is one badly-timed financial setback – maybe you lose your job, your car dies, or you need to pay funeral costs, for example – and it can trigger an avalanche.

Your savings are wiped out and the next unexpected expense that comes along completely derails you.

If you’re lucky, you might have family that can help bail you out. But if you’re not lucky, you’re going to be up the proverbial without a paddle. And that means turning to lenders.

Borrowing money means devoting a large chunk of each paycheque to paying off interest. For years. And that makes it harder to pay bills. Missing bill payments means debt collection and even more repayments. Then you’re in a spiral of forever trying to pay off more and more debt and never being able to get ahead.

It’s scary.

And it truly could happen to any of us.

I reckon that’s why donating to foodbanks comes easily to most. Donating a few tins of food, a bag full of pasta, or some baking supplies; it’s almost like insurance against it happening to us.

That’s why it’s vital to support social services in the work they to do bridge the gaps. If we can help people through the hardest times in their lives, we can reduce the impact it will have on their futures.

And, let’s face it, the more people we can lift out of the poverty cycle, the better all our futures will be.

Poverty begets poverty. Halt it in its tracks and stop the cycle.

Sonya Bateson is a writer, reader, and crafter raising her family in Tauranga. She is a Millennial who enjoys eating avocado on toast, drinking lattes and defying stereotypes. As a sceptic, she reserves the right to change her mind when presented with new evidence.