Jill Porter: Back to the wall, mom gets a break
IF SPIRALING energy costs and the country's financial tumult have you feeling frightened, imagine what it's like to be among the "working poor."
IF SPIRALING energy costs and the country's financial
tumult have you feeling frightened, imagine what it's like to be among the "working poor."
Imagine what it's like to be Shelley Kaplan.
Kaplan, 42, a mother of two who's had the same job for 21 years, has no hot water in her Mount Airy home, no heat, no way to use the stove. Her gas was cut off in March. Kaplan missed two payments to the Philadelphia Gas Works in the spring. She was short on money in part because of her childrens' tuition and in part because she quit her second job to be home for her teenage son.
PGW couldn't help her
because she made too much money to qualify for assistance. She didn't have enough money to pay the back bill of $3,600, which PGW required before it would put her on another payment plan, she said.
"When I haven't been able to supply a decent hot meal for months, how degraded do you think I feel?" she lamented in an emotional letter to local elected officials.
"I write this letter out of fear because I have no one to speak for me but myself. There is no 'help agency' for me. There is no advocate on standby for me. I have only my voice. I am a breed that is forgotten in this city. I am the working poor. I make too much."
PGW spokesman Wade Colclough declined comment on Kaplan's specific account, but urged customers to call before a bill falls into arrears and triggers a cutoff. "In almost every situation, we can make arrangements with customers," he said. "We will work with them."
Kaplan's dilemma is especially poignant because, like many financially squeezed families, she had to make a difficult choice.
Her 13-year-old son was on his own while she worked the second job to make ends meet. One night, he came home in tears after peer pressure got him into a situation he couldn't handle.
Kaplan couldn't surrender him to the streets, even if it meant being late on her bills.
"I have to be home. I spend all my time with him," she told me.
And isn't that what we insist upon for parents? That they take responsibility and provide guidance and supervision of their children?
Kaplan, an office manager for a surgical practice, said she doesn't have a credit card. She doesn't have a computer at home or a home telephone line.
"I don't buy my kids the latest of anything - nothing!" she said. She asked her son's Catholic school teacher for a weeklong waiver on buying his uniform shoes because she had to wait to get the money.
Her monthly gas budget payment didn't come close to covering her monthly bill, which was more than $500, so her debt spiraled quickly out of control, she said. She never puts the thermostat above 65 degrees, no matter what, she said. But her house needs winterization - another benefit for which her $47,000 annual income makes her unqualified, she said.
On that salary, Kaplan pays tuition for her daughter, who's the first member of the family to go to college. And she pays tuition for her son to attend Catholic school, to avoid the rough environment at the local public school.
"He was afraid to go there," she said.
Kaplan gets little help from her ex-husband with child support. He's supposed to pay $40 a month but is in arrears. A few weeks ago, after she paid tuition, she had no money left for food.
There was some good news this week.
After I called about Kaplan, Colclough said, PGW contacted her and "we are offering new payment arrangements."
I know there's compassion fatigue.
I know some of you will think Kaplan should stop complaining, that she has a decent job and shouldn't have her gas bill subsidized by other customers.
But I, for one, don't think her wish is unreasonable: that people shouldn't be penalized for working, and ought to be eligible for some help when they get into trouble.
"I am so afraid because of the 11 years I've been living in my home, I've never faced such an uncertain approaching winter," Kaplan wrote in the letter to members of City Council and to me. Kaplan said she was "embarrassed" that her woes would be in a newspaper story.
But when she read the letter to colleagues at work before she sent it, she realized that she wasn't alone.
"They started crying. They said, 'You're speaking for me, too.' " *
E-mail porterj@phillynews.com or call 215-854-5850. For recent columns: