[lbo-talk] Car loans help the poor get to work

[B.]

[I know lots of people think we need to be weaning
ourselves off these things, but the situation
described here is all too real. You need a car to get
to work, but you need a job to get a car, at least in
places around where I live. I know quite a few people
for whom the car/job - job/car struggle is a sort of
major defining economic struggle of their 20s and 30s,
sometimes beyond. -B.]

Car loans help the poor get to work

By ELLEN SIMON, AP Business Writer
Thu Oct 12, 5:42 AM ET

Emma "Matty" Yturralde was the exact opposite of a
bank's dream borrower: A newly divorced single mom
with a $13-an-hour job. Her finances were so tight,
she had a tenant sleeping in her living room.

She had a car, but it was in the shop almost as often
as it was on the road. The bus ride to her job at
Kmart took an hour and a half. Too proud to ask for a
ride home, Yturralde, now 49, said she would sometimes
wait outside the store to see if a co-worker offered
one.

Her life changed in 2003 with a $2,000 grant for a car
and a $4,000 auto loan at 4 percent interest through a
nonprofit program called Ways to Work, which enabled
her to buy a 2001 Daewoo. The store where she worked
closed a few months later, but she was able to drive
to a new job at a store farther away.

"If I didn't get the loan at just that time, I don't
know what would have happened to me," she said. "Maybe
I would have lost my job, maybe I would have gone on
welfare or worse."

[...]

People who worked with Family Service Agency of San
Mateo County in California to get the car loans say
the amount of work they miss after getting a car is
down 92 percent. Their transit time to work is cut by
91 percent and more than one-quarter say they have
been able to attend job-related education they
couldn't have reached without a car.

[...]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061012/ap_on_bi_ge/cars___jobs