Everyday, people struggle to survive financially just like Robert Howard, a police officer in New Jersey, who gets paid only $10.50 an hour, which is only two dollars above the minimum wage in New Jersey. Howard works for the Hillside Police Department. He lives with his pregnant wife and their two year old son. He also lives with his 15 year old brother. Howard like many other police officers is struggling to survive with his current wage. Howard recently was forced to purchase a high-tech security system within his home, which he purchased because protesters threatened him. Howard explained, “because I’m an officer and they know that,” he also owns a lot of furniture from a rent-to-own store with an extremely high interest, because he can’t …show more content…
It just not healthy. Houses in high price of living areas like California are very, very expensive. Houses like someone where in Missouri that would only cost around $150 thousand are million dollar houses in other areas. The ability to purchase a house comes straight from your income, obviously. So people who don’t make that much have difficulty buying houses, and as time goes on houses get more and more expensive with inflation. Houses prices are skyrocketing, “Home prices in places like Denver (up 9% over the past year), Nashville (up 14%), and Dallas (up 16%) have also been booming. The dynamic has helped pushed the national homeownership rate down to a level not seen since the 1960s,” (Time). How can we be okay with people like professional athletes who are purely for entertainment that can afford pretty much every house on the market and someone who saves peoples’ lives for a living like a police officer or firefighter can barely afford even one of the cheapest houses on the market. They do so much for us. We cannott ignore the fact that people who do amazing things in the community are still living a life of poverty that they do not deserve and people who do nothing but entertain are living a life of luxury that we all wish to live as