[ilbegone]

Today I was driving by the local "Department of Social Services" office when, on a whim, I pulled into the lot to observe the cars, age and condition.

There were a hundred or so in the lot, two were clearly county vehicles. 10% looked like vehicles I have seen single women working low wage jobs driving (I knew those women), maybe a dent, mismatched tires, a window missing covered with plastic and duct tape, older models, and such. These women paid their own rent or house payment (far into the lending years - lower than rent), some had small children or were taking care of other relatives. There is no child support or alimony for these women and they don't access public services. I have no idea how they do it, lots of careful shopping and maybe potatoes, rice and beans for filler.

The other 90% of vehicles, excluding a couple of tweakermobiles, seemed to belong to people of moderate blue collar means.

So, I drove over to a "Ranch Market" which is patronized by lower income and people from other countries. The rate of the "single low wage working woman" type of cars was about 30%.

After that I proceeded to the parking lot of of a corporate market with a definite low income clientele: it was about 60% for "single mom" cars.

While I should have gone into the welfare office to see for myself what apparent sort of people were inside obtaining services, it is odd that there were far more relatively newer, more expensive and better maintained cars in the welfare parking lot than than there were in markets largely patronized by obvious low income shoppers.