Nine People, One Bedroom: A Teen's Take on Life In Poverty

Jairo Gomez never thought he was poor, even though he was one of seven kids and his family lived in a one-bedroom apartment. The cramped quarters made for a loud and sometimes tense home life. When he wasn't at school, Jairo spent most of his time on his skateboard, hanging out with friends. But he didn't always have that freedom.

When Jairo started 10th grade, his mom asked him to stay home from school to watch his younger siblings while she went to work. He failed all of his classes that year.

“I did wrong in making you stay, but I didn't have an option,” his mom said. “At the time I sacrificed you. It was either good grades for you and you’d go to school, or we were going to suffer and lack necessities...it’s a balance.”

Jairo learned that the odds would be stacked against him if he didn't start focusing on his education.

LISTEN to Jairo's intimate first-person account of the very real choices about education and work that kids growing up in poverty have to make every day.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

How Jairo’s family has changed:

There are nine of us in my family and we live in a one-bedroom apartment. I share a bunk bed with my sister Judy. I used to think of my family as middle class – we’d go out to eat a lot and I could ask for clothes sometimes. But after my parents split up, my mom had four more kids and that all stopped.

How Jairo calculated his socioeconomic status:

I asked my mom to do the math, and she said right now my family makes $30,000 a year – according to the federal government we’re $15,000 below the poverty line. That kind of scares me. 

Jairo reflects on class difference:

It gets me mad that my mom works so hard. And there are people out there who are just born into it, they make money like nothing, they don’t have to clean houses, wake up early, drain themselves.

Jairo on his future:

I know I should be thinking about going to college when I graduate if I don’t want that life. But I’d have to stay at home to afford it. Nine of us in a one bedroom apartment, no privacy, one bathroom, and toys everywhere—I don’t know if I can make myself do it.

 

The series is part of American Graduate, a public media initiative addressing the dropout crisis, supported by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.