‘Mom, you moved seven times!’ Why some women can’t achieve the work-life balance they desire – Miami Herald

Daniella Pierre lives in Liberty City and calls herself a “housing conduit.” She connects people in need of housing to official organizations that can help with their specific situation.
Daniella Pierre lives in Liberty City and calls herself a “housing conduit.” She connects people in need of housing to official organizations that can help with their specific situation. Emily MIchot emichot@miamiherald.com

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We’re not going back

Women were hit the hardest by the pandemic. Now things have to change. Here’s what the Miami Herald Editorial Board says needs to happen next in South Florida.

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Liberty City resident Daniella Pierre is familiar with the concept of wearing multiple hats.

A single mother of two, Pierre works full time as a secretary treasurer at Miami Dade College and still somehow finds time to run her own housing advocacy company (On the Grid Community Solutions LLC), write newsletters for Neighborhood Housing Services of South Florida and fulfill her duties as president of the Miami-Dade Branch of the NAACP.

Despite her multi-layered life, Pierre’s ability to successfully balance work and home responsibilities is hindered by her own inability to afford a stable place to live in Miami-Dade County.

“Without affordable housing, there is no such thing as a work/life balance,” Pierre said, adding that she speaks from a place of experience. “I am a mother. I am a college graduate. And I’m in search of affordable housing.”

Before her children entered the third grade, Pierre moved seven times throughout the county.

“At one time I was only able to get into a one-bedroom,” Pierre said. “It was me and my two children — opposite sex. I took what they had available, even if it was a one bedroom.”

Prior to the pandemic, Miami’s housing affordability crisis was already one of the worst in the country. According to a 2019 assessment from Florida International University’s Pérez Metropolitan Center, close to 50 percent of all households were cost-burdened in Miami-Dade, meaning they were spending 30 or more percent of their monthly income on rent.

With rent prices climbing steadily in Miami-Dade, things don’t seem to be getting better. In fact, between June and July of this year, Miami rents increased by 5.3%, making it one of the highest month-to-month percentage increases in the country, according to a Miami Herald story.

Financial hardship abounds

For people living on the edge of poverty, something as small as a parking ticket could send them into massive financial ruin.

“With COVID, that was way more than just a parking ticket,” said Karina Ron, director of the Center for Financial Stability at United Way of Miami-Dade.

Since COVID hit, most households are just trying to catch up from the debt they’ve acquired, which is virtually impossible if you’re already spending most of your income on housing.

“Everything just kind of got more complicated,” said Ron. “Even people who are employed are still living paycheck to paycheck.”

According to the United Way’s ALICE report, which provides a snapshot of financial hardship in Florida, they found that 54 percent of people were living in poverty or living paycheck to paycheck in Miami-Dade even before the pandemic. For households headed by single females, that number jumps to 84 percent.

“Every time I say [that figure], it shocks me,” said Ron.

Impacts of Instability

The constant moving has affected Pierre’s sense of stability at home.

“Out of my entire last 15 years of working, the only thing that has been constant has been my place of work,” Pierre said.

It wasn’t until Pierre received a concerned call from her son’s school guidance counselor that she realized the impact the frequent moving could have on her children’s educational attainment.

“It didn’t hit me until that counselor put that at the forefront of why my children have been having some challenges with education,” Pierre said. “Because they haven’t had stability in their early years.”

Housing affordability is imperative to good mental and physical health. Frequent moving can cause stress and depression in families, and overcrowding has been linked to poor health in children, according to a 2021 report from the Florida Housing Coalition.

“To have a home that a kid can come home to, to have meals that they can count on … I don’t even know how to put it into words,” Ron said, getting a bit emotional at her own words. “It’s everything.”

For families struggling to make rent and with other bills, COVID has brought a new kind of stress to families as children are seeing more of the hardships at home, Ron said.

“It has become so much more of a mental health and emotional health kind of issue. [The youth] has seen these things exacerbated. They’re not off in school. They’re living with their parents, seeing the food insecurity, seeing the fact that mom and dad can’t get a job.”

Tough financial decisions

People who are struggling to make rent are sometimes forced into difficult financial decisions. The opportunity to take a higher paying job isn’t always the obvious choice.

Pierre has noticed that many women she works with in her demographic (40 and younger, single with children) are staying “under-employed,” or taking jobs below their skill or education level, so that they can continue to qualify for government assistance like housing subsidies, Medicaid or food stamps.

“You have women that will say, ‘Why would I give up my subsidies? Now I got to work five jobs, and I will never be home,’ ” Pierre said. “ ‘So I might as well just keep this job that keeps me underemployed.’ ”

What Pierre is seeing in her own circles is an economic phenomenon called the “benefits cliff,” or when higher wages result in a loss of benefits that cost more than the original pay increase.

One way the benefits cliff can be avoided is if people in this situation learn how to prepare for the transition off of public benefits.

Ron said United Way offers financial coaching to help people plan accordingly for a benefits transition.

“You have to factor in the fact that you’ll lose a whole bunch of your benefits,” Ron said. “For a mom or a single parent with children, that is especially difficult.”

Housing advocate in search of housing

When Pierre isn’t at her day job, she connects people searching for housing in Miami-Dade to agencies and resources they need to help them find a home. She calls herself a “housing conduit,” a housing expert through learned experience. Pierre corrects me when I note that this must be something she does in her free time.

“It’s not that I have free time. It’s because that I’ve experienced the pain of what it is not to have affordable housing,” Pierre said. “It pains me to know that more isn’t being done to get to solutions.”

Pierre is a tenacious and affable woman, whose personality transcends the limits of virtual interviews. When we switch gears to talk about her advocacy work, she perks up, her enthusiasm palpable through the phone.

“If people can’t relate to issues of women, when it comes to housing, then they may not hurry up and make the change about it,” Pierre said. “So I have to be able to put the awareness out there on all markets, rental, homeownership, whatever it is, so people can say ‘Aha, I get it now.’ ”

Pierre uses platforms like Twitter, newsletters and video panel discussions to educate others about affordable housing. She believes projects that humanize the problems of homelessness are important in getting people to understand the issues, referring to the Humans of HUD project by the Department of Housing and Urban Development as one that does a great job of chronicling the challenges and triumphs of those who are served by HUD. But she also believes that some can only be moved by data.

“Some people, they don’t get to the emotional or empathy side. They want to see the numbers, show me the data!” she said jokingly.

Pierre often tweets startling data points from her presentations or points out rising rents in housing complexes in Liberty City that are classified as affordable.

As an affordable housing advocate, oftentimes I’m called on to share my story, create solutions or facilitate workshops. Tonight I got a chance to do a combination of them all. Yay! Using data from the Census, check out a few of my talking points below.#affordablehousingmatters pic.twitter.com/hb98rkQZrQ

— Daniella Pierre (@Daniella4Change) August 11, 2021

Ron agrees that advocacy in the affordable housing space is vital to seeing actionable change.

“Investing in understanding a little more about what households go through when they’re either living in poverty or living paycheck to paycheck, I think it’s actually really critical thing for our community. Period,” said Ron.

You can learn more about Daniella Pierre’s housing classes by emailing her at affordablehousingmatters@gmail.com

Lauren Costantino is the Miami Herald Editorial Board’s audience engagement producer.