“Now every day I see people who struggle to own a house”
This profile is part of the series, “The New Jersey 37,” which focuses on residents making up the 37 percent of households in state that cannot afford basic needs such as health care, housing, food, child care, and transportation.
Just one year after purchasing his home in North Brunswick, Allen Castro had to surrender his home to the bank after he fell behind on his mortgage.
“I wasn’t able to pay the mortgage and I lost the house and I started drinking and I developed some mental issues and homelessness set in and now every day I see people who struggle to own a house,” said Castro.
Finding and affording adequate housing in New Jersey is one of the biggest burdens that is put onto people who struggle with the cost of living. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, on average New Jerseyans wages are less than $17 an hour. To afford a two-bedroom apartment in this state, one must make more than $25 an hour- a difference of about than $8- one the highest differences in the country according to the coalition.
Thirty-seven percent of the nine million people that live in New Jersey are classified as “working poor,” according to the latest ALICE report released by the United Way of Northern New Jersey. The gap between cost of living and workers’ wages in New Jersey has been growing apart since 2007, according the report.
ALICE, which stands for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed, defines working poor as households that earn more than the Federal Poverty Level but make less than the cost of living for that state. The cost of living includes expenses such as housing, food, childcare, medical and transportation.
Currently, 28 percent of Middlesex county residents fall under the ALICE threshold.
For people like Castro who fall into the ALICE category, the expenses are almost always too burdensome to handle.
When Castro, 49, of New Brunswick, bought his house in early 2009, he had a full time job as a medical technologist at Bayonne Hospital in Hudson County. Just to afford his monthly mortgage of $1,300 he was forced to pick up another job singing in the choir at Sacred Heart Church in New Brunswick.
“I was barely there,” said Castro, in reference to his house. “I was working here and there 16 hours a day. I wasn’t ever there to even be able to enjoy my place,” said, Castro.
Every month, one of Castro’s four paychecks was solely devoted to paying the mortgage, using what he had left over from his second job to scrap enough money to buy food, insurance payments, and fill his gas tank to get to Bayonne Hospital, more than 40 minutes away from his house in North Brunswick.
Working 15 hours per day, five days a week just to make ends meet, Castro was overcome with stress and he developed a Methamphetamine addiction. He got sick from what he thinks was a combination of the stress from his jobs and the drugs.
Not able to log the necessary hours per week he was needed, Castro was three months behind his mortgage payments only within months of purchasing the house.
He was forced to forfeit his house over to the bank within a year of purchase. He had to quit his job at Bayonne Hospital in search of a manageable rental property in Newark.
Castro found a job and said rent was manageable, but he was still surrendering half of his paycheck a month to rent. A household is considered to be severely cost burdened when it spends more than 50 percent of its income on rent and utilities according to the Affordable Housing Gap Analysis 2016 study.
Castro resorted to selling drugs to friends to have spare cash to afford little victories like chocolate or coffee — two of his guilty pleasures. “When you are a user you know where to buy drugs from and I would buy for my friends and people I partied with,” Castro said.
Castro continued to drift from town to town, job to job for the next five years until his mental health deteriorated and he was unable to work due to the stress that was put onto his psyche. Castro is now homeless.
He reached out to social services and was placed in New Brunswick’s Catholic Charities where he has been living for the last eight months. Castro, who said his has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, dementia, and psychosis, is now free from any monetary obligations as he waits pending for disability for his mental conditions.
Castro said he contributes what he can to the charity, “just to say thanks.” He sweeps the walkways at the shelter and takes out the trash.
“There are organizations out there that you can go for help you if you’re being evicted so you won’t get thrown out on the streets,” said Castro.
