From riches to evictions

Busy days lead me all over Hudson County: from Jersey City and down to Bayonne and up to Harrison and back to the city. It is not the travel and the traffic that bother me. It is never the reporting and the work. But sometimes content can be jarring. I drive my little Hyundai in and out of the realities people live within, and the difference is stark. Watching one enjoy living, and another struggle leaves my mind with questions. Questions I get to ask myself driving to the next assignment.

With the bright light of this morning, I drove to Bayonne and visited a 12-year-old kid and his family in their clean, white home by the water. The neighborhood looked like a postcard from Connecticut and people smiled at me. This young boy has a world of opportunities in front of him, not just because of the apparent wealth of his family, but because he is an incredibly smart kid. I took his picture to run with a story about how he has won the Bayonne spelling bee two years in a row. He shows me his many trophies that line his bedroom walls. As I say goodbye to the family, the mother fusses about her decorations outside their home, seemingly embarrassed that her various of pots of flowers were dieing in the freezing November nights.

This evening I drove back into Jersey City and visited Carmen Martinez in her apartment building. Her neighborhood is not as nice, not a place where you can leave decorations out. Her apartment building is the kind that sporadically loses its heating during these bitter cold months. The lights flicker in the hallway as we ascend the three flights to her apartment. Carmen's daughter and two granddaughters live with her, three generations of women dependent under the same roof (this also not counting the "seven humble" Mexicans that take up the apartment below her).

"I don't know anything about the laws with home ownership," Carmen tells me. "I've always rented."

She faces a possible eviction because her landlord has lost the property in these plummeting markets and economy. The new owners warned her that in 48 hours they will change the locks, leaving no other information about what will happen to her apartment. She does not know yet if she will be evicted, but she knows she will lose her home soon. The place her youngest granddaughter, Deny-Ra was born.

"We don't know when we're going to get kicked out," says Carmen, parked on the coach, still wearing the clothes she worked all day in. "I just hope it doesn't happen until after the Holidays."

Going from riches to evictions shakes my conscious loose sometimes. It moves your convictions and questions your comforts. It makes me question my stories. It makes me wonder what is a story and what we, as the media, should tell. I understand the necessity of a balance in coverage, but it's hard to defend when you know different realities.