It's a sad situation and really shows our collective failure to build enough housing. But in articles about the financial struggles of single parents, why do journalists frequently not report anything about child support payments? The reader is left to wonder whether the father of the Stitt children is paying his share, or dead, or a deadbeat. In a number of cases I know about the custodial parent didn't even bother to pursue a legal support order. Even a few hundred dollars per month can make a huge difference in paying rent. I understand that navigating the legal system is difficult and many single parents are overwhelmed, but most counties have social workers or legal aid agencies that will help with court filings and collections.

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grafmax 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> our collective failure to build enough housing

There has been net transfer of housing ownership to the wealthy through increasing LTV and rentals - interest and rent are two ways of transferring money from the working class to rentier capital. Framing this as simply a supply issue is obscures the dynamics of wealth transfer undergirding the rise in housing scarcity.

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returningfory2 14 hours ago | parent [-]

The ultimate reason the wealthy are earning so much in rent is housing supply shortages.

	▲	grafmax an hour ago \| parent [-]
		It’s actually a trend since 1980s. Things like deindustrialization and financialization, outsourcing (which collapsed the unions), deregulation (incentivizing externalities primarily felt by the working class - the 2008 collapse, environmental deregulation in Louisiana, etc), inflation (which benefits those with assets and harms those without), tax cuts for the wealthy. The wealth gap grows which means assets like housing shift to asset holders (the wealthy). This in turn allows asset holders to increase cashflows from the working class to the ownership class in a feedback loop.

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999900000999 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Alright.

This is just a hypothetical story.

Sarah has 2 kids with her ex husband Bill. Everytime Sarah mentions child support Bill talks about pursuing joint custody.

Bill has no intention of actually following though, but he knows fighting in court is going to very expensive and difficult for Sarah.

Sarah drops it. Often filing for child support involves a whole lot of BS. Bill might just be a wacko she'd rather not deal with anymore.

After all, they aren't together for a reason.

I know my dad kicked me out at 15 and didn't give me a dime until I was like 20, and that was about 300$ or 400$ tops.

He wasn't going to spot me rent money during my second eviction.

Honest to God, I was grateful he just left me alone for the most part. He still lived in this fantasy land were you can kick you kid out and expect them to do well in school.

No I'm not college bound, yes my GPA was like a 1.7 when I graduated high school.

Thank you Brendan Eich, thank you for JavaScript, without that magical programing language I wouldn't be where I am now.

I guess I wasn't smart enough for C++, but I've made great money in JavaScript and other higher level languages for a long time.

Anyway, the woman who starts the story has her reasons.

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nradov 14 hours ago | parent [-]

Right, I get that dealing with family law issues can be extremely difficult — especially when irrational or abusive people are involved. But at some point custodial parents need to step up and do what's necessary to collect the money owed to their children even though it's a painful process. It sucks and it's unfair but usually better than letting the children become homeless.

The subject of the story might have her reasons (the father could be dead for all we know) and I wouldn't presume to criticize her based on such a limited set of facts. My criticism of the journalists is that they just leave that part out. It's sloppy writing and leaves the reader wondering what else they missed? Like they can ask for the intimate details of the family's financial history and living situation but they can't ask about child support? It makes no sense.

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999900000999 13 hours ago | parent [-]

So he can go tell the court she's an unfit parent and she'll lose custody of her kids? If anything doing a story like this is really risky for her, CPS could argue she's not capable and make things really different.

People get really messed up and vindictive when it comes to child support.

I'm 100% sure she's evaluated her options and child support just isn't one of them.

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nradov 12 hours ago | parent [-]

No, you can't be "100% sure" of anything because the article omitted key facts. That's my point. You're making unwarranted assumptions about people you don't even know.

Litigants say a lot of things in family court. So what. Judges don't automatically believe such claims. An allegation of being an unfit parent doesn't mean loss of custody so quit exaggerating. While you can find rare stories of CPS employees and judges who abused their authority, the reality is that CPS makes every effort to keep families together and only take children away from parents in extreme cases of abuse or neglect.

	▲	999900000999 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I'm just going to assume that you don't have any personal firsthand experience with the system . I'm going to trust the judgment of the struggling single mother, there's probably a good reason she's not collecting child support right now. This website has a tendency of attracting upper middle class people, and the vast majority of you have just world theory. You think things are much more fair than they really are. I will agree that this is irresponsible journalism, unless they paid her a significant amount of money, the potential downsides of exposing her situation outweigh any benefits. A social worker can easily make a case for sending the kids to foster care from an article like this. Even just getting CPS to leave her alone might be a difficult process