FAYETTEVILLE, Ark.- Joy Senn, 22, raised in rural Eldorado, Arkansas, works at Eureka Pizza on Leverett Avenue in Fayetteville, Arkansas.  Senn is currently on a “financial break” from being a student at the University of Arkansas. Senn has two semesters left of school in order to obtain a degree in biology. She is currently not enrolled in college. She works the night shifts at Eureka Pizza to “maintain her full time status”at Eureka Pizza even though she also works during the day at Smitty’s Garage as a waitress. Senn has been financially independent since she began college. She pays for her tuition, her rent, and she pays for all of her bills without help from family, friends, or sponsors.

Working at the night shift can be crazy any day of the week, but on weekends Eureka stays busy until their weekend closing time, 3 am. “Our main people that we get coming in late at night are college kids, or people coming from the bars,” Senn said. Since starting her job at Eureka pizza in November, Joy Senn has had her hourly wage raised from $8.50 to $8.75. Working throughout college at different food service industries is very different than Senn’s job on a farm in Eldorado.

Eureka Pizza takes care of their employees, she said. Senn said that the employees, like herself, who are under the poverty line, get benefits for working full time. “If you are a full-time employee, you get paid vacations, paid holidays, and time and a half after you have worked overtime,” Senn said. Although the employees that fall below the poverty belt struggle to make ends meet, the pizza restaurant really works with their employees, especially the ones with families, to make sure that they are able to maintain their “full-time status.”

Since working at Eureka Pizza Senn has experienced out-of-control customers. “Occasionally we have customers that we have to call the cops on if they’re belligerently drunk,” Senn said. Her position at the pizza restaurant is classified as a cook but “it’s kind of like an all around restaurant. We all take the orders, we all make the dough, we all have to close the restaurant down at some point or another,” Senn said. Senn is currently living near the University of Arkansas campus with a roommate that she found on the university’s “roommate surf” website. Neither she nor her roommate depend on each other for living expenses.

Senn had an academic scholarship when she first began college but was unable to keep it because of her workload on top of schoolwork.

Credit: Stefany Lemus
Mishell Quintero moves a cash register at J.C. Penney on April 9.

A number of employed individuals in Northwest Arkansas still struggle with money. One Springdale resident not only deals with that problem, but also finds it challenging to see a way out because of her status as an undocumented immigrant.

Mishell Quintero, 23, works two jobs to help her five-person family make ends meet. At J.C. Penney, she works as a cash room clerk four days a week, which involves sorting and depositing the retailer’s money and fixing cash register malfunctions. She also works as a private caregiver for a paraplegic individual in the area.

Because the work in both fields is oftentimes tedious, Quintero said she wishes she could work for a better paying job that would give her the time and money to get a bachelor’s degree.

After Quintero’s mother illegally crossed over the border through Arizona, she, then 7 years old, and her younger sister hid in the backseat of her uncle’s car as he used fake papers to transport them across. Her parents had extended family in Springdale, so they immediately moved to the area and have remained since.

“My parents didn’t lie to me. They didn’t say that I did have papers here, but they never told me that I didn’t have papers,” Quintero said. “I was never worried about having to have a job until I was 18 or never having to drive until I was 18 because they were always like, ‘You’re not going to do anything until you turn 18.'”

After turning 18, she began searching for jobs to help support her family. That’s when reality hit: she wasn’t a legal resident of the country. Quintero is a Dreamer, meaning she qualifies for and takes advantage of the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act. The topic of illegal immigrants’ children receiving certain benefits afforded to citizens who were born in America has been a political debate on a national scale.

She applied for and was granted a work permit, but she said she was scared of what employers might think.

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At J.C. Penney, Quintero makes $9.50 an hour part time. In her role as a caregiver, she makes $15 an hour. With that money, she splits the cost of a mortgage, rent, food, utilities and car insurance with her mother, father and younger sister.

There are times when the family gets so tied up in paying bills that they eat at food pantries and soup kitchens. In the end, Quintero wants to attain citizenship so she can get a higher-paying job and eventually live her version of the American dream.

Carlos Morgan works as a barber at Cut Close Barbershop, in Fayetteville, Arkansas. One of his biggest hopes is to be able to leave something behind for his kids, “…to own something, to leave something for my children…I don’t have any want to buy a brand new car or nothing, that’s not a dream.” Photo by Aubry Tucker.

Carlos Morgan, 32, was born in Tennessee, but said he grew up in California, before he found his home in Northwest Arkansas. He has been cutting hair for 14 years and started out cutting his own hair before he learned professionally. He said after filing his taxes for 2017 that he made about $26,000, and estimated that he was making about $10 an hour at his job. He takes one day off a week and usually works from 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Morgan said he shares the custody of his children, one of whom is a basketball player at Fayetteville High School, graduating this year.

Morgan’s most expensive bill is his rent which is costing him more than $1,000 a month for a three–bedroom apartment, a cost he pays alone. Morgan said most of his money goes to bills and that he doesn’t spend money on frivolous things. Next year Morgan said he wants to buy a house, and one day a barbershop of his own. Morgan described his childhood as “pretty rough,” and even,  “cliche,” of a black man growing up. “Pretty much cliche, mother did what she did, father was in jail, things like that,” he said. He said he has three siblings,  two of whom are incarcerated, and another that he doesn’t keep in touch with.

Morgan takes pride in his work, “a haircut is more than just a haircut,” he said, because it changes the way that someone feels about themselves. His client, Stanley Chukwuanu, 24, chimed in to add how special he is to him and the relationship they’ve developed through many years of knowing each other as barber and customer. Chukwuanu said he takes advice from Morgan, talks to him about his relationship, and that they always joke around with each other. Chukwuanu said he plans to move to Oklahoma City soon and doesn’t know who he’ll be able to trust with his hair there. Morgan said he works with different people everyday from an array of ethnicities. Several of Morgan’s clients have been coming to him for many years, and two more young gentlemen in the shop said they have been coming to Morgan for haircuts since they were kids.

Three years ago, Alvin Davis was an engineer. He had a steady job, one he was proud of and worked hard for.

But people who have professional training can fall into poverty or become homeless because of unfortunate circumstances, he said on April 8 at Fayetteville’s first “Walk a Mile in My Shoes” march, organized by University of Arkansas senior Quinn Childress. A little over 100 individuals marched from 7hills Homeless Center to the Fayetteville Town Center

Davis, a Fayetteville native, is one of those people. After being laid off, his bills quickly began to pile up and he lost his car, then lost everything.

Although Davis lives at the 7Hills Walker Family Residential Community, which provides transitional and permanent supportive housing, nobody wants to hire someone who’s address has the words “7Hills Homeless Center” in it, he said.

In order for homeless individuals to have an actual address, they have to have a wage that will allow them to pay for rent.

“We need to raise the minimum wage, because rent won’t wait,” he said. “Local companies abuse the homeless, knowing that they will work for almost nothing because they are in need of almost everything. But that isn’t going to help solve the problem.”

Davis addresses a crowd in the square at the Fayetteville Town Center on Sunday April 8.

“Let’s say you’re lucky enough to find affordable housing or apply for a housing program,” he said. “You’re still not going to get it because then you have the background checks, and you could have a non-violent charge against you that happened 20 years ago, and you’re still not gonna get the apartment.”

Housing owners and apartment tenants need to reduce the price, he said.

“We’re not even given the opportunity,” Davis said. “But people don’t care. I walk everywhere, there are vacant houses everywhere. There are help wanted signs everywhere. I know so many carpenters and plumbers who are not being utilized, or if they are it’s nowhere near a liveable wage.”