Updated: OCTOBER 17, 2016 — 1:30 PM EDT
by Samantha Melamed, Staff Writer @samanthamelamed
Last summer, Kameelah Davis-Spears was just one year out of homelessness. She’d found a house for herself and her four children in West Philadelphia using a Section 8 voucher. And, between food stamps and her job, doing inventory for $10.20 an hour, she was finally making it from one paycheck to the next.
Then, she began getting letters: The city Department of Human Services (DHS) was going after her for child support.
Her son, Kameron, had spent nine months in juvenile placement for a fight at school. Davis-Spears had protested, arguing that Kameron, then 16, had never been in trouble before. But a judge sent him away anyway, and now the city wanted to recoup part of the cost of his care.
At a Family Court office, an official said she owed $12,000 — about as much as her take-home pay that year. Since then, $13.71 has been garnisheed from her wages each week.
“Right now, I can just pay my bills. But if anything happens, we’re out of luck. There’s no emergency fund,” said Davis-Spears, 39.
And something is bound to happen. For one, her other son, Kobe, recently spent 18 months in placement for truancy.
Davis-Spears is bracing for the child-support bill.
“I can’t afford to have another $50 sucked out of this house every month. Then I actually won’t be able to pay my bills,” she said.
Collecting child support is just one way juvenile-justice systems here, and nationally, are passing on their costs to families that are often already living in poverty. In addition to potentially thousands of dollars in child support charged to their parents, kids in the system are also directly assessed fees, sometimes totaling hundreds of dollars.
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/living/Phillys-working-poor-child-support-debtors-prison.html.
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