That's the conclusion Lisa Twombly reached as she fought to hang on to her job as a caretaker for an elderly San Diego couple. Taking the bus and bumming rides from friends wasn't cutting it. She was repeatedly late for work.
Threatened with firing, Twombly put down $4,000 - all her savings - on a 9-year-old Chrysler Sebring with 95,000 miles. The Buy Here Pay Here dealership, Dig's Wheels, lent her the $2,600 balance at a steep 18 percent interest rate.
A few months later, the car broke down and she got into a dispute with the dealer over who should pay for repairs. She quit making loan payments, and the dealer repossessed the car.
Again Twombly struggled to get to work on time. She was fired. That set off a chain of events that left the 38-year-old single mother and her two children homeless for six weeks.
"I don't know what I'm going to do," she said, still out of work. "I lost my job because I lost my car."
For more than a century, efforts to help the working poor have focused on food, housing, education and health care. Almost nothing has been done to help them afford cars, despite research indicating that could help combat poverty. Providing cars is not a big focus for private charities. And there are almost no government programs, state or federal, aimed at the need.
About one in four U.S. families in need do not have a car, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation. For the millions who also lack access to good mass transit, that's a serious handicap.
There's some research underlining the idea that cars could help fight poverty.
A survey of 353 people who bought cars with help from a national nonprofit group called Ways to Work found that 72 percent reported an increase in income. Of those on welfare when they acquired a car, 87 percent no longer were a few years later.
Other studies have found that low-income people were more involved in community activities and had better access to health care after getting cars, and that their children participated more often in after-school programs.
"You're more likely to have a job and less likely to be fired," said Evelyn Blumenberg, a professor of urban planning at the University of California-Los Angeles who studies transportation and poverty. "It's just a no-brainer that low-income families need cars."
The U.S. Transportation Department will spend $71 billion this fiscal year on roads and bridges, $22 billion on public transit and $8 billion on rail projects. But it has targeted no money to help put the poor behind the wheel.
Similarly, the Federal Reserve encourages banks to lend to struggling farmers, disadvantaged people hoping to buy homes and small businesses that want to expand - but not to people who need cars for work.
If anything, federal policy has hindered the working poor's access to cars. The 2009 Cash for Clunkers program sent 690,000 working vehicles to the junkyard, making the used cars remaining in the market more expensive.
The lack of alternatives drives millions of families into the arms of Buy Here Pay Here dealers, known for selling used cars at stiff markups through high-interest loans that the dealers design themselves. This segment of the retail auto industry has prospered during the recession, selling to people whose incomes and credit ratings have taken a hit.
The dealers say they are not just squeezing profits from people down on their luck but are meeting a societal need, providing transportation for those who otherwise couldn't get it. The trade group says 25 percent of buyers nationally default on the loans Buy Here Pay Here dealers make, a risk that necessitates the stiff financial terms.
The risks also illustrate why others may be hesitant to plunge into the field.
There are alternatives to Buy Here Pay Here lots, but not many. About 160 charities around the country focus on providing affordable used cars to needy families, and a 2006 survey of 108 low-income car ownership programs found that they distributed about 10,000 cars a year combined.
That compares with the 2.4 million cars that Buy Here Pay Here lots sell each year, according to CNW Marketing Research.
The alternative programs work in different ways. Some receive donated vehicles. Others buy cars at auction. Recipients may be given cars outright or allowed to buy them with reduced-rate loans.
Ways to Work, based in Milwaukee, is one of the bigger nonprofits doing this. It's a lender that works through partner charities in 21 states, including - since June 2010 - Heartland Family Service in Omaha and Council Bluffs.
Jenny Stewart, director of the program at both Heartland offices, said about 70 used-car loans are now on the books, well on the way to the target level of 120.
"We're pretty proud of that number. . We've had kind of a big surge," she said.
"Our program is real-world expectations," not a handout, Stewart said. That means recipients - who must be needy, working families with children - go through a loan application process and budgeting classes intended to make sure they can carry a car payment. An anonymous panel of bankers and other local volunteers makes the loan decisions, she said.
The 8 percent loans are for no more than $6,000 and 30 months. The applicants must shop for their cars from area dealers and get them checked over by an independent mechanic. So far Heartland has had to repossess just two cars, Stewart said.
"We're learning just as the clients are," she said - about how to advertise, how to find reputable dealers, how to manage details of the car-loan business.
Of course some area churches, nonprofit groups and charitably minded businesses do similar work on an ad hoc basis, usually supplying just one or two cars at a time to needy families.
And state government has a toe in the waters.
As part of the main welfare program for families with children, the Nebraska Health and Human Services Department provides vouchers worth up to $2,000 toward the purchase of a car - some 218 of them last year, said Jill Schreck, who oversees the effort. The federally funded program has narrow requirements - mainly the car must be necessary for work and part of a plan to achieve economic self-sufficiency - and the department doesn't make loans, she said.
Iowa in the past has run two similar programs providing up to $1,000 toward a car, said Roger Munns, spokesman for the state's Department of Human Services. One was specifically aimed at helping borderline families get the cars they needed to stay employed and off welfare. But the car programs were discontinued in recent years, he said.
"It's a matter of resources. These are not flush times."
World-Herald staff writer Roger Buddenberg contributed to this report.
