A vision of assistance
Two Sandpoint residents share a mutual vision for helping low-income citizens
By Lyndsie Kiebert Reader Staff Writer Jack Fournier’s life changed in a single moment. One second, he was riding in the car with his wife. The next, he awoke in a hospital bed to the news that a drunk driver hit them and took her life. In the end, the driver spent six months in jail and never paid restitution. Fournier sold everything and started moving around, using his master’s degree to work as a child and family therapist across the West. He never got on top of financial matters and never planned a retirement fund. Now, 30 years later, Fournier is barely scraping by. “I was numb for 20 years. I didn’t know it at the time, but 20 years went by. I just didn’t ever (plan ahead). I just didn’t do it. I didn’t care,” he said. “Thirty years older and now what? You finally become conscious of everything that’s going on and you look back and everything has changed.” Despite becoming disabled following the car crash, he worked as long as he could. Fournier moved to Sandpoint four years ago after becoming familiar with the area while working for Child Protective Services in the early 2000s. He currently lives on social security and uses Medicare to help with several medical issues, including diabetes. Even if 70-year-old Fournier could secure and maintain a job, it would only hurt him. Within the current system, if Fournier makes any more money than he does now, he will lose his current benefits. Bills, medical and otherwise, will pile. To be blunt, Fournier said, he has no choice. “The wheels don’t turn right,” he said of government assistance programs. Kelli Martin, who moved to Sandpoint eight years ago, shares Fournier’s sentiment. Martin works in loss prevention and fraud investigation, and as a result, interacts often with low-income individuals attempting to steal or cheat the system. Martin said she also actively seeks community members who need what she calls a “hand up” — whether it be money, food or other amenities. It is in this fashion that she met Fournier and heard his story. 22 /
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/ May 25, 2017
At 19 years old, Martin found herself living on welfare with two babies. She said she’d wait to go to the store in the middle of the night so that fewer people would see her pay with the fake money the government issued at the time. “I was so embarrassed. I just wanted to die,” she said. “But when I got in the car with the groceries I was like, ‘Oh, I can feed the kids.’ It was like a million dollars in my car.” It was her experience finding a way out of that situation that Martin said helps her empathize with people like Fournier. “When you see people that are really good people and they just need a hand up, that’s what I think a small community like this could create a model for,” she said. This model is something Fournier and Martin are working together to bring to life. Though no plans are off the ground as of now, the duo has a clear image of a low-income tiny-home community based around educating people. Financial counseling, parenting and cooking classes, group dinners, shared childcare responsibilities and the creation of a greenhouse—among many more ideas—would be offered as a means to break the vicious cycle of relying on government assistance, Martin said, and create a pay-it-forward system where residents carry those lessons forward. Rent would be free for a year as long as residents partake in the counseling and community activities, and people of all ages—from families to the elderly—would be welcome given they make genuine attempts to become what Martin calls “successful citizens.” Fournier and Martin’s dream of such a community in the Sandpoint area is a result of both their backgrounds, and they acknowledge that not everyone will understand the importance of such a community right away. “Getting the story out is one thing. People acting on it is another,” Martin said. “I don’t think unless you’ve lived it, you understand it.” She said there is often an attitude surrounding low-income people where others think, “they’re lazy, they’re
Jack Fournier, left, and Kelli Martin, right, discuss ways to improve the lives of Sandpoint’s low income individuals. Photo by Ben Olson.
losers, they’ve screwed up their own lives.” Still, she said, there’s often a reason people end up in their situations that they can’t control. “I see so much ugliness in this world with my job, and I talk to people that no one wants to talk to because they’re dirty or whatever, but I see just beautiful humans, but something happened,” Martin said. “It was the way they were raised, or they were molested or something bad happens in their life that makes them turn.” It’s a story Fournier knows well. He said he wants people who have been living in negative situations to try to think more positively, and the community he and Martin have in mind would be that positive place for low-income Sandpoint residents. “I have a lot of faith in God that things will work. We want them to work at our time, but it’s not necessarily going to happen on our time,” he said. “I think this is just the start of something really positive happening. I think it will grow. I just have that much faith.”
More than anything, Fournier said, he wants people to know that it’s OK to ask for help. “It’s very difficult for me at times to ask for help, but sometimes you have to, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just your pride and your ego that gets in the way,” he said. “Don’t be embarrassed about asking for help — it takes strength. So that’s what I did with Kelli. I asked.”
Crossword Solution
Consider the daffodil. And while you’re doing that, I’ll be over here, looking through your stuff.