New Haven Independent

Connecticut’s 35-cent hike in the minimum wage went into effect Friday. That means Kim Clark’s hourly pay will rise from $7.65 to $8. Next January the minimum wage will rise another quarter.

She’ll collect her first larger check on Jan. 15 for her job answering phones and sending out mailings at the West Rock Family Center.

Unlike full-time workers, Clark won’t see the $14 weekly boost that in some cases will enable families to put a meaningful amount of food on the table or help make the rent. Clark works up to 15 hours a week.

But even that $5 boost will change how she lives, she said.

She plans to use her first checks to buy long-needed new socks for son Arthur, a bright-eyed Amistad Academy first-grader who loves reading; and to start purchasing Ajax dishwashing liquid.

Until now, she said, she needed to use her box of Power Cycle 2x laundry detergent (pictured) not just to wash her clothes, but to mop the floor and to clean dirty dishes.

“This is horrible on dishes,” she said Sunday in an interview inside her Winchester Avenue apartment. “You have to rinse it so much more. It leaves a film on your dishes. When they say ‘laundry,’ they mean laundry!”

“But,” she added, “you have to make it work.”

Making it work has proved a challenge for Clark, 47, who grew up in the West Hills McConaughy Terrace projects.

Her story illustrates in part why state Democrats overrode a gubernatorial veto last June to pass the minimum-wage hike. Gov. M. Jodi Rell said the state couldn’t afford to add costs to businesses in a recession. Democrats pointed to studies that minimum-wage hikes don’t lead to job losses. And they argued that even 35 cents an hour, or $500 to $700 a year at full-time pay, will make a real difference in the lives of working families struggling to make ends meet in tough times. “Trying to make ends meet right now on a minimum wage job is nearly impossible,” said New Haven State Sen. Martin Looney, an organizer of the veto override, in a recent release. “This very modest increase will help hard working people put food on the table.”

Clark reflects the face of minimum-wage workers in Connecticut: a majority are women over 24 who are supporting children. (According to the state Labor Department, minimum-wage earners constitute 3.5 percent of some 1,865,000 people working in Connecticut, and 7 percent of 923,000 hourly workers.)

Clark has traveled a road walked by many Connecticut workers, a road posing challenges ffor policy makers.

Like many displaced workers, Clark used to work in manufacturing. She earned $11 an hour repairing car distributor caps at Echlin in Branford. In 2001 she earned her last paycheck. Her job was gone.

She couldn’t find another comparable one, she said. Many women are being steered to nursing assistant jobs, for which there is a demand in the region. Clark said that wasn’t for her; her “stomach” has trouble with it. “I prefer manufacturing work. I like getting my hands dirty.”

Instead she eventually took to stealing. “Walmart. Kmart. Stop ‘n’ Shop. Shop Rite. I had to provide for my family,” she claimed. The police caught her. She didn’t go to jail. But like thousands of New Haveners, as of January 28, 2008, she did have a felony record — a barrier to finding a new job paying a livable wage. (New Haven is working on a series of proposals to help convicted felons find work.)

Then Clark became a bit player in another social policy challenge: the foreclosure crisis. Her landlord on Sheffield Avenue lost his house. The number of foreclosure filings in New Haven rose from 547 in 2006 to 853 in 2007 and is on track to hit between 900 and 1,000 in 2008 when all the data comes in, according to Eva Heintzelman of the ROOF project, citing statistics compiled by the Warren Group. (The city had 730 filings through the first nine months of 2008.)

Kim Clark said she had to leave the Sheffield Avenue home in December 2007. The lender foreclosing on the home gave her her original $750 security deposit back. She said that wasn’t enough to get a new apartment for herself and her son Arthur.

Suddenly homeless, Clark called on her alderwoman, Alfreda Edwards, who in turn asked Probate Judge John Keyes for help. They found a space for Clark and Arthur at the Life Haven shelter for women and children.

She had grown depressed. “I couldn’t go to a job interview without crying,” she said. Staff at Life Haven helped her get $447 a month from the state Department of Social Services for mental-health treatment. The treatment helped her immensely, Clark said.

Clark also hooked up with a program at Christan Community Action (CCA) called the Stepping Stone Transitional Housing Program. The program helps women with not just job counseling, but life counseling.

CCA gave her the part-time minimum-wage gig doing office work at the West Rock center.

Through Stepping Stone, Clark also landed in the apartment on Winchester Avenue, a converted former school where CCA offers families transitional homes and on-site counseling. She landed the job, and the apartment, in August, a month after her six-month DSS mental health money ran out.

In addition to her paycheck, Clark receives $257 a month in food stamps. She just learned she has qualified for energy assistance.

As she discussed her story Sunday, the Clark Sisters gospel group could be heard from a boom-box in the kitchen. “He’s done enough,” the group sang. “If the Lord don’t do any more for me — He’s done enough!”

Clark (no relation to the group) echoed the words. She thanked God for all the help she has received. She was ecstatic about the minimum wage raise.

“Between the gas bill, the light bill, the telephone bill,” the budget had been tight enough to require waiting on Arthur’s new socks and engaging the laundry detergent in triple duties.

Asked what brand of dishwashing liquid she’ll buy now, she answered without missing a beat.

“Ajax, of course!” she said. The grapefruit-scented brand, to be specific. “That’s what my dad uses. It smells so good.”