{http://soundcloud.com/soundslikerstin/it-is-expensive-to-be-poor}

I did not understand a word of anything the women, men, teenagers and kids around me were saying. All I could tell was that they had exteremely friendly faces and asked me to sit in the best of their chairs at the living room table. Half an hour after I started my interviews conducted with the help of a translater bowls of rice, soup and fried fish were steaming in front of me. The six-bedroom-house in West Hollywood is part of a 'Promise Zone', dedicated by the Obama administration. Six families from Thailand live here - that's a lot of people in not a lot of space. "We can only survive because we help each other," Liam told me. She and her two daughters came to Los Angeles three years ago to finally live with their father again. 

Det had paid smugglers $ 20,000 to get a job in the United States but never got enough work to pay back the debt and could not return home. The Thai Community Development Center in Los Angeles helped him out of his desperate situation. Now he works full time in the kitchen of a Thai restaurant making $ 1000 Dollars a month. Liam adds a few dollars cleaning and 19 year old Ying has a part time job as waitress. Can you imagine living in Los Angeles as a family of four with less than $ 1500 a month? I still can't, even though the family showed and told me how they do it:

They share a bedroom with three mattresses: One each for father and teenage girl, mother and 10 year old Nai share the other one. Free lunch and breakfast for the kids at school. Furniture and clothes from charity organisations. Growing herbs and vegetables on a dry patch behind the house. The most important part: sharing everything they have with the five families in the house - and with visitors. I was thinking about lemons and oranges from the back yard I could have shared with them. 

They knew as much of East Hollywood being a Promise Zone as of Hollywood Stars and Glamor: nothing. Learning that there will be more financial aid coming to their neighborhood Det's and Niam's faces lighted up. "Affordable housing and english tutors" is on top of their wish list for improvements.

Thai Center's director Chancee Martorell promises to work on both. She is very happy about being able to help victims of labor traficking escape modern day slavery and to bring their families to the United States. Martorell also knows: this is just the beginning of a long hard road ahead. Most immigrants underestimate the costs of living in the United States. "It is expensive in this country to be poor!" 

 Thai Community Development Center

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