The day David Martínez found himself living in a car with his wife and infant daughter, storing the child’s milk in a small cooler with ice and asking local churches for food, he experienced a shame so deep that the remembrance of it still causes him to choke up.
"The worst thing was seeing my daughter, so little to be in that situation," he says. "It wasn’t so bad for my wife and I… we’re adults. It’s not that my daughter was suffering, but I just couldn’t stand to see her in that situation. I felt so irresponsible, and I was carrying all the weight on my shoulders."
Prolonged unemployment made Martínez depressed to the point that he even contemplated ending his life.
Unfortunately, he is not alone. The construction industry has had one of the highest unemployment rates throughout the current economic downturn, where the highs of the real estate boom were once as extreme as the lows now being experienced in the industry.
Marco Frausto, who represents the Iron Workers Union said that among his members, unemployment rates range from 30 to 40 percent. But if you count those who work only two or three days per week, the rate increases to 55 percent.
"I’ve spent 15 years in this industry and have never seen things get as bad as they are now," Frausto says. "Terrible things are happening. Families have to move out of their homes, families move in with each other or with their in-laws, and other people have had to live in their vehicles."
Six local members have committed suicide over the past two years, Frausto says.
"In any industry there are deaths, but in this case it is people who have taken their lives because they simply don’t have work," he says. "Its very difficult when a person can’t support his or her family. They begin to think of themselves as a burden rather than a source of support."
Martínez, an eloquent 25-year-old who boasts of "always arriving earlier, leaving later, working harder and studying more than anyone else," found himself at a loss for words when trying to explain the frustration he felt at seeing his world crumble in this way.
Not long before the hard times, work had been plentiful and prosperity seemed to have no end, he recalled with nostalgia.
"There was a time when I was working 50 or 60 ...