Lisa Ventura: The Daughter’s Burden

11/01/21 • 26 min

Lisa Ventura is a housing case manager by day, but for years she's also been her family’s unofficial social worker by night. Lisa was just a kid when she learned to help her Spanish-speaking mother navigate the welfare system. It was a struggle, but she could handle it. But she wasn’t prepared for what it would feel like when her isolated father lost his job during the pandemic and needed her help filing for unemployment. Battling the bureaucracy during Covid on top of a troubled family history takes its toll.

What Lisa experienced first-hand is what experts call "administrative burden," the mountain of paperwork and forms we all have to fill out—but like many burdens, this one falls disproportionately on those already experiencing financial hardship. On this week's episode of the Going for Broke podcast, Ray Suarez also talks to Pamela Herd, professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University, and coauthor of the book, Administrative Burden: Policy-Making by Other Means.

To be the first to hear all the episodes in this season, subscribe to Going for Broke with Ray Suarez on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes premiere each Monday.

Going for Broke With Ray Suarez is a podcast by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and The Nation. To learn more about the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, sign up for our newsletter. To support all of The Nation’s journalism, including our podcasts, subscribe today.

Previous Episode

Ann Larson: The Cashier Philosopher

“What would it look like for that man in the business suit who comes in in his SUV and loads up with groceries... what if he had to work in the grocery store?”

On this week’s episode of Going for Broke With Ray Suarez, Ann tells us how her co-workers at the grocery store where she works chase shoplifters and clean up bathrooms, while shoppers, afraid of contagion, treat her like she’s untouchable. Ann grew up working class and trained to be a college professor but then the academic jobs disappeared. In the meanwhile, she co-founded an organization called the Debt Collective that fights for student debt cancellation. By the time the pandemic rolled around, she found herself out of work—so she took this job at a local grocery store.

Listen to this week’s episode to learn what it’s been like working in a grocery store during a pandemic year, including the surreal interactions between customers, those experiencing homelessness, and those who work in her store. During her year at the till, Ann has seen the bright lines that stand between workers like her and the customers, particularly the most privileged ones. We’ll also hear from Ann about her ideas for changing the existing paradigm and shaking up the hierarchies that divide and alienate us.

To be the first to hear all the episodes in this season, subscribe to Going for Broke With Ray Suarez on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes premiere each Monday.

Going for Broke With Ray Suarez is a podcast by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and The Nation. To learn more about the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, sign up for our newsletter. To support all of The Nation’s journalism, including our podcasts, subscribe today. New to podcasts? Learn how to subscribe here.

Next Episode

John Koopman: A Veteran of America

John Koopman has been a Marine, a war correspondent in Iraq, and a manager at a strip club, among other things. His journey through precarity in the weird 21st century started in earnest after the bottom fell out of the newspaper business. That was when sacrifice or experience seemed to matter, and John found himself laid off and out of the middle class. It was a different war than the one he had experienced before: This time the battle was for consistent and meaningful employment, and its timeframe was indefinite.

On this episode of Going for Broke With Ray Suarez, John explains how he went from Baghdad’s Firdos Square to working at a strip club, and all that came next, including stints at a dive bar, driving for Uber, and more. You’ll hear how John came to rely on a vital safety net: the Veterans Health Administration. We’ll also hear from Aaron Jackson, a scholar studying the VA at the University of California–San Francisco, about how the agency could be a model for the health care system the rest of us need.

Going for Broke With Ray Suarez is a podcast by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and The Nation. To learn more about the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, sign up for our newsletter. To support all of The Nation’s journalism, including our podcasts, subscribe today.

Going for Broke - Lisa Ventura: The Daughter’s Burden

Transcript

RAY SUAREZ: From the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and The Nation, this is Going for Broke: Stories of people living through tough times and conversations about solutions that give us hope. I’m Ray Suarez.

Today, we’re going to talk about the exhausting red tape we go through to extract what we need from the government. Experts call it, administrative burden. Lisa Ventura knows all about it. She’s a case manager for clients in supportive hou