Without judging people's situations, I have to wonder at why people earning minimum wage would be eating out at Panera vs bringing lunch from home for much less money.
Our cities are becoming wholly inhospitable to poor people, and food is no exception. And, someone making $12.50/hour probably can't really afford rent in a city like DC, either.
Is there typically electricity in these situations? I ask because per my post below, I wonder how common it is to bootstrap up to a mini-fridge + pressure cooker or rice cooker or something like that. Seems like a few weeks of PB&J + cup ramen could provide for a significant upgrade in nutrition from purchasing those tools.
I'm probably leaving out some important aspect of this, and unfortunately some of this might simply be around education of where to purchase these tools and what to do with them to eat smarter, but I can't help but think there are ways to improve the situation with the cards they currently have in their hand.
If I found myself suddenly living out of a car or storage unit (provided it had electricity), I'd probably do whatever I could to save for a mini-fridge and rice cooker (eventually upgrading to a pressure cooker), and go from there. Rice and beans purchased in bulk are affordable and solid staples, and easy to turn into more nutritious meals by adding other ingredients.
There was a guy living in the storage unit next to the one I have in Austin (for my stuff from when I moved out of a house and back into an RV). The folks who ran the storage facility let him run an extension cord to the nearest power; several people actually were living in that facility, despite it being illegal. So, in his case he did have electricity, and I believe he had a mini-fridge. We talked several times and he seemed to have a pretty reasonable setup. He even had a space heater for when it got cold. I never saw the inside of his house (he'd built a wall and second regular door behind the rolling garage style door), but he seemed to be reasonably comfortable and had regular work really close by (since he only had a bike, proximity was important). The last time I was there, he'd moved out, and the person working didn't know where he'd gone; I'm hoping he was doing well and got an apartment rather than ran into harder times.
Similarly, I've seen people use one of these to get electricity inside a storage unit when they didn't have particularly understanding landlords: http://i.walmartimages.com/i/p/00/04/31/80/63/0004318063152_...
But, people in cars or vans probably don't have power. Some RVers have solar panels, and also RV fridges often also run on propane (though they aren't terribly efficient in the old RVs...I go through about $15/week running mine on propane). Propane fridges are very expensive and very fidgety and prone to breakage over time, however, so it's not uncommon to see the propane/electric dual-mode fridge replaced with an electric-only model in the cheapest old RVs. So, that limits the use of the fridge to times when it's plugged in.
I know someone who lives in a bus that she converted to an RV herself, but she didn't put in a fridge (yet), so while she has a stove, if she's not parked near a grocery, she is very limited in what she can cook. Some things keep well without refrigeration: onions, potatoes, winter squash, etc. She has potted plants for tomatoes and herbs, but she's much more intentional about her situation. She moved out of an apartment and into the bus by choice, not by necessity, and mostly enjoys the off-the-grid lifestyle. She made one of these for when she's in the desert: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot-in-pot_refrigerator but those only work in very dry climates and aren't cold enough for many foods. Obviously wouldn't work in most places...and if you're in a city, you have to be self-contained and very discreet about where you're living. Can't really spread out and put out pots and stuff when parked on a street.
American Commute
Distance (One Way) Percent
1-5 Miles 29 %
6-10 Miles 22 %
11-15 Miles 17 %
16-20 Miles 10 %
21+ Miles 23 %
(source: US Department of Transportation, Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Omnibus Household Survey. )Your other option is to live in someone's guest room or basement for $600. The people who rent out these rooms usually expect to be renting to college students, and so there is often very little by way of accommodations: the room may be 10x10" and include little more than a bed and a desk. The family will also make it very clear that the tenant is not allowed to use the kitchen, making cooking impossible. So the tenant is pushed to live meal-to-meal, as it were, with little expectation of being able to store or prepare food long-term.
So while I recognize that not everyone in that situation may be resourceful enough to realize this and do something about it, the notion that cooking becomes impossible is not accurate.
The education for where to purchase these things cheaply and how to cook in restricted situations with them is admittedly still a problem though, and it seems like a lot of good could be done to solve it. Getting your nutrition bootstrapped up on a path that lets you save more money seems like a worthwhile goal.
For me since I always carry from home for lunch and eat dinner at home, so cooking needs to be in all categories like low/medium/elaborate efforts. And of course tasty enough that myself or anyone joining me reasonably like it.
So I'm in my 10x10 room (no kitchen access because my landlords are a conservative family that just wants spare-room money, remember), I've managed to fit a mini-fridge in some corner next to my desk, and a rice cooker that sits on top of it. Let's make rice! Firstly, where am I storing the uncooked rice? Do I buy a 5-lb bag of rice for $10 that could feed me for a month? Probably not, because I don't have the storage space. So I spend a dollar and buy the smallest bag I can find, which makes just over 2 cups of rice. In the long term it's way more expensive, but it saves space, because I'll just cook all 2 cups now and have nothing you need to worry about storing.
Rice is not terribly filling or healthy on its own. Maybe we'll jazz it up and throw a tomato into the middle of the rice cooker to make tomato rice. This kinda-sorta borders on a meal. So our rice is done. How do I eat this? I guess I'll buy a single bowl and some chopsticks. Or, screw that, I'll buy a single bowl and snatch some extra plastic cutlery from the Popeye's across the street.
I've finished eating. Even as a meager meal (not super filling, and I've got nothing other than plastic salt-and-pepper shakers that I bought from Wal-Mart as seasoning), I can't eat more than a cup or so of rice. So I've got leftovers. What am I storing these leftovers in? I don't have room to buy some pyrex containers. Maybe I can just cover the inner bowl of the rice cooker with some plastic wrap! Balls, now I need plastic wrap...
Day 2, I should eat some of my tomato rice leftovers. How am I going to reheat this? I could probably reheat it with boiling water, but I'd need to buy an electric kettle or, at the very least, a hot-shot. Maybe if I buy a drink at the nearby 7-11, they'll let me use their microwave? Man, that's a nuisance. I might as well just get some wings at 7-11 if I'm going over there anyway...
Some people just aren't responsible with money, they don't budget, they don't live within their means, they don't really think or care to look at the expenses or how they add up.
If you did a Venn diagram of low wage earners and people who aren't really responsible with their money, those are the people eating at Panera Bread, or buying things from Rent-A-Center or taking out high interest loans and engaging in every sort of behavior that compounds the problems with making low wages.