[~”annual income 19 pounds 6”
~”annual expenditure 20 pounds”
What matters in measuring poverty is the net income after withholding to fixed expense ratio.
Chattels are usually not a realistic measure of wealth or poverty.
If you have a $2,000 rent monkey on your shoulders it can be a problem if only making $15/hour.]
Renting out rooms is a thing. This isn’t rocket science. Renters and homeowners have been taking in boarders since pretty much caveman days. Back in the day, a perfectly sober hobo without any hope of employment who had to sleep under a bridge, rummage through garbage heaps for scraps of food, and often went hungry, was considered poor. Today, an overfed welfare recipient who spends the entire day in air-conditioned comfort watching TV, getting high or playing video games is considered poor. There’s a difference. Poverty has been redefined to mean something other than absolute material deprivation.
My mother’s parents had two boarders according to the 1910 census.
I’m in an AirBnB with three bedrooms.
The Jamaican(?) woman owner sleeps in her living room behind a screen and rents out all the bedrooms.