Back when I worked in social work, most of our clients were people who lived on the edge of a subsistence income and had been knocked over that edge by a single event (e.g. car broke down, couldn’t afford to fix it, lost their job because they couldn’t get to work, got evicted because they couldn’t meet the rent, downward spiral).
Often, a small one-off payment would allow them to get back on their feet. Just a few hundred dollars, most of the time.
