Dorchester residents and businesses are navigating as best they can the persistent inflation that economic experts and government officials say will get worse before things turn for the better.
After buying products to put on his store’s shelves, Geneva Grocery manager Cristian Guerrero said in an interview, the higher costs get absorbed by his customers paying more when they go shopping. His purchasing power fell starting around seven months ago, he noted, and shoppers realize they are keeping less in their pockets.
“They know,” Guerrero said. “They watch the news.”
Economists point to several factors that have contributed to the inflationary spike: Factories found themselves facing problems like labor shortages and supply chains tied up in bottlenecks, which, together with other issues, prevented businesses from meeting soaring demand throughout 2021. With those problems becoming more widespread, inflation is hitting Dorchester consumers and small business owners where it hurts the most– in their companies’ net numbers.
“They’re not doing it to rake more money in,” said Jeanne Dasaro, executive director at Greater Ashmont Main Streets. “They’re raising prices basically just to try to break even.”
Said Kevin Do at a Fields Corner gas station minutes away from where he lives: “I definitely pay more,” said. “My car also uses a lot of gas, so the gas is actually kind of hurting my wallet just a bit.”
Do has two cars: one he uses during the week, and a Mitsubishi ‘Evo’ he uses for fun on weekends. He does not see himself getting an electric vehicle. “There’s nothing that I can do about it,” Do said. “I still have to get gas regardless.”
Marcus Morisset is a Uber driver from Dorchester. Gas prices surged enough, he said, to make his 10-year-old son’s dance classes unaffordable. “It’s killing me,” he said. He’s trying to get another job because what he earns is no longer enough. “You’re working and making money, but you spend it on the car, so it’s not worth it,” he said.”
At her Dorchester Avenue barber shop and salon, Catarina Dos Santos said she is losing customers to the high prices, and added that it has been harder to maintain regular clients. Instead of getting a usual design, customers will get cheaper ones to keep the same price as before. A few even began cutting their own hair, rather than seeing a barber.
Others have resisted the change. In some cases, “they would just give you money folded and walk away,” said Dos Santos, or “they would still come, and they would say, ‘Okay, I’m going to Cash App you,’ and you’re expecting them to Cash App the price – they don’t.”
Nicknamed “Ludy,” Dos Santos said she likes to use good products on her clients. She noted that a unit of gel that used to be $3.98 is now between $5 and $6. Overall, she does not expect prices to come down.
“I see a lot of people who actually quit. People that are good at doing hair that quit,” Dos Santos said. “They go work in other places like a factory or Dunkin Donuts. Something that has income coming in, because here, if the client doesn’t show, you don’t make the money.”
Dos Santos, who worked throughout the holidays, said the male barbers sometimes stay late, working till 11 p.m. She has run the shop for about four years and says it used to be so full that clients waited in their cars for appointments. Now, repeat customers come monthly instead of weekly.
“The business owner is grappling with some really difficult questions of whether or not they should close the business,” Greater Ashmont Main Streets’s Dasaro said. “We now have inflation kind of coming out of a pandemic, which is a really difficult situation.”
A mother of two, Dos Santos does not live in Dorchester. She commutes an hour, sometimes two with traffic, from New Bedford. For her, what was once $40 a week on gas is now $70. Brick-and-mortar costs are up, too: her rent doubled during the pandemic.
She is now considering another line of work. “You start thinking about other ways to make money,” she said.
