Long-Unemployed Texas Man Scores Job, Dodges Eviction

Ricky Macoy swore that if his landlord evicted him from the trailer where he'd been living with his son and ex-wife, he'd camp out on his congressman's lawn.

"I would show up there with my car full of bedding and my kid and a tent and start to set up," he told HuffPost in October. "I'm just about crazy enough to do it. At least I'd go to jail and have a place to stay."

Never mind about that. Macoy, a 52-year-old electrician in Quinland, Texas, told HuffPost on Friday that he finally landed a job after more than a year of unemployment. Starting Monday he'll be working as an electrician for a company that remodels Walmarts.

"It feels like a thousand pounds been lifted off my back," he said with a giddy voice. "It's so good to get back into construction stuff."

The National Employment Law Project featured Macoy in a release (PDF) pressing Congress to give the long-term unemployed additional weeks of unemployment benefits back in October.

Macoy, who'd just exhausted his benefits, said that if Republicans in the Senate blocked additional weeks of unemployment, he'd take it out on the party by pitching a tent in front of the office of Rep. Ralph Hall, his Republican congressman (a former Democrat). The GOP eventually folded in that fight, winning Macoy an additional 13 weeks of benefits, which he said expired in February.

He insisted Friday, again, that he would have camped on Hall's lawn if he'd been evicted. "If we had gotten evicted, I was going to give it a shot," Macoy said on Friday. It didn't happen.

"I don't know if you're a religious man," said Macoy, adding that he himself is not a holy roller. "Prayer works. Prayer and hard work works."

That may be cold comfort for the hundreds of thousands of people set to run out of unemployment benefits in the coming months.

Read Poverty in America's interview with Macoy here.