Homeless people get characterized as lazy a lot. It’s a meme. Something you tend to mentally attach to ‘homeless’ without thinking about it, because it’s part of the mental package, right? No judgement, that’s society, the Just World fallacy.
If you’re not lazy, drug-addicted (in the wrong type of way), or weird-crazy, you won’t become homeless, right?
Excuse my rambling. My psych yesterday was worried because I couldn’t complete or come back to a thought. That’s when she grokked what I meant by ‘constant panic attacks’.
Anyway, a lot of being homeless is forced waiting. Waiting in line at DHHS for hours to see if you qualify for SNAP, or Medicaid, or TANF, or any other direct aid program. The waits last for hours. People lose jobs trying to get SNAP to feed their families because they don’t make enough to do it. (Yes, homeless people work.)
Most shelters are overnight-only. To get in, you start lining up early in the day (this may also get you lunch). You stand or sit and wait for a bed that night, sometimes right through the winter cold or heat with no shelter. So lazy. These are the places the police lurk, because in some cities it’s illegal to give the homeless food or water without a permit, or it must be done with ‘proper kitchen facilities’. No sandwiches. Almost everyone is looking for an apartment or a job, on their scorned cell phones.
You wait for your benefits. Last winter I didn’t get my first shipment of wood (my only heat source) until January. I didn’t get SSI after I was approved for months (but you get a back payment, so that’s okay!), after waiting a few years to get it. I still haven’t gotten my SNAP card in my new name. I remember it could take a month for TANF (although the town I was in then had on-hand supplies to make up for that).
I’m still on housing wait lists from when I was homeless at the start of the decade. And I’m still a few years down. That’s how long the homeless wait. So lazy. (Don’t forget you have to keep them updated, or you fall off! Keep track of all those lists, every county and housing agency, please do, on top of all of this. Most people don’t have a case manager, and most case managers are spread too thin and don’t give a damn-quote from my psychologist, they’re too burned out.)
Right now I’m waiting to find out if I got an apartment. I hope I have, since BRAP rules are that you must see an apartment to rent it. The realtor is very upbeat and hopeful sounding, but I have surgery next month (should be two, but I’m holding off scheduling one, the other was scheduled without my input, it’s happening), and the voucher runs out on 5 November.
If it runs out, I’m stuck in the house another winter. A house that already had broken windows when I moved in (my neighbor and I used cardboard and heat seal to ‘fix’ the worst of them), with cracks forming in more, and a warning to ‘not use the brown outlets’, because they’re the 1920s electric system (but they have to be there, because both are piggyback). That already had no insulation save the original horsehair and lathe (you can look out the outlets and see outside, I don’t have drafts, I have breezes). The stove is completely dead and was before she left, the owner bought a new one and it was never installed. Since the wall with the fridge started losing power during downpours, I don’t stock up on food anymore, either, or use the hot plate I bought (brain-damaged, not stupid). Have any of you figured out what no running water, no plumbing, buying and carrying water adds up to yet? I’m curious. Oh, and I can’t buy water anymore, so it’s back to begging and carrying it further. The wood stove doesn’t boil water even when burn indicator is buried in red. I sit 4 feet away from it and shiver.
All this has been noted by the government. I could show pictures. Hell, people here have seen it, to my eternal shame.
I’m waiting to find out if my doctors will figure out my meds. I’m having to change doctors because my old clinic wouldn’t honor a judge’s order re: my name change (still haven’t), so I can’t trust them, but since I haven’t had an initial appointment with my new doctor she can’t prescribe for me. Old clinic is refusing, too. Ah, being homeless and trans, they can do this, no matter how much my case manager says, “But they can’t! It’s not even hormones, you need this to live!” Oh, they very much can. I can’t even go there because it’s raining and no vehicle. Hopefully tomorrow.
The apartment. It’s exactly where I wanted to be. The realtor has been helpful, has already talked to BRAP, and won’t let me pay for a background check until everything else is clear, unlike every other place. My person in BRAP has preemptively renewed my application for September so there are no snags. It’s incredibly walkable to the downtown (although not a grocery). I went to grade school within walking distance! I know the area well. I’d be closer to friends. There’s storage on site, and despite it’s proximity to town? You’d never know. It’s tucked away. And everyone has been trying really, really hard to get me in the building. I’m only mentioning it now because there’s nothing else for me to do, so I can’t mess anything up, now. I just have to...wait. I did think I’d have transport to see people. I miss people almost as much as bathrooms.
I had an apartment for 3 hours, two weeks ago.
I thought it was awesome. Walkable to my case manager’s office, so I wouldn’t have to worry about getting pulled back from the bathroom again when I really needed it by a security guard, asking which one I should be in, an hour’s drive to nothing. Then needing to get the code again, because who can remember a phone number’s worth of digits (see, they hate the homeless, no use of restrooms at Maine Behavioral Health, next door to Preble St Shelter) after getting quizzed on your gender, down to ID (which says X, which didn’t help her, did it?). And they wondered why I had a panic attack, and why Sally was tense in my arms. Now it will be LogistiCare.
As I told my psych, this has been running through my head:
But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e’e,
On prospects drear!
An’ forward tho’ I canna see,
I guess an’ fear!
~Robert Burns
Context? He’s just run over the mouse’s den with a plow after frost, getting the field ready for winter.
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