Dr Maude moves back to Australia in less than one month. At that time, I\’m going to be homeless. I\’ve had numerous offers on places to crash with friends, but fact of the matter is, I don\’t live well when crashing. The past few months have proven that without a set schedule, a real home base to work in, and a sense of security about tomorrow, I\’m incapable of holding my life together.
I really want to be going back to school (once the financial situation is cleared up), and I can\’t do that without a permanent address. I also need a permanent address in order to keep up with my Department of Health and Human Services and Social Security transactions.
In November, I definitely received a letter saying I had been approved for Section 8, so I needed to fill out a bunch of papers and have then turned in by Nov 18 for the Housing Commission to get back to me within a few weeks. I had my papers turned in on the 12th. It\’s been a few weeks, but I haven\’t heard anything. I\’ve left numerous voice mails, but have received no response. I recently read somewhere that more than 35% phone calls placed by the needy to the appropriate public services offices are never returned. In the three years I have had a Social Security case manager, I have had more than eight different managers and only one who ever returned my calls. This is how people like me fall through the cracks of society. When you bust your ass all day to try and move forward and the heirarchy on the other end just cockblocks your every move, by the end of the day you feel so defeatist that you end up back down at the corner bar where you know that one way or another you can get trashed out of your mind and forget about it everything until you start placing angry phone calls again the next morning. Duck and cover. Confront and retreat. There\’s nothing to do in the off hours except try to dull the anxiety, and what better way than with other bodies and other booze? But I\’m digressing.
I really want my life back, and the only way to do that is to find a permanent place to live. Not a \”you can stay here until you can figure it out\” but a place where I can unpack my shit and transfer the information on my case files to the new address. Not a kind friend\’s place but my own home.
And so, this is something that has been troubling me: how the hell can I afford to do this? Due to the Cost of Living Adjustment, my disability check goes up starting next month to $603 a month. That\’s an enormous raise from this past year. So this is my query:
I have a guaranteed $603 a month. How feasible/dangerous would it be to sign a lease that ranges between $600 and $795 (the cheapest I can find at the moment). Most of these include off-street parking without a fee. Some include most utilities but others require a separate electric bill. My car is paid off, as is my insurance through next October. I have a permanent gas card that I don\’t pay the tab on, courtesy of one of my many guardian angels. I have $150 in food cards for the grocery store at the moment. Once I have a new address, I can reapply for Food Stamps and may be able to get as much as $75 a month. I also qualify for help with electric and gas expenses through the government utilities programs for us poor folk. I currently pay about $20 per month in prescription co-pays. Um. And there are other aid programs through various local charities that offer clothing vouchers at thrift stores, TCA (Temporary Cash Assistance) for emergencies, and things like that.
So… I don\’t know, truly. I think I might be able to pull it off, but I don\’t know. Living that close to the line scares the crap out of me. Living it every now and then (such as now) is one thing, but COMMITTING to a LEASE that ENFORCES life like that really feels like holding a knife to my neck. But I don\’t know that I have an other options to get my life back together. I don\’t know what happened to Section 8; I should have heard from the HOC by now, I think, and there\’s just been nothing from them. I don\’t understand why, but I\’m running out of time. I don\’t have any time left to wait.
Dr Maude moves in three weeks. He MIGHT MIGHT MIGHT let me stay in this apartment until the end of January, but then I have to find some place to go by then. And I\’d really, really like to start my classes back up for spring semester, which begins the end of January. To do that, I\’ve got to stop dicking around. I need a home.
What should I do?
