HUD cuts come home(less) to roost
 

A while back I posted about the cuts HUD was proposing in its housing voucher program. Well sure enough, the cuts went through unopposed by anyone that I am aware of. Prior to the cuts the waiting list for a housing voucher was a year and a half in Colorado. I could have just squeaked by and gotten my voucher before I lost my little cottage I now rent. I just now found out that with the cuts the wait has gone up to three years. I've been on the list for 9 months now. I paid my rent up till next Feburary with my SSDI back pay. I get $625/mo from SSDI. That's my entire income. I'm doing my best to get back on my feet, but news like this just flips me out and sets me back emotionally. I need time to get on with treatment and voc rehab, and time is exactly what I don't have. It feels like what's the point in trying?

I just had to vent about this as I try to come to terms with this information and figure out what to do next. Thanks for letting me whine a bit. I'll shut up now.

It doesn't sound like your a quitter Mari, so I'm thinking this little setback is just that--a little setback :)

Start writing letters (I know you have before) to everybody. You won't get the policy changed, but you might irritate them enough to move you up on the list, just to shut you up. Is it fair? No, but it's reality and reality is what we have to deal with every day. Good luck, you whining liberal, you. ;)

Thanks, guys! Chin up and all that. I least I already know about this great camping spot on the San Miguel River... ;)

You don't give up until you stop trying, and of course if you stop trying, nothing's going to happen for you. Good luck!:thumb:

Mari, if you've got a spot picked out already, holler at me before you take off. I've been thinking of giving the simpler life a try, and I'd rather have a go at it with someone who knows what she's doing. :D

Bring a warm sleeping bag, flash lights, as many batteries of all sizes that you can round up, and a good sharp ax for cutting fire wood and scaring off any possible intruders. A 4wd drive would be helpful, too, as we'll be driving 30 miles into the nearest town to pick up our monthly food box from the local church. When we have the gas money, we'll be going up to the yuppie resort of Telluride to dumpster dive and use the internet at the public library there. Don't worry, I can show you the ropes, and people will think you've been a homeless person for years! ;)

Excellent! How is the room service, though? :D

Seriously, Mari, if there's anything I can do, let me know. And keep us posted.

Well, my cat will bring mice into the tent for you. :D

Thanks, jane. It's looking awfully grim. My local housing authority just told me last week that all housing vouchers are currently frozen. If Bush is re-elected, people who already have housing vouchers will start loosing them, because the Bush administration is proposing even deeper cuts in social services. I remeber seeing some statistic that the war in Iraq has cost over $100 billion. Meanwhile here in the US, we can't even spend 2 hundred million to keep our own people housed. Write your congressman and protest the housing voucher cuts!

Actually the number for Iraq is over $200 million. Even so, I am more likely to write my congressman a letter and tell him thanks for finally doing something about all of the entitlement programs. That isn't aimed at you Marichiko, but at all of the fluff in the system.

Just because $200,000,000 is spent in a war effort doesn't mean we have to keep entitlement programs. Some programs are obviously needed, but these should be limited, short term programs, not long term permanent fixes.

With all due respect, Defmats, someone has been telling you a whopping great fairy tale when it comes to the cost of the Iraq war. Try here: http://costofwar.com/
When I checked in on that site right now the cost stood at $139,221,159,942.00 and climbing.
What we have is an entitlement program for Halliburten and like corporations. How about cutting some fat from THEM?

The social services systems in this country are so bare bone, they look like the victims of an Ethiopian famine. As for short term programs - what do you do about people who are permanently disabled or permanently old? Take them out and shoot them after 5 years?

I suspect you are making the classic mistake of looking at people who get huge disability awards from private insurance companies. Those of us who must depend on the SSDI program (a government disability program which workers paid into with their OWN money) very often do not recieve enough to survive. You cannot survive on $625.00 a month which is what I get.

You're right about the war numbers Marichiko. I mistyped that. I meant $200 Billion.
As for the rest of it, well, get a job. Do something. I feel no responsibility to pay tax money to care for you on a long term basis.

I've been there before so many times on this board, I'm not going there again. You're welcome to your philosophy and God help you if you ever need help. The End.

Getting religion seems to be another option, as they are controlling a big chunk of charitable monies, these days.
Have you ever figured out just how much you paid into SSDI? :confused:

You're kidding right? Figuring that one out is a nightmare for someone like me. I got it in the chops because they weigh your most recent work history the most heavily when figuring out what to pay you. I was a damned fool to keep fighting to work for as long as I did, taking any low paying job that came along and then getting fired because it took me too long to get things done, and I never remembered exactly what I was supposed to be doing. If the moment the utilities worker had told me "Lethal levels of carbon monoxide Ma'am. Get out of this house!" I would have responded with, "Halleluja! Government gravy train, here I come!" and run right down to social security and filled out a disability request form, I'd be far better off today. But no, stupid me. I kept thinking I'd get better and kept trying to stand on my own two feet and I delayed applying for two years while I earned next to nothing. My situation is further complicated by the fact that for 6 years I didn't pay into Social Security, but rather something called PERA, a state employee outfit for Colorado. I don't understand what happened to those payments, and no one seems to want to cough up any money from that. It's hard, Bruce, because I've fought the system pretty much all alone, and whatever documentation I had was lost when I lost my home. I think SSDI DOES still owe me some extra money, but fighting the documentation and paperwork baffles me. This "Marichiko" persona you see here on the board is like a ghost writing to you all from the past. The actual me does thing like walking around looking for my car keys for 15 minutes while holding them in my hand the entire time, cashing a check and then not being able to remember where I'd put the money only an hour later and finding it stashed in the toe of one of my shoes a month afterwards. :mad2:

Shit I do that, and from what they tell me a lot of the people I know. :biggrin: In our cases I think it's a combination of age and the pressure of a lot of responsibilities. Maybe lackanookie.

Isn't it past your bedtime, way out there on the East Coast? At 53, I don't think I should be having such profound memory blankouts, and I don't have the pressure of lot's of responsibilities at this point. And I DO have a sex life. The whole damn mess is so convoluted for me. As much as anything, I am suffering from a terrific emotional aftershock of all the VERY bad things that happened to me in the last couple of years of the "breathing CO without knowing it" exercise. I am afraid of people because I feel they may have one up on me and remeber or know things that I don't. People will tell me about stuff that I've done or said, and I'll think they're joking because I don't remember any of it. I can remember the pythagorean theorem, but I don't remember what I did an hour ago. It makes for a bewildering, frustrating, and very non functional life.

So does this mean that you totally spent your way through the inheritance you told us about? You said you were going to pay a great deal of that towards your future rent so you didn't have to worry about it.

Are you sure? :eyebrow:

I'm sure it does. Since I don't play a Doctor on TV, I can't offer any medical solutions, but common sense tells me you should work your brain as hard as you can in spite of the frustration. Try to develop those alternate paths and connections. Make notes, manually or electronically, to help you keep things straight and lower the frustration level.

Alternatively, you could find God, grow another belly button, put everything in His(her) hands and just bumble along. No,..wait,...that only works if your President,....nevermind. ;)

You're funny, Bruce! And I am getting better than and I was and I do take notes and try to do things to exercise my brain. I've been trying to do things to restore my self confidence, too. It's a process, and it takes time which is the one thing I feel that I don't have with this Feburary out on the streets deadline hanging over my head.

It was a pretty small sum of money. I paid my rent up through Feburary and I actually have stashed away the money to pay for 6 months rent in addition, but I don't know if my landlord will go for a six month extension on my lease rather than the usual year. I need to call him and find out about this, but I've been putting it off for fear of getting a negative reply. Even if he DOES go for an abbreviated extension, I'll still be in the same fix down the road since all housing vouchers are now frozen. Maybe the voc-rehab people will be able to do something for me by then, maybe not. I hate the uncertainty of it all, and it tends to paralyse me which is not a very effective response.