Everyone, please go check out Debbie's blog, which has the name of my favorite color: It's All About Purple! She is an excellent photographer! ... has a wonderful life! ... and lives right around hometown for me, so I both recognize and am astonished! when I see her pictures! ...
Debbie, you & I are in a very different category, even tho we are both women w/ disabilities ... Debbie, you have the most lovely home, w/ a husband in it, as well as two sons .... When I say we have different lives, I mean it more so than just the obvious differences - let me explain ; please allow me to use my blog as a forum for what has been creating anger and anxiety in me over the past several years as I've realized what the "trend" is ....
Public housing. HUD housing. Seniors housing. Being on disability -yes, I qualify. Some of them are very decent! In fact, my whole idea on "where to live?!" was formulated like so: I could afford this apt for a year ... and ... during that time ... I would jump on the waiting list for a specific apt in this area that I know from the last time I lived here, is very decent!
I figured the worst thing was that I smoke cigarettes, and you can't smoke in someplace federally owned (oh I suppose Obama can, but I'm just Jeannee!) ... but how wrong I was!!!
It used to be that the majority of said housing was based solely on your actual income ... so, for example (using a number that's actually on the high end for me solely living on my check BUT its a number that has frequently come up for me), say, they would say -Jeannee, your rent is $222. Well ... ok - I would need food stamps again, but I would be able to still have a vehicle, internet, and may even be able to put a ring around some special upcoming event on a calender!
Except the trend is - we now assign you rent, no matter how little you make. And so the rents I've been seeing - including for the place here in this part of Virginia (and I'm the opposite end of the Beltway, out here in the country) - have literally priced me out ... if I would want a small apt the size of my laundry basket, thereabouts, with no ability to sit indoors and have a cigarette and coffee after a meal - I would have to stop driving, or not have the computer, or give up something (or sell things) that keep this disabled woman connected to the world!!!
I AM OUTRAGED! And scared half to death! Where is my 'family' - my elderly dog and myself - going to go after the lease is up here?! There is just about no place open to us! The one and only place I have found, over the past several years scouring online, that is still income-based, is so close to Canada, I could walk the bridge and have yummy Tim Horton's daily -- and as much as I love T.H., I have no desire to live way upstate NY!!!
Everyone says -oh go on and put yourself on the list, anyway ... which -if I can just pull myself out of the mire of anxiety I'm in! - I'll do that. I mean - I have to do SOMETHING.
Even if it means I have to pull myself off the computer or pull myself up on a city bus w/ groceries ...well, who sees the poor, anyway?! And, when people do, it's usually to ask probing questions, like -"don't you have family?!"
To which I say -take a look at your own and answer me if you're helping them out - if you're even open to doing so.
No comments:
Post a Comment