I am pissed off! I applied for heating assistance (LIHEAP) through Erie’s Department of Public Welfare (DPW). I was asked to submit paperwork explaining how I’ve been paying my expenses this year since I’m not employed. Makes sense.
So I wrote that I had unemployment for a short while, had a job for an even shorter while, and I submitted documentation. I’ve also been selling my DVDs and books. I didn’t want to sell my Star Trek Next Generation, West Wing or Deep Space Nine series. Buffy went, as did Superman, Lost and the Complete X-Files. I didn’t want to sell my DVDs, especially not at a significant loss. But I needed money to pay my utilities and eat.
Deep Space Nine sold the same day I was fretting about how I would pay my $240 fuel bill last spring. My heating costs around $1,450 per year. This doesn’t include electricity, which is an additional $50 per month. I haven’t bought any clothes other than the boots and coat I bought when I first got here a year ago. I helped a vendor at a craft faire sell clothing for a day, and he gave me a couple dresses and blouses.
I’ve made about $200 to $300 a month selling books from my private library. But the zippers in my jacket weren’t getting fixed nor were my shoes being repaired. I have to pay the IRS every month for back payroll taxes and I have to feed my cats. And my friend loans me his car a few days a week, so I need gas money. I can’t afford my own car.
I borrowed money from a friend to buy freezers for meat, and I borrowed money from my parents to buy the meat to put in the freezers and pay my back rent. I also asked for a business loan from them. It was extremely difficult asking them since I hadn’t even told them where I moved.
So I bought a laptop, a couple Flip video cameras, cheap lighting equipment, tripods and editing software so I can do videos. I registered a Website and paid for a year of Web hosting. I’m getting ready to pay $200 for transcription software. I’m hoping I can get work doing transcription for Website owners.
And I bought half a cow and a pig so my food supply was assured for the next year. When you’re broke and a health nut, food takes precedence over every other concern, and having a well-stocked freezer reduces stress considerably.
No, I’m not going to eat crappy, sick, tortured chickens for $1.89 a pound. Nor do I want to eat grain-, candy-, and chicken-crap-fed, antibiotic-injected cows standing in their own manure for months. How do I eat healthy meat on a food stamp budget?
THERE’S NO WORK HERE. Erie county unemployment for September is 9.2%. There are few jobs, especially for pushing-50 women whose only skill is typing. And I can’t get a full-time typing job because I damaged my fingers in 1993 and have had tendonitis since. I have to pace myself when typing.
You know what they pay office help here? $7.50 to $8 an hour. I’m not ruining my hands for that. Then there’s the issue of clothing and transportation. My only hope is another entrepreneurial endeavor.
So why am I so pissed this morning? The intake worker wants a letter from my parents explaining how much money they loaned me and what it’s for. I’m not about to ask them to write a letter to the Erie DPW explaining how I am spending the money they loaned me. They want supporting documentation for my measly “income” selling off my books and DVDs.
Since when is a loan or selling one’s personal possessions considered income??? I asked Ms. Desanto, “So if I sell my futon and my bed and my dresser and everything I own to sleep, eat and heat, this is considered income?” The answer was yes. “Since when is money I have to pay back considered income?” She informed me that all money coming in is income.
So if my parents loaned me, say, $6,000 in October, I would not qualify for LIHEAP because I’m ROLLING IN CASH! Never mind that it’s almost all gone and what’s left has to last me until I figure out how to make money with a new business.
The banking industry got $23+ TRILLION dollars to help them with their little financial crisis–a crisis they created–paid for by our taxes.
$23,000,000,000,000
But I can’t get a lousy $300 to help keep me warm this winter. LIHEAP is a Federal program paid for by the taxes I paid the past 35 years of employment and business ownership.
I could go out and get a shitty job at McDonalds making $7.50 an hour. That would earn me about $1,200 a month. The income cap on a one-person household is $16,245, so I would still qualify for LIHEAP with a full-time job!
Or I could throw everything I have into a new business where I might have a chance to earn a living down the road and save for retirement doing something more constructive than serving tortured meat and HFCS to sick people until I die of boredom and disgust.
Hmmm, that’s a hard one.
