I doubt this will make the news anywhere, but the state of Nevada is BEHIND on SNAP payments.
This type of shit may be coming to a state near you soon, if it hasn't already. Anyway, here's the story.
My wife and I have been receiving SNAP (food stamps) for a while now, because the two of us are trying to live on less than $1,200 per month in the form of my disability payments. My wife looked for work for over a year and only managed to find a commission only "job" for a long-distance carrier which paid so little that it didn't even cover her bus pass and extra laundry money. Her final week at that "job" she made absolutely nothing for over 30 hours' work. Additionally, she's now sick with West Valley Fever in her lungs which takes months to treat and so she's forced to be on county medical assistance until that's finally better. Never mind either of our emotional states at this point.
At any rate, I'm sure that most -- if not all -- states are like Nevada now, wherein you have to go back to the office once per calendar quarter to submit paperwork showing whether or not there have been any changes in your income, rent, expenses and so forth. Every time this date has approached, my wife has been to the office on or before the deadline and verified either at the office or over the phone that everything was properly submitted.
Last month, she got the paperwork in on the deadline day and everything appeared to be fine. Well, today is the day we were supposed to get our deposit on our debit card and nothing showed up.
It took almost an hour of trying to get through to the office by phone, and the worker who answered explained that the office itself failed to meet its own deadline for processing the paperwork, and therefore they were going to require more time to determine if we're still eligible. They further said that a case worker would call us back by Friday to determine if more information was required. Mind you, this paperwork was handed in on August 16. They're telling my wife in essence that it was never even looked at in the past two weeks. Other than that, she got a vague earful of utter crap which does nothing to explain when or even if we'll be getting these benefits.
They couldn't simply give us the benefit of the doubt and push our payment through while they fix their own fuck-up. Nope, they just went ahead and did nothing and gave no warning whatsoever about what was going to happen, then left it up to us to contact them so that they could inform us that they fucked up. Isn't that sweet?
My point here is that if these guys could completely fuck over our case and fail to get back to us with any communication, and could not notify us of any kind of problem when she called them last Thursday to confirm that everything was in fact okay, then who can guess how many other individuals or families here in Nevada are being similarly left in a lurch?
We have food and we'll be okay for a while, but if these guys don't get their shit together soon we're going to be in a world of hurt.
= new reply since forum marked as read
I typed the post up right after my wife finally got off the phone and was still in shock.
Now I'm just too pissed off to think straight, so no improvement on that front either. 