Last edited Sun Aug 24, 2014, 01:00 PM - Edit history (1)
No one is doing anything about the fact that no real Social Services safety net exists in Alameda County?
The thing that was the most infuriating about all the Measure S (sit-lie law) speechifying was how business owners representing themselves as the business community claimed poverty was mainly a lifestyle in Berkeley, and that "resources" existed to take care of the homeless if they chose to utilize them instead of being unsightly beggars. That may have been true at one time, but it's not true now. Now that's a shameless and irresponsible lie, and throwing up those lies creates smoke and mirrors around issues that needed to be seen and addresses.
The FACT is that many people who need welfare are disabled. Not just "on drugs" disabled or "mentally" disabled, but physically disabled. Once you get to the point you can't hold down a job, you discover it takes many years to apply for SSI: especially if you've been uninsured and your medical records are sporadic. SSI will provide doctors to evaluate you, but they will only sign off on the most obvious conditions: 4 limbs amputated. Even then it takes a long time. Let's say you have a genetic or auto-immune disease with subjective pain and fatigue symptoms or symptoms that come and go: the half hour appointment with the SSI doctor is not going to confirm that. It's harder to get a lawyer than you think, despite all the commercials on TV, and nonprofits set up to help the poor get through the SSI process have wait-lists of over a year long. It's a very, very long uphill struggle.
Most people on welfare also live in conditions that exacerbate health problems - stress causing high blood pressure, poor eating habits exacerbating inflammatory disease, etc. - and they end up with multiple chronic conditions on top of whatever underlying disability they might have. The system literally makes them further disabled by the way it treats them.
Social Services can also really screw you when it comes to SSI. For instance they "helped" me apply, and then failed to forward my application! I didn't inquire about it for a few months because I was told the application would take a while to process. When I tried to inquire about it, I was repeatedly lied to over the phone: everyone told me Social Services did not help with such applications. I finally tracked down who had helped me fill out the application, and she would only tell me VERBALLY that the application had not been forwarded (she did confirm there was an "internal record" in their computer system of it). When I suggested that Social Services should have informed me of this, she said it was too much work! Because I had to reapply at the Berkeley Social Security Office, I lost 6 months of the SSI "effective date", and I will have to repay my General Assistance "loan" out of pocket for those 6 months!
So, anyway, how are these disabled people surviving while they try to make it through the SSI process?
First they have to have their doctor's support in getting a "disability exception" because Alamada County has NO regular General Assistance for people who have just run out of resources. People who are just destitute can only get General Assistance for 3 months out of the year! The rest of the time they are begging, prostituting themselves on the corner, robbing you at gunpoint, and crawling on their bellies to the food bank.
But if your doctor has gotten past the diet/exercise speeches, made the RIGHT referrals, and groks the fact you're disabled, then you get a letter (it's still humiliating to ask for it, by the way, since you're basically asking your doctor to help you get welfare), and you can get General Assistance for 12 months out of the year.
General Assistance is a $336/month LOAN that goes directly to your landlord. Now think about rents in Berkeley. Most disabled people in this situation are going to end up immediately homeless: perhaps a few will be picked up into long term shelters that will take the $336/month while they try to qualify for "Low Income Housing" - in itself a very difficult, time-consuming process made of approaching separate landlords and getting on waitlists and remembering to check back with them all and being at the right place at the right time. All this has been exacerbated by Mayor Bates's war on low income housing. I know he's just trying to keep the "riff raff" out (refer him to #whiteprivilege), but this is the population he's hurting. I guess everyone secretly hopes that when presented with the impossibility of this $336/month situation, General Assistance people will somehow just go away (leave Berkeley and go live with their parents or something).
If someone does manage to hold out in this situation (like me), then yes they are in dire straits and will need the assistance of supporting resources like Food banks from time to time. I get no direct cash income from General Assistance. In fact the rules are written in such a way to punish me with extreme prejudice and undermine my housing situation by decreasing the landlord check if I even try to work for a little cash to buy necessities.
It's possible that the only reason this information isn't breaking out to the surface world is everyone who is caught in it HAS to live illegally. They HAVE to beg on the street. They HAVE to prostitute themselves. They HAVE to steal. They HAVE to work for cash and avoid reporting it, even though they are applying for SSI and officially too disabled to work, and if they get caught it could ruin their SSI case. Oakland has positioned in this state of illegality so they can't speak up, so they will get in trouble, so they will always feel like malingerers and welfare cheats if they do anything to get cash to buy tampons.
I used to try to write welfare diaries on Daily Kos, and I gave up in anger. Part of the reason was the diaries were being trolled by people who thought I was preaching or thought they could "know" a human situation from a purely economic perspective. One thing I passionately believe people in poverty should stop doing: dancing to the tune of people who would prefer not to hear the truth just because they think we should approach them with an attitude of humbleness. The other thing that bothered me were some statements made around the Measure S campaign that dehumanized the poor: the most VIP of progressive Kossacks thought it was more important to avoid unsightliness on the streets (phrased as "scared", which I don't believe for a second), than to do something about the poverty fueling it.
These food bank statistics reveal the poverty that is actually going on. And the lack of any income-based safety net as well as te terms of General Assistance for the population that does rely on it (namely the disabled waiting to get SSI) explains why there are so many desperately destitute people in Alameda County.
There are threads about White Privilege all over. How about moving beyond the "feelings" and taking some action? A good place to start would be to kick Alameda County's ass into gear over its insanely inadequate social safety net. This situation affects our supposedly progressive city of Berkeley as well as crime-ridden and corrupt Oakland because the destitute in Berkeley still have to go crawling to the County of Alameda Social Services.
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