Quote:
Originally Posted by krazy kat2  People who abuse the system find ways around everything. You are only supposed to have a certain amount of assets per person in the household to be able to get food stamps. I am sure it would take a lot of household members to be legally able to keep your Escalade or custom motorcycle. Those are common in the low income housing around here. I can't believe the DSS office is right there and does not check in to it.
I know a girl that lives in a low income apartment that she pays 18 dollars a month for, because she has a handicapped child and elderly mother living with her, but gets no other help. The state will not help her go after the child's Marine father because they never married, even though she has paternity test results proving he is the child's father. She pays his medical bills and for his meds. Occasionally he will send her a few dollars, but not enough to be of much help. If the state was to find out about that, they might take away her apartment.
She works her butt off every day, 12-16 hours, has to pay out about $300 a week before she can make a dime for herself, but she does not qualify for help. She has no education and does the best she can driving a cab. They say her cab is worth too much for her to get any help, and it is a raggedy piece of crap. If ever anyone needed and deserved a little help it is this poor girl. She desperately wants to go back to school to try to make her life better, but cannot afford not to work. It is very hard to see her go through this and then go pick up someone with a new car in the driveway for a free ride to a free doctor's appointment. It must be really hard for her to have to do it.
It just makes me so angry to see stuff like this every day! No wonder this country is broke.
OK, will stop ranting now.  steps down |
See those kind of situations suck big time because of the way the system is set up and the fact that they either wont or cant do anything to help people like her.
In my county unless you fear for yours or your childs safety you HAVE to apply for child support and the county will then force the potential father to pay atleast $200 of the paternity test if you need that done. I have noticed that in my county there is a lot that can be done for single mothers or low income families. However if you are a single male and need assistance its almost impossible to get assistance, especially medical.
What kind of gets to me about the system for determining eligability is how they base income guidelines. For one they base it off your pre taxed check not what you take home. Sorry but in my case the goverment is going to see most of that money they take out...Not me!
They also only take into account your utitlity bill and rent. We live in a run down piece of crap trailer that we have been investing our own money into to fix. They didnt take into account that we had to fix the oil tank just to get a company to deliver oil, or that we had to get the oil furnace itsself fixed when it broke down, or how about the new breakers we had to put in because some dumb butt decided to put the entire living room, hallway, stove and dryer on one breaker! We had to have our dryer replaced and our stove before we realized what the problem was and then had to go out and fix that. How about when we had to rewire the hallway light because when they replaced it they didnt wire it right and everytime you walked down the hallway the light would shut off. Its stuff like that where all they see is $200 a mth rent (after living here now I know why its so cheap haha), and a $200 electric bill that is $150 behind from when BF didnt have a job that we are slowly paying off. They wont even consider our cell phones part of a utility because we dont have a house phone we only use our cell phones, since they are in BFs brothers name also they wont consider it because its part of a family plan with three other lines on it. We even offered to have his brother write up a statement that says we pay him $120 a month for our service along with a copy of our individual lines costs. Nope they wont consider it. They wont take into account my car insurance because its not full coverage...Well I cant afford full coverage for a piece of crap car that keeps breaking down and no they wont take into consideration that for the 10 million appointments I have to show up for Ive needed to replace almost every sensor in my car because it wouldnt start and the alternator and battery so far. Whats going to break this week since I have to go into the office again on Monday.
Sorry this is turning into a me me me thing but this is just my personal dealings with the assistance office. It just makes me mad that I walk in there and see girls with 3 and 4 kids that barely look a year apart with an infant at their feet and pregnant. Not to mention the 'brand name' clothes they are wearing and jewelry covering their ears, neck and fingers, but their kids look dirty and skuzzy. Why help the over population more by being a baby machine to get more money from the goverment. Its the situations in my county especially the town that I live in where people are blatently taking advantage of assistance and dont give a flying fart that there are people who need the help because they cant afford to buy their own groceries because the 'pay' coming in is almost $200 less than what they need just to pay the bills let alone be able to buy toilet paper and stuff like that. Its the people that I run into in the assistance office in the morning that end up partying and drinking their butts off at night at the bar. Yes let me figure out who will buy us toilet paper while they are out paying for yeager bombs and captain and cokes. Let me figure out how to keep the cops from knocking on my door because Im scrambling money to pay fines while the electric company is calling because we cant afford to pay our full bill and its getting behind but you can go out and score a dime bag of drugs! Its these people that I run into on a regular basis who go out of their way to exploit theses systems put into place to really help people that need the help. These are the people that really grate on my nerves. There is so much help out there but so many limitations put on people who really need the help but heaven forbid they have a car to go out and look for a job or need the car for their job. Nope sorry you cant have that car gotta sell it and then report the profits that are going to clothe your kids, or buy medicine for your elderly grandparent who you have to take care of!
I have been giving this thread a lot of thought because of what Im dealing with now in regards to my assistance. Basically because the weather is nice and there is no guarentee on the hours my bfs company will work they are scrambling for as many as they can get. So he has gotten about one hours of overtime a day. They pay him overtime based on an 8 hour day not a 40 hour week. If he works only 40 hrs a week we still qualify for our assistance and would also be eligable for their assistance in helping us find a good used car, since Bertha is dying and we arent having any luck finding one that runs with barely any problems for under about $700. They program will help us find a car, and upon qualify would pay up to $800 of that car. Awesome right??? Wrong this program decided that not only will their guidlines be based off a gross income they also wont take into account any bills you are currently paying and or behind on. So thats out of the question. We also would still qualify for our food benefits which would help soooooooo much while we are trying to get caught up on bills that are behind or past due which is something we really are trying to get done. Because we dont go out to eat anymore we never realized how much groceries actually cost holy potatoes for two people we use every cent of that $367 a month. So now we are at the point where after this week our eligability for next month is determined and since BF got overtime again this week we are more than likely getting kicked off. What can you do though, they arent going to change everything they think works based on the faults found by a few people. These people that cheat the system are good at it and know how to play the system. Well sometimes I feel like a toad because if I didnt have a conscious I would have hid Bf having a job till Nov when our renewal was up and we could have kept the money. But Im not a toad and Im not going to cheat the system!
I hope that someday regardless of if they do drug testing or not, they find a way to better screen their applicants and make allowances or loop holes for people like in the quote above. Those kinds of people need the help so badly but there are so many restrictions and goofy rules that they end up jipping the people that need the help the most.
Ok enough of my ranting and raving.
