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stitch-n-time · 4 years ago

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Can you explain how the US housing laws work? You have me interested

Short answer: they don’t.

Longer answer (because I have to work tonight and truly don’t have like 8 hours to write the thesis, because you bet your ass I could):

There is actually an internal structure that the low income housing system has been built around that makes it nearly impossible to navigate, difficult to get into, and specifically works against the people that it was supposedly built to help.

I’m actually not quite sure where to start with this, so it’s going to be all over the place and bouncing back and forth, but that’s also kind of on brand for the low income housing system.

The system as we know it is very much a post WWII thing, so the info here will be from after that point. A lot of this will be in kind of broad, sweeping terms. But since the US is like 60 different states in a trenchcoat trying to sneak into an R-rated movie, very little of it actually covers the entirety of the country. There are also state and city levels of bullshit that people have to wade through. Most people don’t make it.

I’m going to use my own experiences as an example. But know that my experiences are NOT typical. When I started down this rabbit hole, I was a 30-ish year old white woman, a part time student, presented as a professional female on a daily basis, had a fairly stable income from a job I had held for years, and a vehicle (though making payments). All of this put together meant I had it pretty easy.

Some of that caused problems, though. The vehicle was a problem. It was a newer model gently used vehicle. According to the dealership, the previous owner had traded it in because it was a manual transmission and they wanted an automatic. When I bought it, it had less than 60k miles on it and was in excellent condition. In the eyes of the people who approve the paperwork and rubber stamp applicants for low income housing, I could get rid of that vehicle, and the moneys spent on the payments and insurance could go toward housing. Which would be reasonable, except most of the US doesn’t have public transportation at all. What public transport does exist is sketchy, rarely runs on schedule, and often does not go into residential areas. I COULD have gotten rid of the car, but that would have meant a 2 mile hike to the nearest bus station, 4 hours on a bus to get to class and 5 hours on the return trip twice a week, then a 2 mile hike home OR a 2 mile hike to the nearest bus station, 4.5 hours on a bus, another 2 mile hike to get to work, and the same on the return. At that point, I would have been spending more time on the bus than either at work or school, and might as well just live on the damned thing, since all I would have time to do at home is shower and MAYBE eat a sandwich?

But that’s also typical. Part of the laws as they are written specifically state that a person or household can not own physical properties that are over a certain value, because those properties could be sold in order to elevate the person/family’s lifestyle. That also makes household absolutely reliant on public transportation, which is simply not available in many poor areas.

Which goes into redlining, and systemic racism, which is a huge part of this, but is a whole ‘nother essay.

The fact that I was a student also worked against me. If a person can afford to go to school, they can afford housing. So why would you want/need help from the government? I’m just thankful that I was a part time student when the need for low income housing arose… If you’re a full time student, you are automatically denied on any application for low income housing. There are different legal designations for “low income housing” and “student housing”. They can not exist in the same housing complex for legal reasons. So if I had been taking one more class that semester, I would have been denied, and would have been homeless.

That in itself doesn’t sound terrible. And there’s reasons for the legal differences. But think about it… What if I had been in the last semester of school and something had happened? What about the people who are both enrolled in school and are working, trying to make ends meet, trying to be able to do something better, and either their lease is up or they get evicted or… I don’t know… their house burns down or a tornado hits or suddenly medical bills? If a person fills out that paperwork while still a student, even if they say “I’m graduating next month and want to move in the month after that” they still count as a full time student and would get denied. Which means leaving school and being spit out into the post graduate world probably without a job, while being denied help with keeping a roof over their head, when it’s absolutely necessary to have a physical address while searching for a job.

Which goes into the anti-homeless way of thinking, which is a huge part of this, but is a whole ‘nother essay.

I’m going to lump the “fairly stable income from a job I had held for years” and “presented as a professional female on a daily basis” into one, because they are directly related. I had worked my way through a trade school, and had been working in the medical field for nearly 4 years. The practice was open 4 days a week. I was there 2 days, the male counterpoint was there the other 2 days. If a client preferred one of us over the other, either they scheduled appropriately, or the doctor asked us to come in for that client’s appointment time. Because a large portion of the clientele were middle aged and older, as well as conservative, the dress code reflected accordingly. Since I actually REALLY liked the job, and the doctor and his family were pretty awesome people, I dressed and styled accordingly, on a daily basis. But because the number of hours on the clock varied with the number of clients scheduled for therapy appointments, there were times when those paychecks got mighty thin. There were absolutely trends of busy seasons and light seasons. Sometimes during that light season there were days when I would go to work for a couple of hours, go home until about 3PM, then go back for 2 or 3 hours. It was hard to pin that down.

Having to explain that I could not pinpoint an amount of annual income with any accuracy while filling out the application worked against me. And just about anybody who works in retail, food service, etc. - all the jobs that people with low incomes tend to have – will tell you that they suffer the same thing. Go into work, put in a couple of hours, and have the manager come tell you to go home because it’s not busy enough to justify having people on the clock. But without having an accurate estimation of annual income (that could be verified by their calling your employer) means that the application is denied. The general consensus is that if you can’t pinpoint your annual income, then you’re lieing on the application, which means you’re untrustworthy, and therefore don’t deserve to get the help you need to keep a roof over your head.

That conservative professional look helped me here, though. I went into the office dressed well, in khakis and a nice blouse, to fill out the application and speak to the people. While I was there, another lady came in to fill out an application. This is somebody who I happened to know personally. She was also a professional, who was arguably in a slightly better place than I was because her income did not fluctuate (though it was low, as she was recovering from a divorce and most of the family income had come from her ex husband), but she was “dressed down” in shorts and a t shirt. We made the same arguments. I ended up in an apartment, and she did not.

Honestly, I was actually lucky to get into an apartment. A lot of people don’t realize it, but even with things being classified as low income housing, it takes a LOT of money to get into places. Just like every other rental in the US, before you move in, you have to pay the first month’s rent. And a deposit. And if you have pets, another deposit. And the cost of having the electricity and water turned on. And depending on the specific details of the contract you have to sign, possibly trash pickup. And if you want internet, either you pay for that and get a modem through the ISP, or you pay extra on signing the lease. And if you want to do your laundry in your home (if there’s even a hookup), there’s an extra rental fee for a washer and dryer, unless you bring your own.

I got lucky. When I applied and was approved, this particular housing development was running a “special” - if you sign a lease, you get one month rent free to use within 12 months of signing. I had to use it immediately. With all the extra fees and everything else, I could either pay for the rent OR the deposit, but not both – so I paid the deposit and laughingly told them I’d like to use that free month on the first month, immediately, right now, please and thank you, now where’s my key? They almost turned me away at that point.

I honestly believe that if it hadn’t been for my professional clothing and the fact that I could point to a couple of scabs on my face, that I would have been denied at that point. (The scabs were from a dog. I had been renting a room from a “friend” who is no longer a friend. Her dog bit my face, and instead of punishing the dog, she decided I needed to move out that weekend. Note: this is literally the ONLY time I��ve had a dog bite me, despite having been around them most of my life, and this particular dog had snapped at multiple people before.)

Which goes into classism, which is a huge part of this, but is a whole ‘nother essay.

Now the thing that has been on my last nerve for a few years now is a good one. The laws state that if your household changes in any way, you have to fill out the application again. Doesn’t matter if you literally got approved the day before: you fill it out again. Because there have been household changes. It doesn’t sound terrible at all, but I know somebody who got evicted from low income housing and ended up homeless because his wife left. Suddenly the household size was smaller, but had the same income, and it was over the limit for the household size. Sorry not sorry you have to go. I know somebody who was evicted for “falsified paperwork” because she had a baby and was in the hospital for 2 weeks, so didn’t get the paperwork in on time. They ended up in a homeless shelter (in this city, homeless shelters are more expensive than a lot of low income housing). Now she’s in debt that she’ll probably never get out of, due to that.

What’s more is that the eligibility requirements to be able to pass those income thresholds change constantly. Out of curiosity, I tracked the changes over the course of a year. Just checking on the first of the month. In a single year, the income requirements changed 10 times. It’s not easy to keep track of, and there’s not much reason to track it unless it’s literally part of your job, in order to keep in compliance with the laws.

My own personal gripe is much less severe than that. I can’t get married. Technically, my fiance can’t live with me. On paper, he lives with his parents, miles away. But he spends most of his time in my apartment, which is under my name only, because I’m disabled (but ineligible for disability) and need his help. We’ve been together for a decade. We’ve been engaged for over 5 years. But if we get married, then the household changes, and we have to fill out the paperwork and get approved again. The thing is: if we put together our incomes into one “household” income, we would never be eligible for low income housing. Which means we would have to move out.

Moving out comes with it’s own difficulties. Because of the paperwork you have to sign to lease low income housing – and depending on where you are because 60 states in a trenchcoat – there are hoops to jump through. The lease in this particular development, you get a choice. If you break the lease you either a) pay the full amount of rent on the apartment through the end of the lease term or b) pay two months’ rent on the apartment after termination of the lease. So not only would we have to find other housing that we could afford (with all of the move in fees, deposits, transfer of service fees for utilities, bla bla bla), we would also have to pay 2 months’ rent on top of everything else. Which means either borrowing literally thousands of dollars from an individual – banks won’t do loans for this – or having to decide which bills get paid and which don’t while surviving off of ramen noodles for months at a time. Which… uh… would not work well with the man-thing’s diabetes.

Which all goes into respectability politics, and deciding whether or not poor people deserve to have stability and emotional fulfillment, which is a huge part of this, but is a whole ‘nother essay.

Now this may sound like a whole lot of personal whining. And it kind of is. But I can’t speak for anybody else. This is my personal interactions with these people and with the laws behind their behavior. But it’s the laws themselves that are written to be exclusive of the people that need help the most.

Homeless people can not apply, because they don’t have a current address.

Unemployed people can not apply, because they don’t have an income.

Full time students can not apply, because of the legal definitions of the different types of housing.

People with “disposable” property (such as cars) are often denied because they could turn those assets into monies.

People who rely on that “disposable” property for work are unable to take advantage of low income housing due to the above.

People of color who have been relegated to specific neighborhoods where public transportation is not available due to the redlining of the last century are unable to take advantage of low income housing due to the above.

People who do not have thousands of dollars readily available are denied because they can not pay both the deposit and rent.

People who face employment discrimination (even though it’s illegal) are denied because they can not provide proof of steady income.

People who have bounced from employer to employer are often denied for the same reason.

People who have successfully gained low income housing are often unable to change anything about their household.

People who have successfully gained low income housing are often unable to get out of it if their situation improves.

All of it is written into the laws surrounding the housing itself.

So…. Yeah. It doesn’t work. But if you want me to actually get into the nitty gritty, I can start actually researching. But somebody’s gotta pay me for it.

#long post is long #hey nonny nonny #what was that?

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christopherwatsonbooks · 3 years ago

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Covenant Spring, Chapter One

I’ve never been good at self-promotion. I’m terrific at touting someone else’s work -- it’s something I’ve done for decades to pay the bills. But when it comes to my own writing, my inherent aversion to calling attention to myself gets in the way. It just feels unseemly to boast. I’m also sensitive that others, like you, might find it off-putting.

Unfortunately, no one’s going to discover my writing unless I keep talking about it. And unless I also do something else I find quite difficult, which is to ask for help.

I need lots of people -- like you -- to read Covenant Spring and then write a review for it on Amazon, as well as spread the word via social media, word of mouth, book-loving friends and clandestine dalliances. As I said before, I just want to get the damn thing read. I really would give it away for free, if I could, but Amazon wants money for doing their part to help. Which seems fair.

But that doesn't mean I can't share some of it here. Maybe all of it. So let's give that a go.

Below, you’ll find the first chapter to Covenant Spring, which you can purchase on Amazon in ebook and softcover formats.

I'd really appreciate your help getting the word out about Covenant Spring. It’s about love and God and murder and sex and truth and lies and finding one good thing in your life to believe in, something to make weathering the rest of the s**t worthwhile. There’s also some excellent inside scoop about car sales. Really.

Check out the first chapter below and let me know what you think.

Chris

***

Covenant Spring

Foreword

All of the places in this story are real but I've changed their names and where they are, so if you try to follow the directions I give to Covenant Spring you’ll wind up someplace else entirely, past the New Covenant Presbyterian Church and Miz Dori's neat white house, past the dirt road into the woods by the swamp where Mister Silas lives, over and beyond the little cement bridge, where I held Aaron's hand and faced down Pastor Lamm, with the storm black and howling over our heads and the world a tick from ruin.

Some of the events I have changed for certain reasons that ought to be clear by the end. I've also changed the names of everyone involved, except my own, for the same reasons. So if you think you see yourself in here it’s not intentional but you can’t say it's all that surprising, the world being what it is.

. . .

Chapter One

My name is Daniel Ivy and I live in New Jersey. I’ve lived in Jersey all my life. I was born and raised in a typical Jersey town, which I know won't mean a thing to you if you haven't been here. There are worse places to grow up, and any place is fine when you’re a kid and don’t know any better.

My hometown is small. You might find it on a good state map. It's about an hour west of New York City, identical to the towns that surround it, like interlocking amoebas in a petri dish. Millions of squirming souls captured in a drop of dirty water, fighting over parking spaces. It’s home because it’s where I was born and grew up, and that’s the end of it. It’s difficult to get sentimental about asphalt and strip malls.

When I was younger I liked to search maps for my hometown. Big paper maps, atlases, the kind that showed the entire world. My town was never more than the smallest dot if it was listed at all, but I was always glad to find it. It meant we were real.

Our existence, officially confirmed.

. . .

There's a place one town over from where I was raised. It’s called Washington's Rock. During the Revolutionary War, General Washington is said to have stood there on the high ridge and observed troop movements in the valley below. It's also said he often went there to meditate, whether he would win or be hanged, I suppose. People drink there now and get stoned, and scrawl obscenities and the names of who they’re hooking up with at the moment on the tall granite marker erected where a ghost once stood and contemplated death, hope and honor. The limbs of the trees at the bottom of the ridge drip with sun-faded trash and used condoms, like tinsel.

I spent a lot of time on Washington's Rock as a kid. The road to the top is long and narrow, and it plunges at the shoulder into trees and rock. Trucks are banned from it. It’s alpine steep, and laid in serpentine turns around which it's impossible to see a chubby kid on a bicycle until the last moment.

It is a dangerous road, my parents warned me, back when I was the age when dangerous was intoxicating. The feel of a dangerous thing, a forbidden thing, was sexual in its allure. To brave the slender bending limbs at the crest of a tall tree, or to dash across the teeming interstate with my friends. These are the trials of early manhood for suburban boys. We would dance nervous on the highway shoulder and then dive into the diesel avalanche, through doppler-shifting horn blasts, knowing even then, even that young with our legs shaking and gulping breaths coming precious and hard on the other side, that we’d done something. You weren’t quite the same person you had been moments before. You had done a dangerous thing, a stupid thing, and had been changed.

But it wasn’t stupid. It built me by small degrees like daubs of clay pressed on a frame. It gave me weight in the world, an earned power that was mine alone, and was important.

It took everything I had to pump the pedals and make it to the top of Washington’s Rock. The passing cars kicked their grit in my face, their horns blasted hurled curses. But I dared not stop. The road was so steep that if I stopped, I knew my legs wouldn’t find the power to push the pedals anew, and I would think about giving up. And if I gave up, I would be that much smaller, diminished by it forever, and I might never try again.

So I did not allow myself to quit. The trial made me real. There was nothing else I had then that possessed the power and magic to make me much of anything.

. . .

I knew a girl in middle school named Shelly. I saw her one day in class pressing the point of a nail file into her arm under her desk until she bled. Her face was as composed as a cameo the whole time. She saw me watching her and she put the file back in her purse and returned her attention to the blackboard like nothing at all had happened.

I read years later that a lot of young women hurt themselves like that, mostly women, but nothing I ever read explained why. It was a disease. It was a disorder, a warning sign. A warning of what, no one seemed to know. But if you saw it, you were supposed to tell someone. You were supposed to take action.

Shelly was beautiful. She was pale and doe-eyed and slender. She wore nice clothes and got excellent grades. She waited every day after school out front, her books embraced against her chest like body armor, waiting for her mother to come in their giant SUV and pick her up.

They found Shelly that summer in her bedroom. She had found some pills and washed them down with liquor from her parents’ wet bar. The local paper wrote about it on the front page, how Shelly might never wake up and how it was such a senseless tragedy, as if there was such a thing as sensible tragedy. How it was such a shame that it had happened to so beautiful a young woman, as if good skin should have been enough for her.

“She was so beautiful,” everyone said. As if that was all they could see.

Kids visited Shelly for a while in the hospital. They took turns caring for her, talking to her, playing her favorite music for her, brushing her hair. The nurses showed them how to turn Shelly every few hours and position pillows under her so she wouldn’t get bedsores, and how to clean the site where her feeding tube punched a hole into her stomach, and how to empty her urine and colostomy bags. Shelly’s friends at school set up an online crowdfunding site for her and held fundraisers for the family to offset medical bills when insurance ran out, “We Heart Shelly” dances and 10K walks and bake sales. A local car dealership held a raffle for a new vehicle. Save Shelly, win a Toyota.

Then after a while, no one talked about it anymore. Everyone forgot about Shelly until she died two years later, a wax doll skeleton in pink sweat clothes, resembling her former beautiful self as much as a paper sack resembles a tree.

It would have been better if Shelly had been shot in the head, or had died in a car crash. I’ve heard others say it, families and friends of people injured like Shelly, the ones who have to live with the unromanticized pain, who can’t go home and leave it behind. The ones who have to wear the rubber gloves and clean the fluids and feces, and exhausted wrestle tormented with their love against the slow expiration of hope, and the guilt of wishing more each day for death’s blessed mercy.

If the crease from living Shelly to dead Shelly had been sharper, it might have cut us more than it did. A knife to awaken us. Useful pain, instructive pain, stopping our lives, making us ponder more than it did.

Remember Shelly? What a shame. Her poor family. Gee, how long ago was that?

The newspaper ran a story: Local Girl Dies After Two-Year Battle.

It wasn’t a battle. It was decomposition. The battle ended when Shelly said so.

Two years for the edge to dull, until it drew no blood at all. Maybe if it had, we wouldn’t have so easily forgotten her. But Shelly Christ did not give her life with the intention of making us see. It was about us, but it was never for us.

. . .

I’ve never told anyone about what I’d seen Shelly do, until now. Maybe if I had said something, I sometimes think, she might be alive now. But I think that’s arrogant. I don’t have that power. I don’t know what I would have said or done. I didn’t know her.

Maybe if I’d tried, maybe she would have let me be her friend. I don’t know if it would have made a difference. Maybe I only would’ve gotten in her way.

I think I should have tried, though. I still feel that I missed something big by not trying. And I didn’t understand power, not then.

. . .

I wondered why I was drawn to Washington’s Rock. Sometimes I would just find myself there, having set out on my bike with no conscious intention of going. I’d find myself at the bottom of the hill, waiting for the silent something that moved me from stillness — some hunger shown food, some decision I never was conscious of making, an impetus like a whisper, the only evidence of which is the echo I hear after I’ve begun.

Washington's Rock was my trial, my very own. Making it to the top gave me power, and freedom.

I walk around the trees, hot and panting and sweat-soaked and then, there is the entire world, spread out below me.

I stand on the marker and extend my arms, I outstretch my hands over it all. I can feel the press of the tiny houses and the billows of green against my palms. I spread my will over them and hold it suspended, like the sky. How lucky they all are to be ignorant of me, those tiny, stupid people. So ignorant of my power, for all I have to do is lower my hands and crush them all. And in their last moments, only then would they finally understand. Then they would know how stupid they were, how they had until that last terrible moment, when it was utterly too late, understood absolutely nothing.

But other times, I would fly. I would raise my hands with my palms upward and feel myself becoming light and I would rise like a flock of birds set loose from my heart, so high above the dull world and the stupid people in it. Soaring through the clean, cold air, my blood and breath transformed to joy, knowing at last that I was free.

I didn’t think of it then as prayer.

Maybe that’s what Shelly felt. Maybe that’s why I can’t forget her. Maybe I could have taken her with me and shown her another way, given her a trial that she could weather. Maybe she would have come out on the other side born anew, even if only for a little while, with a defining something other than pain that was completely hers, that was earned. And maybe she would have kissed me in thanks, the one person who understood, and we would both have had another thing to make us real.

But then always, I would feel my weight again, and I would open my eyes and be standing on the rock. But maybe just before, just moments before, I truly had been free. Maybe the world returned only because I opened my eyes expecting to see it.

The world is strong, but one day I would be strong enough to remove myself from it completely, I vowed. One day, I would ascend into the real and become my true self, forever, with no hope or desire of returning. I would be awesome and terrible to behold, and everyone then would know how deadly stupid had been their decision to dismiss me.

I carried this with me as a comfort. It is the closest thing I had to religion then. That, and searching for myself on maps.

. . .

My mother and I argued. I screamed at her but my voice was never strong enough. If only it had been, I could have blasted her with my power and then she, too, would know. That she had better stop and ponder, and wonder if what she was doing would one day prove dangerous.

I did not like my mother. I felt no obligation to. Any animal can give birth. Ten seconds after that’s done, you have to earn the rest.

My mother didn't understand. She would tell me to stop shouting. It didn't matter what we were shouting about or whether she had shouted first. "Stop shouting!" she would hiss, as if we were creating a scene in a restaurant. She would repeat it over and over, never looking at me until I went away, and she would make another drink.

I learned to give my mother my silence. I made myself easy for her to ignore. I gave her nothing, other than what was necessary to pass through her space. I learned to turn my mind from the wet crawl of her eyes on me, the slurp of her taking a drink. Sometimes she would say things but they were just rocks. I was too far away, and she didn't have the reach. I think she was grateful.

That silence was all we had in common. Except for blood, which can't be denied but is easy to ignore, once you make up your mind to do it.

. . .

There was a time when Dad tried to play peacemaker. I would stop arguing when he did, for him.

I love my dad. When I was still at home, I would hear my mother shouting at him downstairs, sometimes in fury, other times with words that cut but held no truth. She only wanted to hurt him. Usually dad would speak so low I couldn't hear him, so it sounded as if my mother was cursing a ghost.

Many times the front door would slam hard enough to rattle the windows in my bedroom. Then I would hear the fridge door open, and the cabinet where she kept the bottle, which was right beneath my room. And sometimes I would hear her cry, and I would turn up my music, just enough so I couldn't hear her but not so loud that she could hear me do it. It made me feel something that I had enough left to give her that, at least.

"Your mother is having a tough time," Dad would explain, though he never said with what. I don't think he knew. If he had, I don’t know how he could have explained it to me then so I would understand. I was in their world, and what bound them together was to me like a monster swimming in a dark swamp, a great merciless shape obscured in the murk whose silent approach I felt like a wave as it neared.

I would make myself small then, I would press myself against the walls in fear and pray it did not crush me as it passed because whatever it was, it did not see me at all.

It terrified me worse than dying.

Dad rescued me. His familiar footsteps on the carpeted stairs, the squat shadows of his feet against the crack of hallway light below my closed bedroom door. Three light taps. I never played my music so loud that I wouldn't be able to hear them.

Sometimes we talked for hours in the dark, with long silences between clumps of sentences like the highway between towns. Sometimes he drove and sometimes I did. And then, there would come a stretch of highway and I would feel his weight rise from the end of the bed, and his warm hand would squeeze my arm, and the door would close softly behind him, leaving the faint odor of after shave and cigarettes.

Dad always goes outside when he smokes. I would hear the screen door creak and close, and I would rise from my bed and go to the window and see him on the back patio. Sometimes he would just stand there, and sometimes he would walk slowly around the little yard that I mowed every weekend. He would move in and out of the next-door neighbor's yellow porchlight spill, in and out of the shadows cast by the high forsythia bushes along the fence. His hand would come up to his mouth, and I would see the little orange dot flare bright in the dark as he inhaled. His hand would swing down by his side and I knew he was exhaling but I would watch the cigarette cherry as it faded, seeing how long I could make it out before it went away completely, counting the seconds.

Sometimes he would be like that for an hour, smoking one cigarette after another, like he knew he had to smoke them all right then before he went back inside for the last time that night. Back on duty, back to my mother who with her vodka breath had ordered him and his cigarettes out of his house.

I always made sure there were no lights on in my room when I watched him. I didn't want him to look up and see my silhouette in the window. I wasn't afraid he would be angry. I didn't want to rob him of his religion.

Dad amazes me, what he tolerates. I don't know what my mother once was that made him fall in love with her, but it's gone now. Maybe there's just enough of it left that only he can see that keeps him there.

I think it's more that he feels sorry for her. If she can't love him, then he will protect her. That at least he can still do. He will be dutiful. It is the only way he has left to show her his love. The only way she will accept, even as she curses him for it.

If I think about it too long, the sadness of it breaks my heart.

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