How Jim struggled against welfare

A little over a year ago, Jim (not his real name), a college-educated, single Caucasian man who lives in the Albany Diocese, was earning good wages working in food service.

He was also struggling with clinical depression. When his depression became so serious that he required hospitalization, Jim called his boss periodically to give updates on his condition.

But when he got out of the hospital and called to say he was able to return to work, he learned that he'd been fired. Since he'd still been in a probationary period at his job, he had no recourse against his employer.

Ups and downs

"For a substantial amount of time [while on Unemployment], I was in deep distress," he said.

He began applying for federal Social Security/Disability (SSD) but soon learned that was a lengthy process. While he was waiting, a doctor told him to take New York State temporary disability while he tried to get his life back together.

But "I had no food, no funds to pay my rent, phone and electricity," Jim remembered. A mental health clinic told him about a food pantry. "That was how I ate," he said.

Confusion of programs

"Public assistance," Jim explained with newfound knowledge, "is a cash assistance program for people who are unemployed and have no resources to draw upon. As a single person, if I make more than $315 a month, I am disqualified for public assistance."

When Jim went to the public assistance office, he said, "I felt I was criminalized. I was treated like a second-class citizen."

Fingerprinted

He placed his thumb on the pad, "and all of a sudden, my fingerprint popped up on the screen!" he said angrily. "I felt like I was being processed for prison. At no time during the process was I [told], `This is what we're doing.' They were checking to see I was not receiving benefits under any other name in another state -- which is perfectly reasonable, if you explain it to the people you're interacting with!"

The next step was sitting down with a caseworker. "She asked how I'd been supporting myself the past six months," Jim explained. "I said I'd been collecting Unemployment and it had run out."

In response, he said, "she was not just rude; she was dehumanizing. She said if I'd been collecting Unemployment, that meant I was ready, willing and able to work -- and I wasn't, and there was going to be an investigation of my collecting benefits."

Humiliated

"I think the whole process was designed to weed out as many people as possible so the state does not have to dole out more money, because of the welfare reforms," he said.

"The people seem to act as if they themselves own the money they're dispersing, instead of being public servants dispersing the state's money. The literature that's available to read [in the office], the video that's on a continuous loop, the posters on the walls, all speak of `a means to get up and out' and intimate that the people you're going to work with are going to treat you with respect. As far as I can tell, that's state-run propaganda."

Another try

This time, he said, "I made it through the initial interview and had to take part in a group for six weeks called `self-sufficiency.'"

During a group session, he said, one member brought up the topic of confidentiality. Jim said the public assistance employee running the group assured her that anything she said was confidential -- and then began sharing confidential details about other group members.

"After listening to her share that so-and-so was in a halfway house, I realized I was not going to continue with the process," Jim stated.

Complaints

But he was told it was better not to complain: When he talked to a mental health clinic about his experience, he was warned that complaining to public assistance authorities could anger them, "and if I ever wanted public assistance in the future, it would be a good idea not to [tick] them off."

He still finds it hard to believe that people on public assistance are treated this way. "If a medical doctor, psychiatrist or other well-respected caregiver had shared [such] breaches of confidentiality," he said, "there would be an outrage. But the majority of people applying for public assistance are under a lot of stress; they're down and out; they don't have resources, and they don't have access to high-powered defense attorneys. We've been marginalized. Just because we happen to be in a period of crisis in our lives, we're treated like dirt."

State of need

It's not easy for outsiders to understand mental illness, he said.

"People who know me and have seen the state I've been in don't treat me any differently," he noted. "People who know me less well and have no experience with severe, chronic, cyclical depression have difficulty when I talk about it, because of the American tendency to derive our identity from our work."

Jim's experience with aid programs has opened his eyes to the plight of people who have no other options than to obey what he calls degrading rules.

"Because they have [funding] and you want it, it's a seller's market," he said. "If you absolutely have to have it to get by, you have no alternative than to swallow everything that comes in your direction."

Experience

Jim believes it's reasonable for legislators to want people to get off welfare. But, he added acidly, "I'd like to suggest to them that they live on $315 a month as a single person. Try it out."

Having become a regular patron of soup kitchens in the past year, Jim noted that he's met many people in his situation.

"There are a lot of people I eat with in the soup kitchen whom I suspect might be on public assistance, and they go around collecting bottles and cans all day so they can live -- and that's not just a few people," he said. "Go up to the automatic bottle return at Price Chopper and see who comes by. It's not just moms with RC Cola bottles; it's people who look like they need the money. People doing the best they can."

People like Jim.

(05-17-01) [[In-content Ad]]