By Kendall Worth!
Out of the many First Voice people on social assistance, living in HRM, I had the opportunity to interview Jewel, (I never use real names) on the morning of May 19th, 2023. I have been running into Jewel on and off since I first met her in 2015. Like many first voice in my community, my only communication with her was whenever we crossed paths on the street. When I ran into her recently that was the first time since before COVID restrictions began in 2020. Jewel is one of the many welfare recipients who cannot get approved for the “special needs” telephone from Income Assistance. She, like many welfare recipients, has a type of part-time job where there is no socializing with co-workers. She, in fact, works alone in a 5 floor Business/Office Building, cleaning, and has the whole building to her self. She is not friends with the people she sees when she used to be a regular at places like Souls Harbour.
First lets have a look at Jewel’s financial situation on NS Income Assistance!
Jewel gets the $950.00 standard household rate and $54.00 for 2 special diets = $1004.00 a month. She does have a part-time job where she works 4 times a week. She gets to keep the first $350.00 because she got approved for supportive employment. So $1354.00 a month may sound like enough, but it is not. And remember any of her wages above and beyond that $1354.00 will be clawed back from her Income Assistance amount. Luckily for Jewel, she gets a sweet deal on her rent. Her rent is $1000.00 a month. However, everything is included in her rent: heat, hot water, and power which is unusual to have “included”. ..even WIFI and the telephone is included in her rent. That is why I refer to her rent as a “sweet deal”. She also gets a $300.00 rent subsidy which also helps. She has roughly $650.00 a month left after rent is paid. However that $650.00 does not stretch very far. First – the $54.00 she gets for her two Special Diets goes directly on her special diet needs so that reduces the amount left over down to $596.00 a month. Over this past year with inflation behaving out of control she has been finding that her special diet needs has been costing a lot more than $54.00 a month.
She does have a cat, which she says she needs because having that cat helps keep her anxiety low. She lives alone and is single. Like many welfare recipients she does not have any friends and does not have a social community she keeps in contact with. So she needs that cat to help her maintain her sanity, day to day, especially when she is not at work. All expenses for maintaining her cat including food/treats, cat toys, and vet bills can come to $75. to $200 a month. She did say this spending for maintaining her cat is different from one month to the next. However, the way she described what she does for her cat related expenses, to me is that, she does not have has to take her cat to the Vet every month . This means for those months what she spends on cat maintenance is less she has a Dish where she keeps some money aside to pay toward Vet Bills when she does have to take her cat to the Vet. So $596.00 - (up to) $200.00 = $396.00 left over.
Then with the $396.00 she has left over, she has to pay a $25.00 cab Ride once a month to get her groceries home from the grocery store, because there are no grocery stores close to where she lives. Also a Second $50.00 Cab Ride if she has to go to the vet, because when she takes her Cat to the Vet, she takes the Cab both ways. Out of that $371.00 that is left, she has to buy her groceries, personal hygiene products, clothing, etc.
When I first met Jewel in 2015, she was not as lucky as she is today. At that time, she was paying $900.00 a month for rent, plus power and phone. Her rent had just increased to $900.00 a month before I first met her. She has to move because a new landlord took over her building and was going to increase the rent, massively. As a result between 2016 and 2019, she ended up being homeless for a period of time. Also in 2015 she did not have the part-time job she has now. In 2015, and during her time of being homeless, she was going to the places like Brunswick Street Mission, Souls Harbour, Hope Cottage, and The Basilica Drop-in, regularly. She still occasionally drops by those places, however, she feels she has moved on from going to those places as her regular day-to-day activity. While interviewing her, she told me she does not miss going to those places at all.
Her Part time job:
She was telling me that she works 20 hours a week cleaning. She is the only cleaner in a 5 floor office building all by herself. Her shifts includes working both Saturdays and Sundays, which she likes. She told me that if she had her weekends off she would just be sitting at home alone, watching TV. - Not having friends who she can invite over to her apartment – Not being to able to go visit or even contact family because the family she has left, believe in the stigma about all welfare recipients, including her. By being at work on the weekends she is keeping herself occupied even though she is alone. During the week, she also goes into work on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. She also voluntarily goes into work on her days off for an hour to make sure that the washrooms are stocked up with toilet paper and paper towel, etc. even though she does not get paid for doing this. The tenants in the building appreciate it and once a month they give her a gift card from Sobey’s as a thank you. She volunteers to do this because it helps her fill her days. She was offered this job right when the pandemic first started, and they decided to keep her on, as the only cleaner after things got back to normal, because they liked the way she was doing her work.
Final notes in this story:
So it turns out that Jewel suffers from OCD and learning disabilities. She has had issues with depression and anxiety throughout her life. She wants to make friends and make social contacts, but she has learned to enjoy being by her lonesome. During the interview she mentioned that she has complained to her doctor about how lonely she is and her doctor feels bad that there is no-where he can refer her to help her make Social Contacts.
Let hope a solution can found for Jewel and others experiencing social isolation, moving forward.
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