By Kendall Worth
Today I want to tell you about Joe-Joe. She chose that name to make it difficult or the people she has in her personal life, who might be believers in the stigma about her, to identify her.
Before going any further with this story, want to provide the following information about stigma applied to people on Income Assistance. First, if you Click on this link you will see where I have written and published where stigma come from. In Joe-Joe’s case, she experiences stigma from members of her own family and an ex boyfriend. According to them she is just faking her social anxiety.
As I reported, in the now folded Nova Scotia Advocate, Here and Here, stigma also come from society’s misunderstanding of why people are on income assistance in the first place. Joe-Joe can relate to what those 2 articles talk about because there have been times in her life when she has been accused by those in her personal life of just being lazy and not wanting to work. And, she can relate to what this article talks about, because some people have even suggested she should be living in a group home. Other times people just will not mind their own business as I addressed here. One last article from the now folded Nova Scotia Advocate, that fits with Joe-Joe’s experience is this one, because these days she lives her personal life with only one friend she can talk to. A lot of her past friendships have ended.
Joe-Joe receives the standard House Hold rate of $1005.00 and a $198.00 rental subsidy = $1203.00 per month. Her Rent is $660.00 per month, and her Nova Scotia power bill ,on budget billing, is 145.00 a month. So that = $805.00 a month. So $1005.00 Subtract $805.00 = She has $425.00 left over for groceries, personal hygiene items, and kitty litter and food for her 2 cats.
For most Joe-Joe’s rent sounds like a sweet deal, but overall for her it is no sweet deal. I say this because while interviewing her for her story, I had the opportunity to go visit Joe-Joe at her apartment, and note, her landlord IS A SLUM LORD! Her Slumlord is already giving her advanced warnings that once the rent cap is lifted at the end of 2027, her rent will increase by at least $500. This means that if the cap is lifted at the end of 2027, starting in January 2028, her rent will be $1160.00 per month. In the meantime I saw the following in her building:
Outside her building, sheets of plastic taped over broken windows with duck tape.
The locks on the doors coming in from outside of the building are broken and people enter and exit the building with no security or security system.
Large holes in the walls seen as we walked through the hallways of her building.
In her personal apartment a few things that needed to repaired and according to her the landlord will not fix anything.
We smelled a strong stinking smell as we walked through the hallways of her building.
The walls of her building are not sound proof and we could hear conversations happening in her neighbour’s apartments.
According to Joe-Joe all of the above have been issues in her building over the past 2 years and she would like to move out of there. We agreed that unless the Income Assistance rates are raised, come 2027, she is not going to be able to afford her new rent of $1160.00.We also agreed that even if their was a way she could afford the new rent he will likely charge that amount of money and still behave like a slumlord.
Now I want to get back to her experiences on Income Assistance.
Joe-Joe told me she has been on Income Assistance since she was 19 years old and she is now 48 years old. She has been in a relationship and has two children. At present, her children and their father will not speak to her. They believe in the stigma attached to welfare recipients, and they believe that she is faking her mental illness and social anxiety. She said these days she feels like she is an introvert by force, just like This BLOG post here points out points out. During our interview, she also brought up This BLOG post here because holidays, as they are for others, are a very lonely and socially isolating time for her. Her children will not come over to see her or even contact her on holidays. She does not get invited to the homes of family or friends.
A couple of other things she experiences negatively being on income assistance:
#1 – Her Current caseworker who is assigned to her file will not return her calls, when she tries to call her caseworker.
#2 – A professional who she goes to for counselling made call to Community Services and spoke to a supervisor to find out why she is not getting the $318.00 monthly Disability Supplement. Joe-Joe’s counsellor was told by the casework Supervisor, it is because her doctor only has her down as Part Time Disability (whatever that means) and her doctor needs to agree that she has a full time disability, before they can approve her for the $318.00 Disability Supplement.
Joe – Joe has had learning disabilities, OCD, depression and anxiety her whole life. However she is someone with Invisible Disabilities, you cannot see just by looking at her. During her life on Income Assistance, there have been times when she has tried working at jobs along the way. However the stress she had to deal with, keeps her from holding down any job she has ever tried.
I will conclude this BLOG by saying this is one out of many examples of why sometimes Income Assistance recipients lives, are hard lives.
Comments
Post a Comment