Saturday, July 10, 2010
Clinic 7/8/10
This past Thursday at the clinic, Hanna and I worked with a woman, Stephanie, who was hoping to move out of her apartment by August 13th. We helped her look up different apartments in towns around Boston. She is looking to live with an elderly woman as a housemate or to find a situation where she could exchange childcare or household work for living arrangements. She does currently live with her husband, but is worried that things between them will continue getting worse. She left the clinic with a bunch of places to call, but I think she was still very apprehensive about the whole situation. She is currently out of work, and though she has training as a nurse, the hospital wants her to be living in a stable environment before they rehire her.
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ReplyDeleteWell said, Maddster. Stephanie also had applied for a couple of housing lotteries, and is in contact with REACH, the domestic abuse organization. Right now, her only income is through disability aid, and she had applied for food stamps, but her husband had taken them. This is the second case I've seen in which a woman's attempts to gain domestic independence and receive outside aid are thwarted by her abusive husband (Debra, a woman who came in two weeks ago, suspected that her husband had intercepted and hid a letter notifying her of the necessary paperwork required to complete the process of accepting a Section 8 housing arrangement after years on the waiting list, as he has kept other mail from her in the past, resulting in a missed window of opportunity; thus, her name dropped back much further down on the list). Stephanie's husband does not pay rent, and he has not shown up to several court dates regarding their divorce, elongating the torturous process for Stephanie. She wants to move out by August 13th to avoid an explosive escalation of the tension between her and her husband, as another court date is scheduled for that day.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if this subject is too sensitive for discussion, but it certainly illuminates the heartbreaking flaws in the systems that offer a way out, yet the unfavorable circumstances themselves keep the ones who need that change the most from escaping. The dire competition for these aid programs and their slow and unforgiving bureaucracy don't do much to help these situations either.