Anemone's Research Emporium

Life in The Warsaw Ghetto: or, What It's Like Being on Welfare

Anemone Cerridwen
January 21, 2009

You've seen where I live now (in View From the Glass Hill). 230 square feet. Walls (from 1912) so thin I can hear people breathing in the hallway. Plumbing and linoleum from late 1950s, when the place was broken up into apartments. No soundproofing in the building code back then (they added it to the code in Canada in 1975). Electrical updated since then, from time to time. And various other updates as needed (the place is in good repair, for what it's worth). And it's a bargain, because it's only $546/month right now, leaving me a fair chunk of my welfare cheque left over for other things like food and clothing. And phone and internet. And it's in a safe neighbourhood. I am grateful for that. Even as I loathe the frequent sound of leaf blowers and other power tools. There are people on disability who don't have enough left over after rent to pay for food for the month.

But I desperately want to move. Have for years. Why? Walls like cardboard. No privacy. Routinely under assault from neighbours' noise, and none of them are particularly noisy. But I can hear everything anyone says in the hallway, and voices from apartments both above and below. And then there's the sound of footsteps etc. in the hall and outside stairs, and in the room overhead. It wasn't like that when I first moved in. The neighbours overhead were so quiet I had no idea how bad the soundproofing was until they moved out and other, more normal, neighbours moved in. And once, when I banged on the ceiling with a broom handle a couple of times after particularly loud music overhead, I got an eviction notice, for disturbing my neighbours with my complaint. The Residential Tenancy Office set it aside, which is good because I sure didn't want to become homeless. And I'd have been long gone by that point if I'd had anywhere else to go. That was a terrifying experience.

If I could move anywhere better, I'd be gone in a flash. There is the small problem of money, though.

This is where I want to live:

This particular photo doesn't look particularly exciting. I took it on a grey day. But it's fairly obvious the building is well taken care of. The vibes are good.

600 Drake is award winning affordable housing, built in the early 1990s, so it's got proper soundproofing. I've been watching availability from time to time, and apartments have started at about $720 plus utilities, going up to over $1000/month. And the layouts look cool. Check it out. Here's their website. (And they have a better picture.)

This is affordable market housing. Problem is, I can't afford affordable market housing. The government only gives me $375/month for shelter costs, including utilities.

Work the math out, and see where I got "Warsaw ghetto" from. $375 gets half a studio apartment, if you're sharing with a stranger. Or it gets you most of the rent on a room in a hotel, with shared bathroom and kitchen, something I'm not thick-skinned enough to handle. I definitely need my own kitchen/bathroom. Most people do.

It might also get you subsidized housing, if you can live long enough to make it to the top of the waiting list, and if you don't mind being assigned to a unit like you're being assigned to a prison cell (I consider social housing to be a form of apartheid, regardless of the intentions of the people who provide it), and then being trapped there because you can't afford to leave, though they can probably shift you around in an emergency. Personally, I'm not tough enough for that sort of arrangement, either. And I don't even know what the rent is there - it might be quite a bit higher than the shelter amount anyways. Of course, if the city wanted to subsidize the housing I was in, that would be different, because I could take the subsidy with me when I moved, giving me the choice of where to live. Feeling trapped is the worst part.

If you have a roommate, and this roommate is your significant other, either your sweetie's income is so high you're disqualified from receiving any welfare at all (happens at about $1770/month combined income for a couple with one partner on disability and no children - do you know anyone who would support you on that kind of money?), or you get $570/month combined shelter amount if you both qualify. This is less than twice $375 because two can live more cheaply together than apart. Yay for that.

If you have a roommate and you both want a bedroom, you can expect to pay at least $450/month each, probably a lot more, for an apartment that's built to code, in a decent building. And there's a shortage of this sort of housing. Of course, you need to find said roommate. And said roommate needs to stick around, otherwise you're stuck with the rent for the whole apartment while you look for a replacement. (And you probably don't have this money sitting in savings.) And you really need to get along with this person, since you really really depend on sharing costs, and since you're likely at home all day, since you're disabled and unable to work. And, you know, it's much harder to get along with other people, no matter how nice everyone is, when you're under chronic stress from being on welfare. This stress also, by the way, increases your sensitivity to noise. Stress does that. And then the noise adds to the stress, which adds to the sensitivity . . .

Also, it's harder to budget when your fun roommate wants to go out and do something like go see a movie or get something to eat, and you can't even afford to go for coffee more than once or twice a year. Or at least it feels like you can't, because when you do it feels like your budget is unravelling. Which adds to the stress.

At any rate, no matter how you crunch the numbers, $375 is not enough to cover shelter costs. Which means you get to cut into your living costs to pay the rent.

Now, looking at my cheque, it looks like I get quite a lot for living expenses. (Certainly more than those who are expected to work get.) Except:

1. A lot of this goes to rent and utilities, including internet. I need internet. It's my lifeline. Frequently is for autistic people. Too bad a lot of autistic people probably can't afford access. (Sorry, don't have numbers. There's too little research on autistic adults to know how many are homeless or too poor to pay for phone/internet.) And going to the library often doesn't work for us because of sensory issues.
2. I have major food intolerances. If I were eating healthy, I'd be avoiding all grains and dairy. This sort of diet (GFCF) is common for autistic adults. I'd also be avoiding all other starch, and plant fibre, because they disagree with me so much, too. Which pretty much leaves meat, preferably wild or grass fed. (And sugar, which I'm sure would make my dentist very happy.) This costs $400-500/month, buying in bulk, eating the cheapest meats, with almost no variety, and always eating in. There is no way I can afford to eat a healthy, varied diet no matter how I'd budget. It'd be a stretch even if I had the entire living expenses amount ($531.52 + $40 high protein supplement) for food.
3. What happens when my hiking boots wear out? Or my computer dies? I have other expenses that I consider essential besides food. I do need to have clothes to wear. And the computer is the lifeline that will hopefully someday get me off welfare. (You don't think I can live forever like this, do you? Or even very long?) And in the meantime it's my only means for carrying on conversations with other people. And you don't expect me to do without toilet paper, do you? (Everyone mentions toilet paper, right?)

You try living with only the bare essentials for survival. It's like living in a concentration camp. Fine in an emergency (maybe), but not for years at a time. You get run down.

You know, what's interesting is that if I were living with my parents, I'd still be getting the $531.52 (+$40), plus $75/month for shelter costs, so I'd be better off. Fine, even. And I don't think they ask how much money your parents have once you're an adult, even if you're still living with them. I know they've never asked me.

So the problem is not that I'm disabled and can't afford affordable housing. The problem is that I'm disabled and can't live with my folks. If I didn't need my own housing I'd be fine.

How Is It Elsewhere?

Canadian provinces generally keep their rates at around the same level as each other. If they raised their rates, we'd all move there and they'd get stuck supporting us. Most English speaking countries have similarly abysmal welfare rates for disabled adults (at least US and UK do). The exception is Australia (I haven't checked New Zealand). I did some calculations a while back (November 2007), and a single disabled adult living in market housing can get about $1450/month to live on. You can actually live on that (at least, I could). Furthermore, the income exemption/clawback is more generous:

This is a rough guide. I am not a social worker in either jurisdiction so it may be off a bit here and there, plus Australian rates seem to have gone up (they may be indexed to inflation). British Columbia rates from Employment and Assistance for Persons with Disabilities Regulation and Rate Tables Disability Assistance, Province of British Columbia. Australia rates from Disability Support Pension website. Note that in both cases this is for single people living in rental housing. Both jurisdictions allow you to own your own home, but this affects the assets test in Australia.

Investment income is not considered earned income (unless you're John Maynard Keynes), so they deduct all of it penny for penny from my welfare cheque, if I tell them about it. (They don't care if it's less than $35/year, but they check our tax returns to be sure. We get tax slips for more than that, so they'd catch it.) Canadians who earn money are encouraged to invest it (The Wealthy Barber, The Wealthiest Man in Babylon), but we are not allowed to, or we're punished for it. Welcome to two-tier capitalism.

In Australia they want you to be financially independent, so the closer you get to that, the better. That includes being allowed to pile up your savings to the point you can live off the investment income. It's like they don't actually expect you to be able to work. In Canada, they want you to be independent, so they keep you on as little money as possible in order to give you incentive to go out and get a job. Even though you're "not expected to work". "Not expected to work" means they don't expect you to go out and get a job right away, but eventually you should, because employment gives people dignity, even when it's forced on them and they can't cope. How about the indignity of repeatedly failing to hold down a job, no matter how hard we try? We'd love to work, but it's usually not that simple.

While we're on the subject of rates, compare disability rates in BC to Old Age Security/Guaranteed Income Supplement, paid to seniors 65 and over by the government of Canada. If I'm a senior and I have no other source of income (e.g. CPP, private pension), they'll give me $1169.47/month to live on, indexed to inflation (unlike disability, and disability increases generally don't keep pace with inflation). I don't know how income reporting works, but if they go by your tax return, friends and family would be able to give me cash gifts to top it up, something that they cannot do for disability (it would be deducted dollar for dollar from my welfare cheque, so if my family wants to help they either can give me a place to live or support me completely). So if I live long enough, I get a raise!!!

A Holocaust?

Autistic people commonly compare our situation to the Holocaust. In addition to living in crowded, rundown housing and being kept on half rations (money, not calories, so we eat too much starch and get fat and dopey instead of skinny and hallucinatory), we get the added bonus of pseudoscience printed in academic journals and earnestly promoted by the mainstream media. (Not all disabled groups get that. Lucky us.) Not to mention ridiculously negative stereotypes promoted by "autism" associations hell-bent on raising money for research to eradicate future autistic people from the face of the earth (since our lives can't possibly be worth anything, not that they know anything about them). There's hardly any research on autism in adults, and some of what does exist inaccurately reinforces negative stereotypes. To be fair, much research is good, but properly cautious researchers tend to avoid press releases in case they're wrong. So what you hear in the media isn't necessarily worth anything scientifically. Makes good press, though.

As a bonus, the Jews (and other targeted groups) who escaped the Nazis were largely hidden and supported by people who knew and liked them. It seems to be the same thing with disabled adults. We do much better when we have supportive families or other people who like us whom we can live with. Of course, not all families are supportive. A few "mercy-kill" their disabled kids and get waves of support from the general public. But fortunately many of us have great families who would never do that.

I just happen to not be one of those people.

Not All Is Lost; or, How You, The General Public, Are Not Nazis

Many things have changed since the Holocaust. Researchers after WWII found a link between bigotry and authoritarian parenting, and advocated less authoritarian parenting. The first generation that grew up in this new parenting regime went on to fuel the second wave of feminism and the civil rights movement, and all sorts of other human rights and environmental causes. Things really have changed.

Except we still have an underclass.

I think there are a few reasons why we still have an underclass in enlightened, not to mention wealthy, western countries. One is ignorance. People simply don't know how hard things are. There is this tendency to assume that the government wouldn't do anything really bad. So even though welfare rates seem far too low to live on, people think "there must be some way of holding body and soul together with that little money". There isn't, unless you can live with your folks.

Secondly, when you put money into people's hands, it becomes their money, and they're reluctant to part with it again. So they're suspicious when other people say they need some too. Heck, if I were a taxpayer, I'd be worried I was being ripped off by people on welfare, too. I think you have to be ridiculously rich to not feel that way.

A third reason is that economic theory tends to look at the individual as the basic economic unit. Economic models mimic the ecological activity of bacteria. It's great that these computer models mimic living processes, but we're not bacteria. We're mammals. We don't conveniently die off when there aren't enough resources to go around. And it takes a lot more than eating lots and dividing into two to increase the workforce when times are good. Bearing and raising kids to become productive adults takes a lot of time and energy that isn't included in economic models. And if it isn't included in the model, then the model doesn't have anything to say one way or the other on how various policies affect it. So we don't know, unless we look at other measures. In addition, good parenting means having someone at home full time when the kids are too young for school. It really makes a difference. Too bad it's bad for the GDP. And then, there have always been disabled people around. Usually, they were either lovingly supported by their families (or at least grudgingly supported), or they were kicked out to die. Same as today. So the economic unit is actually the family, not the individual. It's the human rights unit that's the individual. This makes things complicated.

Let's take the minimum wage, for example. Minimum wage in BC is not enough to support a family on, and probably not enough to support an individual person on either, with rent these days. Unless you're living with someone else, who helps share costs. But let's say you're on your own. Your folks are dead, or in another city/country, or they're abusive. You can't live with them, for practical reasons. So you have to pay your own way. And if minimum wage isn't high enough, you suffer. But if you raise minimum wage too high, the number of jobs goes down (or so researchers say - I haven't read the research). And fewer jobs is bad, right? If you live with your folks, you can always spend more time in school upgrading your skills instead, or renovate the bathroom, or something. If you're on your own, you need the job. And competition for these fewer jobs is higher, and you might lose out to someone who lives with their folks and doesn't need the money so much. So we need more jobs. So they lower the minimum wage, or allow inflation to erode it. Which means more jobs. (So long as minimum wage doesn't get too low. I think that's a factor, too.) Then all those people who can live with their folks flood the job market to get these jobs and you're stuck competing with them and trying to make ends meet on less than enough. (And if they have enough money they go after the affordable housing, too, and kill the vacancy rate.) Basically, if you have folks you can live with, it doesn't matter so much how high minimum wage is, but if you're the primary wage earner, it matters a lot. Either way you're competing with people who don't need the money as much as you do. I think economics is measuring the wrong variables.

Society really has changed since the Nazis, and I do not think the presence of a persistent underclass is due to blind bigotry. I think that people can be reasoned with, and things can change. It will take better economic and social models, more solid information as to how people end up in the underclass to begin with (hint: lack of social support at some point in the lifespan is probably important), and enough trust to support total strangers in need, but it can happen.

You have to do it, though. I don't have the resources to make these changes. In the meantime, I'm trying to dig my way out with a spoon, since I'm pretty sure the army won't get here any time soon. And if I do get off the dole, and I start paying taxes, you'd better be nice to me. I'll be a person, then.