Oh yeah & my knees. They predict every change in the weather these days. & somehow I fucked up one of the tendons on the inner side of my L foot.

This aging shit sucks. Fuck going gently into that good night, entropy's gonna take me kicking & screaming.

Ugh, everything hurts today. I strained a shoulder muscle this past weekend lifting a bag of laundry & it's stiff & aching up my neck & down into my pecs on one side. & that doesn't even get into the trainwreck that is my back...

@PaintedMask So just a rhetorical device, nothing more. & of course the widespread-ness of poverty & stresses now doesn't erase that the same has been with us in the past. Whatever led you to call 211, I hope they were able to help you & that your circumstances are light years better now than they were then.

@PaintedMask It's OK, I can understand that. No aspersions on age or anyone's circumstances at all - I pulled "20 years" randomly out of my brain, just to illustrate "at some point in the past dire straits weren't as widespread as they have become" using fewer characters.

Thinking more about social services & just how hard so many people got hit with... a lot of stuff, because of the pandemic & how poorly it was handled.

Jobs. Health, physical & mental. Housing. Income. Childcare & the mental health of families. Education. It hit everything & fucked everything.

@silent_dystopia Hello from SEA-ish!

Ugh, that sucks so hard. We find ourselves cobbling together some kind of less-than-ideal solution just to survive. I'm so glad your roomie was able to find something and is safe.

This area is known for being broadly liberal, w/a lot of folks into social justice & active in local government. That's true, but it's also slow & conservative in some ways & this sort of bureaucratic trap is extremely common.

In October, they got a decision: assistance was denied. They called the program to find out why. "You had a duplicate application", said the program. "You'll have to re-apply."

"OK", said friend, "can I do that now?"

"No," said program. "Our program closed in August. You'll have to wait until next year."

Here's a thing that happened to a disabled friend:

They applied for rental assistance back in April of this year. They had to be behind in rent to apply. They sent in their application as instructed.

The program was so backed up that it took 6 months to process their application. Meanwhile, they're getting further & further in the hole.

@small1ldy That's pretty awesome - it's good to know that it works somewhere! "Here" is South of Seattle.

@PaintedMask Right, that's why services are stretched so thin: almost everyone is in need right now, a bigger % of the population than... I dunno, 20 years ago, needs help *now*. More people, less money, & less money to go around.

I'd like to tax the fuck out of the rich. Then eat them.

@AlbertCashiersCousin I hear that. We have something like tens of thousands of empty housing units in the area, more than enough to house everyone on the street. Housing is there, but logistics are the challenge. You can't just compel someone to live in an empty house, or compel a landlord to house someone. There are no solutions in place.

@GalibyGolly A smallish city south of Seattle, so Pacific NW. West side of WA state.

I'm a bit paranoid, which is why I'm not saying which specifically, just region.

Ppl in poverty are set up to fail, in the US. Simple as that.

Set up to fail, & then blamed for failing.

I think about all these things a lot, especially when I see right-wing religious authoritarians in the US pushing hard to shame everyone into marrying. Or when I think of trying to climb out of poverty, & how the system is stacked against people doing better, & even deliberately keeps us poor.

I can support us, if we want to be working poor.

I don't really want to be, thanks.

More personally, I'd love to marry my SO. But I can't, because if I did, then he likely wouldn't be able to receive benefits that depend on *household* income instead of *individual* income.

He's got a TBI, can't work & is fighting to get SSDI right now, fwiw.

There is *some* help available from a state or federal level, for the truly indigent.

You have to have *nothing* to get there though. You have to lose your housing, job, medical coverage, health, retirement funds... you can't have much more than the clothes on your back, it seems. This forces people who need help to get rid of anything that might keep them afloat, or provide dignity.

So I can't fault 211 for this. I'm big into root cause analysis & it's clear to me that other, bigger, more powerful factors are to blame, from profit-hungry landlords & the opioid crisis & the lack of jobs & a general attitude of scarcity & lack of giving a shit about one's fellow human beings.

I wasn't aware that, ironically, local services contribute to the homeless crisis here because of advice like this.

There is effectively NO social safety net here. That isn't the fault of 211 or the orgs people use.