I read that it may get snowy here this week.

I WFH so don't mind the snow anymore. It's beautiful & quiet & puts a stillness over everything. It also replenishes our snowpack, which will be our water supply for next summer.

At the same time, I wonder what the homeless encampment along a nearby major arterial will do. I know there isn't room for them all in the local shelters. Will they find space to keep warm?

Tangentially, I learned something about 211 this year that I didn't know before.

Locally, social service orgs prioritize the most vulnerable people. That's as it should be - it's a kind of triage. The people most in need get help the most quickly.

However, services are stretched so thinly that "quickly" is on the order of weeks, sometimes months, even for those in greatest need.

One of my friends has called 211 a number of times for rental assistance, when they were at risk of losing their housing. 211 advised them that there was nothing local orgs could do if they were *still housed*.

211 told them to put all their stuff in storage & live in their car, if they wanted help.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

I don't really want to be, thanks.

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.

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

Set up to fail, & then blamed for failing.

@Impious_Jade Not sure where "here" is but I am a senior citizens living on Social Security. I've been living in subsidized housing for almost 5 years now. There are others in my bldg who have zero income of any kind. Here doesn't sound near as volatile as where you are does. I'm even allowed to work part-time to supplement my income.

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