So there I am at the Fairview "Housing and Social Services" office.
It's an ironic title, one of those Orwellian DoubleSpeak names.
"Housing" in the name of a Ministry that has no ability or interest in finding anyone a place to sleep. You're on your own, and yes, we are fully aware that we don't give enough to actually rent a place of any kind, just a single room for a single person and fuck all your loved ones or needs.
It's more like MiniDeath. Read 1984 if you don't get it.
There's a homeless shelter 2 blocks away, one that actually takes dogs, and I can't get signed up to go through a "Social Worker".
They should rename that to "Client Assistance Clerk" and lower the CUPE paygrade. You don't get to sit with anyone anymore and actually be heard. You have to stand at a window, speaking through the slot, and they make sure your private life is nicely hollered through.
I have to call each day to the Yukon Shelter. With what? Quarters? With my calling card tracker phone given to me by the MiniDeath to find jobs with? I've been calling the shelter. I've been checking the 2 websites given to me to look at as part of my "housing assistance"
Its 2 months now on assistance and I don't have a 3 foot by 6 foot sheltered space on a floor to sleep on. Because I have a dog.
I have a dog. No less than 6 people in the Ministry and associated programs have suggested to me that giving up my dog would be beneficial to my housing status.
I know that you fucking evil morons.
This beautiful dog is my close friend. She's as important to me as your children are to you. I wonder if single mothers who go to get income assistance are given the option of euthanizing their children in order to streamline their housing needs?
I was sent by the Ministry to PCRS, an agency who supposedly finds housing for people who have no homes. Their options were: Call the shelters, or we can set you up in a junkie hotel on skid row, or we might be able to find you something on the outskirts of town, 20 miles and lots of transit fares away from anyone you know or socialize with.
I guess they think that having no one to talk to is good for a human being. When people are isolated its easier to beat them down, they learned from watching years of spousal abuse I figure.
The lady at PCRS was a very nice person. I got some socks. Toothpaste. I was able to get some food vouchers when my $240 living allowance was gone. They even gave me some sardines and granola bars when I was really hungry. And coffee.
What I didn't get was a place to live for me and my well behaved dog that fits within the "Ministry of No Housing" limits.
What I got instead was all of my personal information gathered, a form I had to sign saying anyone in the PCRS organization could read my information and notes about my situation, and workers on staff that hang out with Police in their off time. Interesting.
Its a good way to get around all those privacy rules that government offices have to follow.
So they listen to my story, share my personal information, and don't deliver what they are actually contracted to do, a dry warm place to sleep that's near a phone I don't have to pay for to call for employment, an internet connection I can search for work at, and either some food or a small cooking spot that I can make things like pasta on.
Because I have a dog, and to unionized government workers and their contractors, that's a luxury a poor person can't afford.
Fuck you, I say. I'd rather sleep outside and miss opportunities to work than lose my friend to your christian concept of what a person needs to LIVE. We don't get rid of the beings we love in a civilized society. We find a way to survive together.
In my years of living in Canada I've come to the conclusion that the largest money sucker of all in the "social services" industry is the unionized "social worker". Of the 17 million bux per year spent on poor people in the 90's, more than have of that money was the wages of the social workers.
I can't even count the times in my life I've sat across from that 400 lb behemoth thinking, "She got this job, in the beginning, because she knew someone. If she were laid off today, I bet she wouldn't get another job in social work/EI for at least 5 years"
Everybody knows who I'm talking about. Don't you? We've all seen her. We've all had to interact with her at some level of bureaucracy or another. Its funny how she's always a sarcastic finger pointing game player, even behind the rolls of obesity. Her union job security holding her up as the prescription percodans keep her going.
We spend more money restricitng the way poor people use what the gov't gives them, than we do on actually giving people some money to LIVE for a while. These programs wear people out, the people who work these offices, so many of them are 10 years in and its just a job, they actually DETEST their clients.
So I'm back in Fairview office, looking at a well to doo yuppie overweight male with his $300 silver ring and his Eddie Bauer "dusty rose" dress shirt. He so fucking mellow there's no way he got there with zen mastery. He tranked right up on some prescription antidepressant or painkiller. His smile is wider than a fucking asscrack. Glossy eyes.
I can barely stand. I've had 6 hours sleep 3 days in a row, because it rained, and the place I crashed I had to get moving by 6 am. There's no place that's covered in any park anymore you might have noticed. Sly social cleansing.
I tell him I need a care card. Voila. He hands me the number with a big shit eating grin, so relaxed the drool is starting to form. A fucking Care Card number in 30 seconds.
So, I believe I've told the story about how I need an operation on my knee, one toe is fucked as well, and I have an internal organ problem that requires a specialist. I've told at least 5 people in this "Social Services" chain over the last 2 months that I don't have a care card and I need medical attention, and not a single one of them has said "We'll get you one right away".
All that pain, all that walking to clinics that take people without cards, and he just types for a sec and hands me one. Fucking bullshit. I'm glad to have it, but it would have been useful to me 2 months ago, I have a serious fucking issue that's affecting my LIFE and my ability to do certain kinds of heavy work I used to do in between IT and Media jobs. Fuck.
I ask him for a form for the doctor as I have some medical problems which will limit my search for work and keep me from doing a lot of jobs I like, but which are dangerous and painful right now. Whoosh. Out comes the form I've asked for numerous times before. Along with a big smile and a derisive snort. Like I'm pulling a fast one. I guess no one believes in hernias or crunched knee cartilage and nerves, you have to have a burned face to get respect for your pain.
I ask him to put me into this JobWave program I've been told about, where I can get a wage subsidy for a job, some work clothes, and possibly a voucher to upgrade my computer tech skills with a couple of Microsoft tests. My MCSE is Win XP, and that's hurting me in my job search.
He looks at his computer and snorts, a little tranquil chuckle.
"I guess work is more important than a place to live"
I really want to throttle him.
He's being a yuppie prick and he knows it.
You see, you can't be on both programs at once, but then PCRS hasn't found me a place for my sleeping bag in 2 months of being in their "program". Probably because they don't really have any resources to find people housing, just web pages to send us to that anyone could find if they were given a sheet of paper.
PCRS is really about illegal police information gathering from the start,
just like the Money Mart scam.
Money Mart was started by ex cops and shares information with the police, that's why banks won't cash a welfare or EI cheque without a wait, they want poor people to need the services of money mart, because its difficult to get information about someone from a bank with all those inconvenient privacy laws in place. If money marts can cash my cheque in 5 min the bank should be able to. Give Banks the little webcams and photo verification.
It's Canada's version of TIA for the poor. Programs and services with ex police or police friends in them. Always they target poor demographics who don't have the lawyer power to speak up.
I don't make the charge lightly.
I saw physical evidence.
I listened to PCRS employees talking about the police officers they hang out with. I watched as only one person actually served the clients, until she was ragged.
I observed rooms with walls that didn't quite go to the ceiling.
Privacy is non existent,
and the free phone they give you right of the bat is with a company that records all calls and has active gps on the phone as long as the battery is in, because it's a US phone company.
Fuck those human rights.
Fuck privacy.
Fuck actually providing services you are contracted for, what will the clients do?
Call a lawyer?
That's funny. They'll be driven into the ground.
Anyways. I say that because everyone tries to make me out as crazy.
I'm fully aware so listen up you hordes of nice and mindless zombies.
Death Squads for intellectuals, activists, writers and poets could be around the corner.
We'll just rename them Beautification Forces.
Sorry, I digress, but then again, maybe I needed to.
I'd probably be less pissed if they actually performed the contracted services during the surveillance. No, I'd still be pissed.
Back to Mr. Dusty Rose:
I breathe deep and tell him that a place to live is extremely important,
it's kind of hard to get a job if you have nowhere to put you stuff or your dog while you go to work and make money for a real place to live.
I can see he's about to say it.
"No I'm not giving up my dog, so please sign me up with JobWave"
He recovers fast. Pretty sly on those tranks.
I ask him why they can't call the Yukon Shelter and have a spot for me.
It is after all, the "Housing and Income Assistance" Ministry
"We used to do that, I'm not sure why we don't anymore...
Yeah, that is kind of ironic that name change, isn't it?"
"I don't think the irony is lost on anyone" I reply.
At least he's got me some of the simple basic needs I've been requesting,
without any bullshit doublespeak and lifestyle interrogation I'm so sick of.
Then I ask him for a "Leisure Pass", which I was just told about yesterday.
He looks conspiratorially at the nasty cow beside him. I can see what's coming.
She didn't like the fact that I got upset last time when another worker started giggling at me because I couldn't find my birth certificate. I hadn't eaten in 36 hours and she was giggling at me. I asked for another worker after I came inside, I went outside for a smoke because it bothers me when I'm so upset I have tears in my eyes.
Nasty cow took it personally that I wanted another worker and not her friend.
I took it personally that a woman with a job to do that affects my life was giggling at my misfortune and refusing to copy the ID that I'd crossed the city to give her at another workers request.
"You can do that for him, right?" with a little wink.
He smiles the shit eating grin again, all looped out.
I've been on the street for over 3 months.
I needed a shower, a LOT, and all the shower services they give me pieces of paper for are downtown skid row, where putting my dog outside is going to get her kicked or poisoned by a junkie.
I've asked for some kind of pass or voucher for the local community center AT LEAST 10 times in this process.
And voila, it suddenly appears out of the thin air in front of her, with a nice yuppy knife comment attached
"well, here, some things are for what you've given ME, which is NOTHING, other services at the center you'll have to pay for"
her voice filled with detestable sarcasm as she sits back in her $500 ergonomic chair she was going on about last time I was here.
I bet she spent 20 minutes thinking that little stinger up.
Implying that I'm somehow scumming off her because I need a fucking shower.
You know what would make for an astounding piece of research and journalism?
Compare the names of people who were on welfare in each province of Canada,
with the names of people who were murdered, died of exposure or committed suicide.
That would be a fucking eye opener for sure, eh?
We could compare which province had done the best job of invisible Social Cleansing.
And finally I have to talk about something that's been REALLY bothering me.
Throughout this whole process, numerous times people have tried to get me to sign up for "Mental Health services".
Each time I'm assured that everything will be faster, I would already have a place to live, all my medical needs would be taken care of, everything.
Except for my freedom.
Except for respect as a human being.
I know people who've tried the fast route.
They never shake the stigma and the labels.
They never get taken seriously again.
Socially alienated forever, losing their rights, losing the respect for the works they've accomplished.
Like Neitsche and Orwell and Reich.
No comments:
Post a Comment