Greetings,
Today as I have just a short time before radio today, I thought I would write and update. Think for a moment that what would happen if you became disabled, also add that you are an American barely making it or just out of poverty.
The First thing that happens is you lose your job of course, then for most people if they had medical at all you would lose this. If you do not have a wife and children or just children then no help from welfare, maybe some food stamps.
Very soon your bank account if you had any money in it is gone, with no way to pay rent and soon you are homeless. Now think about that, maybe with a terrible disk problem or some other reason you have no way to see a doctor other than the emergency room or a free clinic. When you become mental and most do from living homeless than you can get some help from a mental agency.
In this age generally family and friends drift away from you. You go to social security only to find that you must have a doctor saying you cannot work, most free clinic will not jump in and say you cannot work so somehow you have to find a doctor.
In Wichita if you are a woman there is no shelter for you, some beds are there but very few and they are full most of the time. Men can go to an overcrowded rescue mission that has 69 beds and the rest get floor space. This even get’s full and if you do get in it is very easy to be kicked out for things such as forgetting to turn in your insulin or other medications when you come in. Some very hard rules and it takes a lot to live in this place. Very hard and very scary place to most people, yes it is dangerous.
Many men chose to just live outside, or have to due to no room or being kicked out, women have no choices really it is then prostitute yourself or live under the bride or shack up with anyone who will give you a place to sleep, really!
Finally you somehow get a doctor and a letter for social security. Only to find they can take up to 3 to 4 years to go all the way through the process. And for get back pay you get only two year’s worth and not all at once, welfare gets what if any they spent on first, then the attorney, so you might get a small amount of back pay.
But what have you turned into? Many once hitting the streets that are disabled turn to drugs and alcohol in order to deal with their lives and by the time they do get money they are generally unable to then handle it after being the street 3 to 4 years…
If you are going to help a homeless person get out of the street you need to get them with in the first 3-6 months before they get into the circle of disaster. Better yet we need programs like welfare used to help before a person is kicked to the curb.
So they act different than you or I and some live in delusions, but would you know in given the same circumstances?
And you do not have to be disabled to get stuck in the street, loose your job, loose your home or rental, car insurance goes un paid, lose your car and then you are in big trouble as no transportation to a job. Try going to look for a job with no clean clothing and your address is the Douglas Bridge.
Anyway at the bottom I am going to post a short article that inspired me to write this one. The people we help many are disabled, some are not, some are women, so many cry to me about having lost their children because they lost their job….terrible.
We need your help to stay open, last months bills mostly are unpaid and this month’s are in, I have electric doubled and they will send shut off’s after the 16th of this month! So please lift this to prayer and we need to do the Work The Lord Yeshua placed us in. And if you read your Bibles it is a book about great persecution for your faith, the closer you get to doing the right thing the harder the world fights against you because you are not part of this world. The Word Church means “ called out ones” we are called out of this world and made different. We suffer this world so we gain the next and eternal life with Yeshua.
In His Perfect Peace, Pastor Dan
Sick and homeless, man gets SSI benefits days before dying
Bobby Rutherford was a casualty of Social Security’s other disability program.
The native Oklahoman, homeless and mentally ill, was one of the roughly 1 million people who apply each year for Social Security’s Supplemental Security Income. Those benefits, known as SSI, provide 5.4 million aged, blind or otherwise disabled adults an average of $493 a month.
Beneficiaries of that program — separate from the Social Security Disability Insurance program that American workers pay into paycheck by paycheck — come from a swelling underclass of citizens too disabled to start or keep a job.
Money of any kind would have greatly helped Rutherford, who had lifelong trouble holding a job. In 1970, when he was 22, the Marine Corps discharged him after diagnosing him with a “character and behavior disorder.” Later diagnoses included schizoaffective disorder, hepatitis C, depression, anxiety and alcoholism.
Rutherford lost jobs as a laborer and construction flagger because of his delusions and heavy drinking, says longtime girlfriend Debbie Williams. He was sick and penniless by the time he moved into the Klamath Falls Gospel Mission.
He applied for disability benefits in January 2005, but Social Security denied his claims time and again. Then, in October 2006, one of the agency’s administrative law judges ruled that Rutherford had been disabled since June 2004.
Rutherford had been sober for more than a year. But hepatitis savaged his liver. He was pale and losing weight. Still, he was thrilled when his first SSI check reached the mission Dec. 18, 2006, says Beverly Leigh, a homeless advocate who befriended him.
He hoped the $545.50 check — and the $13,248.88 in unpaid benefits heading his way — would move him into an apartment of his own and help him get treatment for his hepatitis, Leigh says.
But four days after his check arrived, a friend found Rutherford dead in his Gospel Mission bed. He was 58.
Social Security officials identified no next of kin to whom to award his benefits. The agency kept his money.
