Brian Kulas
ANNOTATION
Transcript: "Which is just, if you divide. I always just divide it by four, you know, and, um, you know that comes out to whatever the math is - I don’t know, like fifteen dollars a week, if [50:44] that. My point is, if you can’t even buy… if a gallon of milk is taking almost like a quarter, twenty - if four gallons of milk takes up twenty-five percent of your Food Stamps for the month, that’s just four gallons of milk? [sigh] How do other people get by? I mean, it’s just me! If I [51:04] wanna lose five pounds in three weeks because I wanna stretch my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and skip lunch, that’s fine. It’s just me, you know, but I’m concerned about families and stuff, you know."
Learn More [3]: Kalet, Hank. “Without Welfare Increases, NJ's Safety Net Is in Tatters.” NJ Spotlight News, September 19, 2019.
Learn More [1]: “Official Site of The State of New Jersey.” Office of the Governor | Governor Murphy Highlights Investments and Progress for NJ TRANSIT.
Learn More [2]: “More Riders, Less Investment: A Blueprint for Failure on Public Transit in New Jersey.” New Jersey Policy Perspective, October 11, 2020.
TRANSCRIPT
Interview conducted by Kristin O'Brassill-Kulfan
Interview conducted in 2018
Transcription by Kether Tomkins
00:00:00
Let’s, let’s, um, about kind of your personal history. Where you grew up, um, what that was like. You know, and, and how much of that affects where you are today.
Sure. Um, I actually grew up right, right in this town. Um, I moved here when I was six months old, so, nursery school, kindergarten, elementary. Um, I lived about, uh, no more than maybe a mile and a half from where I live now. And, um, basically, uh, I started out in East Brunswick Public School system and, um, you know. I moved around schools a lot, you know, cause, uh, it’s just the way it was. So then I went to Catholic school in Old Bridge, came back to East Brunswick Public Schools like a year and a half later. So, um, basically the school I was originally in had closed so we were shipped to another school. And I guess that’s all relevant because I switched schools so many times as far as even just buildings themselves and students, um, it, [laughs] it kinda became like a very repetitive, consistent thing, which made growing up very hard because it was hard to make friendships because every time you’re in a new school, or just even a new building with different kids, or a different school system, you know, it, it, it portrays a challenge. So, um, basically with all that being said, when I was in the middle of fourth grade, um, my parents decided to move to a different town. And, you know, East Brunswick is pretty, it has a very big school system, obviously a lot of stores, things like that. The town that we moved to was Millstone Township and my new school was a four-room school house with a bell on top.
00:01:42
Is Millstone in Monmouth County?
Um yes, yes. So, um, my parents never sold the house here. They rented it out and I’ll go into that in a little bit. But basically when we moved there I started having a very, um, right away, like right off the bat, I started feeling a lot of m-- I started feeling different. I didn’t know they were mental health symptoms at the time. But, um, I knew that something was wrong. Um, the way my life was, you, like, the way I was approaching daily life. I only was ten years old, so to know that, to see a significant difference in your own behavior and your own thinking, um you know that there’s an issue on the horizon. So, um, I was basically able to hold out until about the seventh grade without really saying anything. I had a suicide attempt, uh, in November in, um, I guess it would, um, like November like, like nineteen-eighty-nine or something I think. I, um, I tried to electrocute myself by sticking my thumb in a light socket. But that did not work so, uh, basically a month and a half later, um, I told my mom that, you know, I just-- I was thirteen at the time that, no twelve, you know, and I asked her, I just said, “Look, can i just sit down and kind of have a heart to heart with you?” You know, which is usually something maybe a twelve-year old doesn’t ask their mom in that fashion. And, you know, I just kinda came clean to my mom that, you know, I was having what, at the time I didn’t know was hallucinations.
Um, this was all new to me. But I was hearing voices, I was seeing things. And, um, this was happening very-- it, it was all really kinda, especially after the suicide attempt, it was really picking up steam. So I stopped-- my parents and my teachers started noticing a difference. My grades were dropping considerably, my attendance was dropping considerably. Um, my weight was dropping considerably. You know, there was an instant change. My sister had noticed the change in me a long time before-- we were always very close and, you know, I remember one time. I guess it was, like, the fourth grade, and she approached me, and she was just like, “You know, you’re acting really strange.” So you know, um, family genetics, grandmother, grandfather, pretty much on each side of the family, so I was kinda like bound for this. You know, um, I just didn’t understand what was happening. So, um, basically because the school system was so small in Millstone at the time, um, they didn’t have a ver-- they didn’t really know what to do with me either. You know, I just kinda came out of nowhere with all these issues and everything.
You know, um, I had my first hospitalization, um it was, um at UBHC in uh, on Rutgers Campus. I was there for four weeks, I think? Um, and then when I came out, you know, life was so different because, you know, kinda the day before your first hospitalization ever you know, um, it’s like a… you know, you go from just watching TV in your living room and then all the sudden… I, I was originally hospitalized at Carrier for three days but then my parents’ insurance didn’t cover it. And I can definitely tell you that was very scary because I was on, kind of you know, the pricest wing for, uh, Carrier. So I can pretty much tell you being a thirteen, no, twelve-year-old at that time, was just watching like DuckTales and things at home, and then the next day you’re in this, um, wing that’s only one hallway and there’s kinda like, almost like spring-caged windows [laughs], this, it was just like, um, I realized that my life was never gonna be the same. So, um, you know that hospitalization I was there a couple days, I went to UBHC I was here a month, and then when I came out you know, Millstone School was a very small school system they basically couldn’t handle someone like me. So, it turned out that my parents moved back [laughs] to the house that they rented out. You know, uh, who knew? And, um, but the problem was, you know, life felt perfect before I moved to Millstone. And, and I didn’t know about poverty, I didn’t know… I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t say I was born completely into privilege but I certainly didn’t want for things. There was always food on the table, I had a TV in my room, a bike, you know, an arcade system in my room. I had it, I had it pretty damn good.
00:06:02
You know, so, you know when I went into the hospital, um, I was introduced to kids who didn’t have parents. I was introduced to kids who never saw their parents and so, you know I was just introduced to kids who basically were living in and out of hospitalizations and in and out of temporary foster care. So my eyes, like, even though I was extremely sick and working on myself, I had a culture shock to my system. Because, because now I’m being introduced to all these kids who aren’t used to having TVs in their room, and aren’t used to having plenty of stuffed animals, and aren’t used to having food on the table. Or aren’t used to getting to pick what food to eat. You know, there was no such thing as seconds, you know, you just got a little bit. So, I suddenly started, even in myself, my dynamic, my social dynamic first went to complete confusion, especially when I came back to East Brunswick Public Schools because everyone was just like, “Hey, Brian’s back.” You know? “Cool.” And I was just this totally different person. They did not understand, they did not get it. Which made it even worse because I went to the junior high school which literally, right on the other side of the road. Again, you’re talking very small school system of sixty kids in Millstone to about I don’t know, five hundred in a grade, you know, in East Brunswick so again, culture shock. So, I didn’t do well that year, I was hospitalized three times I think for a total of, uh, close to about two-and-a-half, three months. In, back and forth back and forth. So no one understood, I never understood. The child study team didn’t understand and my parents were trying to, you know.
Um, and my sister and I became extremely distant at that point. When my behavior changed, it also took a very large toll on my sister’s life. Because she didn’t have the symptoms and the experiences that I did, she was just an average, everyday kid. And all the sudden, people started to make fun of her because of me. You know, like, “Oh, your brother’s psychotic. He’s nuts. He’s crazy. He’s a lunatic.” You know. I’m sure someone must’ve approached you and said, “You must be as well.” [laughs] I don’t know. All I’m saying is, my sister is as normal as they come, you know, I don’t like that word but, you know. Um, it was extremely difficult for her. And that story’s important to be told, because for people in my situation the story always gets put on the ill child and it never gets put on the child, the sibling that has to go through everyday life and deal with their family and deal with someone like me and is still trying to, um, do all these things. So, basically that was kinda my high school years. It was in and out of hospitals, in and out of day programs, back to public school. And then I would go to, um, day programs and, uh, that’s when I became an advocate [laughs].
00:09:00
That’s when I started saying, “Okay, enough is enough.” And um, basically the first advocate issue I had was, um, I tried my best to play football in high school. It was the one thing that kept me going, the exercise, the energy, comradery with the team if I, if I had that. But um, basically the, um, day hospital said, “You can’t play football because you go here.” And I’m like, “Well, that sounds a little unfair.” You know, like I wanna have as much opportunity to be, like, a normal kid. Just, you know, and they’re like, “Well, you know, that, that doesn’t happen here.” And I think it wasn’t that it doesn’t happen here, it was that the school realized that if I was able to leave twenty minutes early to go to, uh, football practice, then all the other students would wanna do extracurricular activities. So, long story short I got kicked out of the school [laughs] in a very un, uh, kicked out of the day school. In a very unprofessional fashion cause, you know, I was escorted out by the Rutgers police. They said I was, like..so, then at that point, um, I uh, I went to a school called Collier. Collier was great for me it was at that point I kinda gave up on high school, I just stopped showing up. Depression was too much. If I attended fifty days out of the school year they were just like, “Good enough,” just keep passing him along because he’s too expensive, he’s too much work, we can’t handle him. I started getting into some fights and stuff which was very much out of my character which was very much out of my character. Kinda getting into a little trouble here and there which was very much out of my character. But, by the time I was a junior in high school I just gave up. And it led all the way to me having to go to, um, being involved pretty much in the state system, the county system as far as all these different things. Case management, whatever, and you know, I would go to a, um… I would have to go before a judge. For everyday I missed I would have to spend in a county youth shelter which basically just like an alternate prison. So, you know, I did that three times until that started to double up and then I just began to give up more and more.
And you were, and you were still at this point living at home, right?
Yes, I was still in high school. And um, finally the day came where I was just on, like, my fifth year of high school and my second senior year and East Brunswick High School was just like, “Look, all you gotta do is show up for the library like once or twice a week, for like an hour, that’s all you gotta do. Just sit there, walk around, and we’ll give you your diploma.” So I finally got my diploma and when I look at all of that I usually refer to my high school years as, “I on the battle but I lost the war.” I was able to stand up for myself during a time of illness and try the very best I could, but because I gave up on high school and because I felt a lot of people gave up on me at that point, I didn’t realize all the decisions I was making, was making, the type of impact they would have on my future. Not having a college education, not being able to pass Algebra I, or even pre-Algebra. Not learning a language, you know, not taking Driver’s Ed in high school. These were all things that I didn’t realize that once I got my diploma, I’d be completely on my own. So during that time you know I, I can’t even count how many hospitalizations I had. You know, symptoms would get worse, they would change, my diagnoses were just not, um, schizoaffective, which is, which is different from schizophrenia. Um, um, some significant differences but that’s certainly not to be like--
00:12:40
“Oh, I don’t want to be stigmatized as Schizophrenic.” I mean, hallucinations are hallucinations and hearing voices is hearing voices. But I can definitely tell you that people who just hear the word “Schizo--” They don’t care what diagnosis it is. They throw you all in one batch And it’s a shame because the stigma that comes with that is, is just awful. And I know many people who are schizophrenic and they’re like the nicest people I know, and, you know, so like we all deal with that. You know, “schizo” is just such a horrible word these days. All you have to do is just turn on the news and, you know, it’s a hundred-and-one things so, everyday Um. Dealing-- that’s probably the thing I deal with the most. That people don’t realize as much as I do is stigma. Ev-- Every single day I get some kind of-- just anything. Something that reminds me of the stigma. It could just be, like, junkmail that uses a certain language or something that you get
[laughs]. It could be anything. It could be a conversation that you’re having at Walmart with somebody in line, and they're like, “Oh yeah, my neighbor’s just crazy. He’s, you know, in hospitals all the time.” I mean, this is so repetitive because you realize that if you’re honest with that person and say, “Oh yeah, I was too,” they’re just gonna, you know, throw you in, throw you in this batch of what they assume is dangerous, violent people which really, I hate.
00:13:58
So, um, anyway, uh, after I graduated high school, um, I had nowhere to go, nothing to do, so I, [laughs] ironically I always liked physical ac-- activities, and um, different things so I figured I’d take dance classes, and, um, that was the only thing that I knew I could do that I could afford cheaply and it was the first thing I ever did start-to-finish. Like, I actually did one dance class, I tried to do ballet, and uh, it was just like a eight-week program and I finished it. And I’m like, “Wow. That was, that wasn’t so bad.” So that was my first taste of actually finishing something that I started. And, uh, from there I just did a volunteer work at Robert Wood Johnson Hospital as an orderly in the ER. During high school, I left to check out, um, I worked probably like, uh, I’d say thirty, forty jobs during high school.
00:14:55
One time is a specific example, I worked three jobs in one week. And I would quit because I would, I would just be depressed, uh, I would get a job one day, I’d be depressed, I would never show up. I’d work two days uh, so, so, I don’t know. But I have a binder this thick of almost every job that I had, at least one paystub. So that had a very big impact on-- so that has a very big impact on my life today, because a lot of people are like, “Well, why can’t you just get a job locally?” I can’t because I already worked there for three days [laughs]. And people forget that one-- I worked at Burger King for three different times. Wendy’s, three different times, you know. And some jobs I held for five months, some jobs I held for four months. Um, Walmart um, as far as full-- full time work was my biggest, biggest success. And uh, I was there working there for about ei-eight months, at full time and things seemed to be on the bright side there. And then I became, I hit a depression symptoms were getting very bad with OCD, hallucinations, hearing voices… so I got… and I had to be hospitalized. You know, and, um, when you’re in, in a psychiatric hospital and you know, you don’t have a phone next to your bed, you have a payphone that, you know, is shared between about twenty or thirty people. So you better hope that you have coins or a calling card, and, um, if you don’t, I mean, you ain’t reaching out really that far. So I never really told my job and stuff and I was hospitalized, I think for two weeks… so when I came back, they were just like, “Well, you didn’t call. You’re fired.”
00:16:31
And I’m like, “Well, I have a doctor’s note.” That just, didn’t say I was in the hospital, it just said, you know, “This patient was under my care,” you know, “Please excuse…” They didn’t care. You know, so, uh, this was like my first success, uh, I had made friends there. So I’m like, I’ll go to the labor board. You know, and, and you know, address this that way. And they’re like, “Well, okay, you know, we won’t fire you. But here, here’s the, here’s a pale and a bucket and a mop.” You know, “And your new job is, um, part time and you can, you know, be a janitor here.” And I, um, you know, un-- unfortunately I took that personally. Because I found it very degrading, you know, um, I quit. So in the very end I guess they got what they want. But after that, um, I kinda started eating out of depression. A lot. And the, the doctor that I had was changing medications constantly, constantly just flipping medications, putting me on stuff that I was on before. Um, in my lifetime, so far, I think I’ve at least counted twenty-six different psychotropic medicines, but I’m sure if I took a in-depth look it would, it would, uh, be a lot more. So, um, around that time, I would say my early twenties, I’d finally gotten my, my license and my parents were generous th, they gave me a car that, you know, they just didn’t really need at that point. Which opened up, you know, a lot of opportunities for me.
Uh, I still tried to stay with sports, um, you know, that was always been kinda my saving grace, so uh, you know I started playing in REC softball leagues and things, things like that. But, um, I started to put on a lot of weight from the medicine. And like um, rapidly. So rapidly, like, by the time, um, you know, I was up, I was hitting like three-hundred pounds at some point. But, um, basically, um, eventually job, job, hospitalization, hospitalization, hospitalization, um, I was hospitalized again and, um, at that point my parents were just like, “Well, he can’t come home anymore.” Which was the right decision because, you know, things were kinda getting really rocky at home, my father and I were kinda getting into a lotta fights, but not just like screaming-argument fights, you know, they were getting kinda physical. My mom was always the one trying to balance things out. You know, she was at wits’ end, so. Um, it was actually probably one of the best things that ever happened to me, that they made that decision. But at that point, um, I was kinda stuck. In the hospital. ‘Cause the hospital wouldn’t release me unless I had a place to live. So I was kinda just hanging out there in limbo for a while [laughs]. Which really, really was beginning to take its toll on me, too, because the only fresh air you can get is like, on a smoke break and if you don’t smoke… not exactly fresh air. So, um, at that point, uh, I was sent to the Park Hotel, which is a boarding home. And, um, you know, a boarding home in Plainfield which, you know, um. I was there I think, for close to a month and, you know, that was first taste of reality, of life on my own. Except that the place was ultimately flooded with cockroaches and, you know, i remember I shared, like, a room smaller than this, um, that just had two cots and a little, uh, dresser. And the roommate that I had was, he was about eighty years old. And he actually passed when I was there, so, um, you know, it was very close quarters, it was very poor conditions and even the bathroom that we had in our room, the tiles were broken so you could literally see in the bath-- the shower next to you. So, you know, it was, um, it wasn’t a very healthy place to live. And, um, you know, there wasn’t a lot of opportunities for me in Plainfield. [Sharp inhale] So, I, I went back home. That was about September two-thousand-eleven, I remember, because all that stuff took place and then I was immediately sent to a group home in SERV, which was in Highland Park. So now I was in, in, in a better place, you know, um, you know I shared, it was a group home so I shared a two-bedroom apartment with three other guys. I was, I think, twenty-three, twenty-four at the time. They were primarily all in their fifties and sixties, so again, it was a little bit, um, hard for me, um, to kinda identify with my roommates in cer, in certain ways. And, um, you know, again, just falling back in the hospitalizations. The, the rules were really strict there. So once again I became an advocate and, you know, you kinda had to be in by nine o’clock, you couldn’t stay out on weekends, and I still had some friends that I just wanted to be age twenty-four, you know? So, um, you know, I got kicked out of there. You know, and basically, what that-- was the way that occurred, and at that point I couldn’t identify with, with really anyone at that point. I had a few friends but they were all from Collier and everything, which was an alternative high school for, you know,
00:21:35
and shared with other students who really didn’t belong or difficulties in school. So, um, you know, I had met a friend in the hospital and she was active in drug addiction. And, um, I always tried to be helpful, you know, I always had good intentions and she was homeless so I’d sneak her into the group home at night so she would have a place to stay but I never really had any friendships, close friendships with addicts in active addiction. So, um, it turned out that she overdosed in the apartment. Which was completely my fault, I should’ve seen that one coming. Um, and, uh, because of that I got thrown out and everything. And, you know, all these things began to kind of collapse at mild records for me, you know I wasn’t involved but I wasn’t not involved and you know, the trouble I’d seen in the past would kinda seem to just be building and building and building to the point where I was just really ending up nowhere.
So when I got kicked out of there I was homeless, again, this would be the second time. And, um, at that time [laughs] who, who knew, again, a little bit of a saving grace out of nowhere, but, uh, I had an overpayment from Social Security Disability in November two-thousand-two. And it was for thirteen-thousand dollars which is really unusual. Yeah, very strange. And there was another one, I think, follow up like a month later for like, five-hundred dollars. So basically, you know Social Security is like, you have in the ballpark like, whatever it was, thirteen-thousand five-hundred dollars you have to spend in six months. So, I’m homeless, you know, and those are the rules-- You either accept the money, you know, and spend it in six months or if you don’t, you know, you get kicked off SSDI if you don’t spend it in six months. So you know, it was the first time where it was like, I was ever able to say I actually had some money that I could try to live off on my own, get an apartment. But that was even, uh, two-thousand… that was two-thousand-three at that point, um, you know, it uh, thirteen-thousand dollars doesn’t go that fair, especially when you’re also on kinda like a manic kick for a while, and you’re just buying
this-that-and-the-other-thing. So, um, uh, but I got my first apartment there, it was in New Brunswick. And um, you know, it lasted about two months before everything was gone. And uh, but I met another friend in the hospital um, and uh, we became roommates cause he had just lost his job, you know, but he had uh, you know, he was doing okay for himself.
00:24:14
He had some savings. And he was one of, um, the biggest influences in my life because, um, even at age twenty-three he taught me everything I needed to know about being an adult. Um, I didn’t know those things yet. I didn’t know, really, how to be responsible. How to take things, take things seriously that I should. You know, and having him as a roommate for three years, um, was a blessing. And one, another person who saved my life who I left out of this was in my first hospitalization, this is going back to age twelve, um, when I was at Rutgers UBHC, and I was talking about, you know, culture shock from watching DuckTales in the afternoon to being, you know, in a whole different element. I would’ve never survived that hospitalization if it wasn’t for somebody else that I met my first roommate there, he was seventeen, I was twelve. Um, he was a couple months short of eighteen. And he was, uh, convicted for attempted murder in a drug deal. So again, I wasn’t really familiar with this type of lifestyle but he had, you know, a uh, he had a young so, that uh, we wasn’t allowed to see and, uh, you know, he taught me, he taught me what I needed to know for my high school years, being in and out of facilities and state things and everything. He taught me what I needed to know by telling me, “Never come back here again.” You know? But he taught me a lot about life, you know, he was African American, and um, he taught me about life in New Brunswick for kids who didn’t have it so good. You know, for kids who didn’t have parents, who had to take care of themselves and stuff. So, my role models are basically, you know, what’s interesting, is my role models are people that most people would never wanna talk to in their lifetime. Because, “Oh, that person’s dangerous.” Or, “That person’s this.” Or, “That person’s this.” Or, “That person must be cruel because of their actions.” And those are my greatest role models, in my life. Were people who have really deeply struggled more than I’ll ever know, and um, taught me life lessons even though it took me a long time to learn them. So, moving forward, back up, you know, having that three years of being able to live in a two-bedroom apartment with this person that I’d met in the hospital, you know, um, he was able to get another job and, and, you know, we maintained a friendship. And he taught me a lot about life. You know, I started my softball teams and never quit them, there, but, um.
You know, from there, um, that situation couldn’t maintain itself anymore. My budget wasn’t allowing myself to be able to pay even my share of the rent anymore, um, everything was chaotic. So, uh, you know, I was approached with the idea that if you don’t renew your lease and you claim homelessness, you know, you could get a rental subsidy from the Department of Mental Health. You know, and um, you know, I was like, alright. So, you know, I just kinda abandoned ship on my friend and you know, took, took the chances of, you know, getting a rental subsidy. The, the person who told me that works for Rutgers UBHC, so I think they were just like, you know, we can kinda hook you up a bit. And, uh, that was a very… most people are not that lucky and that fortunate. But, you know, I was. So at that point, um, I, I was homeless for a little while.
But I was able to get a rental subsidy in June two-thousand-six. And um, that changed my life. I mean, I’ll tell you something, there’s this housing model out there called Housing First. And um, you know, Housing First is just a, uh, you know, I don’t know if you’re familiar with it, but… okay. So, um, so I actually had-- excuse me-- I actually had, you know, housing.
00:28:02
You know, I actually had [laughs]-- there’s no napkin there. I actually had housing and, um, you know, um, that changed everything for me. Um, within six months of having housing I started to apply to go to college. I was like, “Alright, my life is deteriorating.” You know, even though I have housing, my life is deteriorating. So I’m like, alright, I need to start applying to go to Middlesex County College. And I, I kinda remember one day I looked at myself in the mirror and I, I lost some weight um, because when I was in the hospital, my highest was three-hundred-and-forty. And I was on Zyprexa and Depakote at the time, which is a really, dangerous combination and the doctor was just like, “This is gonna kill you.” So at that point I was just on Depakote, but I could not break um, two-hundred and fifty pounds. As much, as much as I tried. So, socially it, it’s very hard, um, I, I couldn’t seem to meet anyone or, or make friends. A lot of people were still making fun of me because of my weight and all these things, even in softball and everything.
So I de-- I decided to take the gamble of a lifetime. And I was like, you know, I, I was contemplating suicide, again, another attempt, and I was just like, “This is not a way to live.” So I went off all my medicine cold-turkey. And I didn’t tell anyone, you know, which didn’t last very long. Or it didn’t need to last very long [laughs]. But, um, you know, I kinda, um, got the idea because in November of two-thousand-six, um, I was admitted at Columbia-- I was sent for an interview at Columbia University for a Schizophrenic program, which, um, I kinda knew that I wasn’t gonna be able to qualify for anyway, Schizoaffective. But the plan was there, “We’re gonna take you off all your medicine, everything, and start over.” So to me, that sounded like a welcome idea, except for the fact that would literally be, like, shut in, you couldn’t like, call anyone, you couldn’t have visitors. You couldn’t go outside. You know, you’d literally be, like, trapped in the Columbia Psychiatric Department for, like, a month or two without human contact, other than your doctors. So, um, when I wasn’t accepted I was, you know, pretty much shattered and I was gonna commit suicide that night. But I was like, “You know what? I can do this on my own. I…” You know?
So, you know, as soon as I went off my medicine, it lasted about a month or two before I can really kinda, before trouble began [laughs]. But, uh, I held my own. And you know what, my doctors were really cool, they understood why I did it and they started putting me on some new medicine that didn’t have the side effects. And that brought me to a new section in my life. Um, I developed uh, eating disorders cause I was so afraid to eat that point, you know, um, I went from two-fifty down to one-thirty-five, you know, and maintained that. And I looked horrible, you know, but that brought on a new onset of problems, just, eating disorders of all kinds-- bulimia, I just… [sharp inhale] But I still maintained. I tried to work when I could, unsuccessfully, job, you know, held it for a month, then I’d quit. But it wasn’t until about, um, two-thousand-eight that I kinda began to come around again. You know, I’ll sometimes call it “come around again” where I’ll go through a difficult phase in my life, not just because I got in trouble for something or I got kicked out of a school or whatever. You know, you kinda come around and you resurface and it’s like, alright, what can I do now to improve my life. And um, that’s when I began to become very angry. I went through two-thousand-eight and two-thousand-nine I went through a period of extreme anger within myself. Not at other people. Um, but I really kinda shut myself out. You know. I maintained what I had to do-- softball, tried to work. But it was a very bad period so that’s when I started a new phase of advocacy in my life, which was trying to recover my medical records to kinda find the truth about all the questions I had since I was age twelve. So that took a lot of research and time because no lawyers wanted to help me, nobody really wanted to get involved.
And, um, you know that turned into a small legal battle, um, with UBHC to be able to read my records and I found out what I needed to know, what I always thought and what I didn’t. Which at that point was kinda like a point of healing for me, or a new step of healing. And, but that began my advocacy career. Not career, I’m sorry, but just-- volunteers and because when I kinda was able to finally achieve access to my records after, like, six months and be able to sit down and read all the truths that I wanted to know, um, going back all the way to age twelve. Um, that’s when I began to learn that, you know, I was a good advocate. So basically from that point, um, I began to get involved in advocating at different levels, at basically when I call, uh, social venting. When I went to public forums and I would just scream and yell at the top of my lungs about yow, you know, food stamps and all the systems is just all wrong, it’s backwards. Um, I expressed myself in every way, um, outside of swearing, but like, you know, I would just scream at the top of my lungs at like legislators. I would literally just go off the hook. And, um, that’s when finally someone from the county was like, “You know, you got a pretty big mount,” [laughs], and like, “Why don’t you put your money where your mouth is and, you know.” So I was like “Alright, give me the chance.” So that’s when, in two-thousand-fourteen I joined the, um, the, uh, I became uh, uh, appointed to the uh Middlesex County Human Services Advisory Council. And that was new for me because it was like my first official advocacy thing. I was no longer this angry independent advocate. I still couldn’t hold a job [laughs]-- at that point I was probably up to, like, job sixty at that point? But, uh, you know-- everything from slicing, um, deli meat at shoprite or whatever grocery store to working at the rest stop, the midnight shift pumping gas, you know, on the turnpike. Working at Macy’s, JCPenney. I, I did a little bit of everything, you know. Um, but I couldn’t maintain holding a job and I found myself in advocacy. I found for the first time that, um, I could do something and do it well. The problem was that I wasn’t very welcomed, because I was kind of like this outsider. This pissed off person who actually received the services that we were trying to help. And it’s not that, with good intentions, that wasn’t what the coun-- the council was about improvements, but I wasn’t really part of the, you know, the, the, the, um, the group, you know. And I really had to fight a lot to earn my
respect. But not fight in a bad way, fight in a good way. Just to earn peoples’ respect, you know, for them to actually, for me to be able to come… I also had to learn how to be a professional speaking advocate, I couldn’t yell and scream anymore, you know. I couldn’t yell at people to their face and say that, “This system is a joke and this doesn’t work and you don’t get it.”
You know, I actually had to learn how to sit down with people and be, and have like a professional conversation about issues. And um, I became part of the homeless youth task force because that became a very big issue for me, because I know so many people who were part of homeless youth. And even me, I consider myself homeless youth because there were many times that I just wasn’t around [laughs]. You know, doing my own thing when I was supposed to be in school or living with my parents, so, you know homeless youth takes many different forms. So, so I felt like being a part of that really kinda made me feel that I actually was talking about something that I really understood. And then, um, then I became part of the Garden State Leaders Program in two-thousand-six. Oh no, I’m sorry [laughs] two-thousand-sixteen. And um, that, again, came around, brought me back to a new level of finding myself, you know. Um, that was the first time I was ever able to be part of a, um, a group of people that, you know, kinda became, became a family to me.That believed in me. Um, you know, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve only had a few people in my life who really believed in me: My therapist, who is the first therapist I’ve ever had, from Rutgers UBHC since I’ve been twelve, which is very rare. Um, I’ve had the same psychiatrist for twelve years, uh, eleven years now. Which again, in New Jersey is very rare. Especially being that she, you know, um, works more in the system, you know, normally the turnover there is completely, uh, it’s… So, she believes in me.
00:37:07
Um, I have family that believes in me, you know, my mom. My, my immediate family and stuff. Although I’m, I’m, I’m like a very, um, disconnected relationship with them after everything that’s been done. And uh, you know people from uh, you know, the Garden State Leaders Program. Which brought me into advocating at the state and even the Federal level, somewhat. You know, getting involved in lobbying and just recently I joined the Poor Peoples’ campaign and I went from advocacy even to some lobbying to now activism! [laughs] So now I get arrested for good reasons! [laughs] So, you know, that kinda brings me back and there’s like a thousand, to today.
And there’s a thousand and one stories in between that I left out that have such extreme significance, but, you know, you can work around that I guess. You know, the little stories sometimes count the most. And that’s where I have more than I could ever imagine, more than I could ever imagine. And those are where the life lessons come in. The little stories with the people that you meet-- you hear their story. I mean, I remember when I was twelve years old it was such a culture shock because, um, technically I, I guess I could’ve qualified for the youth unit, but they thought I was mature enough in age to be in the teenage unit. And it was difficult because I look back at the time in my life so much and, you know, there were teenagers there who were dealing with issues of rape and abuse and, you know, there were teenagers there who were you know, I, I can definitely tell you there was more-- no more terrifying conversation than hearing a, someone who was raped, in a group where the doors are locked and it’s cement walls, someone was raped trying to rationalize to someone who’s a rapist. And when you’re twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old having to listen to these conversations and then go back to public school, I mean, that was probably the hardest part of my life.
So it’s, it’s like… you know, I feel like I understand life from many different angles very, many different perspectives even though I haven’t been through everything-- God, thank God. You know I don’t know those experiences. But, you know, I do understand abuse from parents and I, you know, multiple kinds. And I, you know, I… I can identify with a lot of people that most people don’t want to. You know, and those, um, are the people I’m closest with and unfortunately I, I’ve never really been able to, um, feel comfortable even today around people that just, even though they’re my friends and I, I… If there’s no kinda calamity going on in life I don’t get it. [laughs] You know, I often come up with little slogans to get myself through each day. Um, one of them is, “Tomorrow will be better because that’s what tomorrow is for.” Um, I kind of look at, I kinda always try to do my advocacy work from the angle of, you know, you don’t-- I always kinda look at it this way as like, you know, um there’s many way you can lose your innocence in life but I think one of the worst ways is when you’re no longer afraid to go to court. Because I left out all the evictions and all the reasons for the evictions. But when you’re no longer afraid to go before a judge, whether you’re a teenager or an adult, um, you know, you’ve lost your innocence. You know, there’s a certain amount where, where you should be afraid to go to jail, you know, and stuff and that’s something that I’m dealing w-- you should be afraid to go before a judge for anything. That’s something I, why I’ve gotten involved in, in um, civil disobedience because it’s helping me learn the difference of -- you know, I still have a lot of maturing to do [laughs]. As a forty-one year old man, you know, I still have a lot of life to live but a lot of basic life experiences of just what I’d call a mainstream life I don’t understand and I still have to learn. So, any questions you have I mean there’s tons of stuff that I, like I said, it’s the smallest stories, the, the little things and the reason why I’ve always kept all this documentation for years on end, just decades of binders so I don’t forget.
Right.
00:41:33
You know-- where I’ve come from. And I started writing a little, um, little, little Cliff Notes version [laughs] of my, of maybe a book one day that I might write. I started that in, uh, two-thousand-sixteen. But ironically I, I had to email them to a friend because I couldn’t write them down on paper to myself. So, you know, unfortunately I’ve lost touch with my friend at that, due to differences, and um, with that I kind of put down the pen on the keyboard and I’ve never picked it up since, but, you know, I’ve always wanted to. So, you know, I live everyday. I, I, I can’t say I live life to its fullest. I can’t always say that’s my attitude, I wish it was, I really envy people who have that attitude. But, you know, my life’s a struggle. And everyday is a challenge. And the hard part is my challenges are somewhat predictable. The only challenges that are not predictable that I have are, are when I challenge myself to do something or achieve something. You know, the other day I, not the other day-- three weeks ago-- I got a letter in the mail from food stamps and it said “Your food stamps is gonna be reduced by a hundred and fifty dollars.” I was like, okay, that was predictable. You know, and, um, I’ve lost five pounds since. Just from, just trying to stretch out you know, my, my refrigerator, ya open it, it echoes [laughs] you know, there’s not much in there.
What, what was the rationale that they gave you for the cut?
Um, they said basically my income uh, was too much and my rent I’m paying is too low. So like, right now my rent I’m paying is one-fifteen, which is extraordinarily low. But that’s because when you have banquet work, you don’t work over the winter time and I only work once a week and that doesn’t always mean I get hours. But food stamps is tricky because it’s like for every single dollar that you earn in earned income in a job, it’s almost like... I always say they take two on top of that. So it’s like, for every dollar you earned in income-- it doesn’t matter if you make twenty dollars an hour, you’re working at Burger King for eight dollars and sixty cents in New Jersey, they take two dollars. So, the, the way the system works at least in New Jersey, you know, kinda what goes up, what goes up must come down and what goes up must stay up. You know, it, it’s kinda like, you know, if you work and your income goes up, your food stamps goes down. No, I’m sorry, if you, yeah, if you work and make income, your food stamps go down and your rent goes up. And, uh, you know, so your rent, they don’t always make the adjustments like with an SRA Voucher, you’re supposed to pay twenty-five percent, not twenty-five percent of the monthly rent, twenty-five percent of your earned income. Whereas when I had a voucher, uh, that I got in two-thousand-six, the Department of Mental Health, uh, you pay forty percent of your income. But there’s a large difference in that because the Department of Mental Health voucher, you can live more different, you have more freedom to live where you’d like to live. So that addresses just, um, you know, housing issues against, you know, prejudice and discrimination. There’s a lot [takes deep breath] and it’s very hard to explain but, um, I can go into detail anytime.
W-w-why don’t we…
Yeah, just tell me where you’d like me to…
00:45:08
Some of that stuff more systematically, you know, where--
Mm-hmm, sure.
‘Cause what I, what I do want to talk about is--
Absolutely.
Is the money that’s coming in and the various--
Right.
Of, of expenses that people sometimes don’t realize. Let’s, let’s talk about it, so you’re--
Mm-hmm.
Um, what would you say monthly income is, generally?
I get six-hundred and sixty-seven dollars in SSDI, um, I actually get more but they take out, I think a hundred and twenty-four for Medicare, um, premiums, and then, um, that thirteen-thousand dollars I mentioned, overpayment, yeah, I, I, I got caught having to pay that back for some reason so I’ve been paying thirteen-thousand dollars back to social security for a decade now or whatever, so, you know they take out seventy-five dollars a month. So between just deductions there, I make twenty dollars an hour at One Atlantic, a standard shift is your traditional eight, eight-and-a-half hours, so, you know, I guess that would be about one-sixty. So you times that times four, that’s like, uh, two-forty. So I guess my income right now could be in the ballpark of about twelve-hundred dollars. But work at One Atlantic, a lot of people ask me, is it seasonal. It’s like, no, you know, you just don’t always work. It’s a permanent job but from December to the middle of April, I didn’t work at all. You know, from like, the middle of December, I think to kinda the early April, middle of April I didn’t work one shift. So that’s where it gets really a very big challenge in the system because they... One time I was told that I had to quit my job at One Atlantic so that they could adjust my, um, the services I receive-- food stamps and my rental subsidies to the proper levels based on six-sixty-seven, because they’re like, “Well, as long as you’re employed, it doesn’t matter that you’re not making income, we have to base it on your last paychecks.” And I’m like, that’s insane, because it’s like, now I’m paying sixty-six percent of my income into rent, that leaves me like two-hundred and something dollars. And they’re like, “Well, you have to quit your job to adjust it.” [laughs] and I’m like, that’s so illegal! You know, like I’m not supposed to be paying forty percent of my rent by HUD rules. And they’re like, “Well you found this weird little window.” [laughs] So.
Wow.
It’s like, it’s a crazy system that just, like, you really… I hate to put it this way but you have to play by the rules by a T so that the system treats you fair. Um, and that’s fine. That’s how it’s supposed to be. That’s how it’s legally supposed to be. It’s just, fundamentally if you do the system puts you in a situation where it’s best not to work. You know, a lot of times, if I were just... If I really wanted to accept the safety net of my rental subsidy and secure my food stamps without having adjustments, working is the worst thing you could do. Like to keep my food stamps stable, that I could count on a certain amount a month without changes and, and stable amount rent, I often-- sometimes make a joke to myself, “Well, just like, alright, time to give up on life and just put my feet up on that couch and do absolutely nothing.”
00:48:27
Because it’s like, that’s a lot of times what it’s like to have to work in the system. I have a friend right now-- she really wants to work, she really wants to get a job. She can’t stand staying home. But the only, she receives food stamps, she doesn’t have a rental subsidy, she’s trying to get one and she certainly should. She has um, a, a daughter who’s an infant. And she has, um, two young adolescent boys and it’s really, really hard for her. You know, she kinda finds her way from place to place. And as far as housing, but, you know, she really wants to get a job, but just to keep her food stamps stable, just to take, take care of her kids and make sure that they have enough food, she chooses not to work. And she hates it. Because she knows that if she gets a job, everything’s gonna change for her kids. And if she gets a job the income isn’t going to be able to maintain enough money to be able to s-- what’s the word? Substitute for the difference in food stamps. So, you know, me-- I always kinda look at it like, you know, by working I’m always throwing caution to the wind. [laughs] Because it’s like, alright, I’m gonna get a job and life is only gonna get harder. But it’s just me. I’m not looking after kids, I just have to take care of myself. So if I wanna throw caution into the wind-- I mean, if I were to even just work a extra day at One Atlantic, um, my rent would soar. To mean that I couldn’t, um, you know, manage. Now, my food stamps would go up. But it still wouldn’t make, make up the difference. I mean I am, right now, you know, my income-- my new food stamps amount of fifty-six dollars, you know, all you have to do is go to ShopRite and a gallon of milk is three dollars and nineteen cents right now, at Walmart I think it’s two-eighty-five. You know, times that times four? Ha. And you’re looking at, what, like fifteen dollars and you? What? That’s just, milk, you know, for the month.
And that’s, just, sixty-six dollars a month in food stamps right now?
Yes. Mm-hmm. Which is just, if you divide. I always just divide it by four, you know, and, um, you know that comes out to whatever the math is-- I don’t know, like fifteen dollars a week, if that. My point is, if you can’t even buy… if a gallon of milk is taking almost like a quarter, twenty-- if four gallons of milk takes up twenty-five percent of your food stamps for the month, that’s just four gallons of milk? [Sighs] How do other people get by? I mean, it’s just me! If I wanna lose five pounds in three weeks because I wanna stretch my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and skip lunch, that’s fine. It’s just me, you know, but I’m concerned about families and stuff, you know. Um, I live at the Dollar Store. You know, um, basically I live there because I go there every couple days. But I always kinda look at it as like, I’m there every couple days because that’s where I buy everything. You know. Pretty much everything you look at in this apartment, maybe besides some Walmart put-together furniture, was purchased at the Dollar Store [laughs]. You know? Like, um, what I buy for three bars of soap is what I buy for my spatula that I make my eggs with, you know? Um, what I buy a roll of paper towels costs the same amount as my shampoo. And if the Dollar Store didn’t exist at either a dollar-seven an item or at a dollar if it wasn’t taxed-- I wouldn’t be able to live here. Because I would have to make a choice-- do I want shampoo? It’s not always about to food or my rent, it’s do I want shampoo or my rent?
Now, my rent right now is one-fifteen, which, hey, you know what, on the record, I don’t care. I haven’t reported my income in a couple months. It should be higher right now. But the reason why I did that was because I was paying more in January. And honestly, if my rent went up to the amount that it’s supposed to be right now, wouldn’t be able to afford to live here. So I’m just gonna take my chances of getting caught. I just admitted it on the record, go ahead, my-- I’m cheating the system right now! Just so I can afford to live! [Laughs] I’m cheating the system right now just so that I can have shampoo. You know, just so I can wash myself with soap. People don’t get that. You know, my friend that I was talking about, she’s like, “You know, I don’t always report everything.” She’s like, “I work under the table sometimes, I don’t report it.” She’s like, “I’m so terrified with food stamps.” I said, “Look, you know,” I said, “So does everybody.” If we, you know, lived by the rules the way they’re set there’s no need for rental subsidies. Because you still wouldn’t be able to afford ‘em. People just don’t understand. They don’t-- they think you have a rental subsidy. You know, they think you’ve got it made! They’re jealous, they’re envious of you. You know? That’s why a lot of times I don’t connect with, with even sometimes the working poor. I don’t always connect with the working poor. Heck with the middle class, they wouldn’t-- they just hate people like me. But the working poor? Just, just squeezing by without a rental subsidy? I can’t even identify with them-- they, they get angry at me. So I only identify with people that really, the really like, the bottom echelon of the poverty level because they understand. You know, I-- my lease renewal comes up in like a month or two. So that’s when I’ll, I’ll report my income. And technically yes, I should lose my rental subsidy at that point but you know what? It’s too hard to live as it is. You know, my car insurance is a hundred and fifty-seven dollars a month. And if, if I-- well people are like, you know, get a job that’s closer. That, I still need a job to get my doctors. You know? I’m very fortunate that public transportation picks up right there-- that, the Middlesex County eight-eighteen and eight-fifteen.
00:54:42
Picks up right there, takes you right to the New Brunswick train station. But then I’d have to stay at the New Brunswick train station for about fifteen minutes to a half hour to wait for the next train or a bus. So just to be able to go a, a distance of like five miles, if I were to take public transportation from there, it would take me, take me about an hour and a half. [Laughs] To go five miles. So like, again, I feel really bad for people who have to depend on public transportation. I used-- I didn’t always have a car. But my doctors are not around the corner and it’s just not, and my, my psychiatrist and therapist that I have to see, I have other health conditions. Which, I don’t have a special medical diet, but I have a certain due to my medication that if I don’t eat properly, the right foods such as raisins and other things like that, um, I’d become extremely, extremely sick to the point where I’d have to go to a physical hospital like Robert Wood Johnson or St. Peter’s for other issues. So a container of raisins is two dollars and eighty-seven cents. Close to a gallon of milk. So by the time that I eat the diet that I am supposed to eat so I have, do not have to end up in the emergency room for different reasons, my food stamps are gone.
And you have to, I mean, I can tell by, by you’re able to recite the prices…
Yes.
Which I’m assuming, you know, most of us don’t really need to do.
00:56:15
I have to. I, I literally have to go to the grocery store-- I either get my groceries at Walmart or ShopRite. ‘Cause ShopRite I can walk to and Walmart I can walk to. And the Dollar Store. Those are the only three places I-- one grocery store, one larger conglomerate store, and one store over there that, you know, the Dollar Store sells some food and, and, you know, but, you know, yeah. Depending on my budget for the week, where do I wanna buy my, uh, frosted mini wheats this week? You know, what’s on sale? Is the ShopRite brand on sale at two dollars and twenty-nine cents? Or, you know, sometimes Walmart flips their prices from a dollar eighty-nine for frosted mini wheats to sometimes it’s two-ten, sometimes it’s fifty. So, that’s how I know the prices because I eat the same damn diet everyday because it’s all that I could afford. Peanut butter and jelly, the cheapest you can get it, is a dollar forty-nine, when it’s a good week at ShopRite. Um, standard ShopRite prices is usually two-fifty for peanut butter and jelly if it’s on sale, jelly is a dollar eighty-eight. Um, but it’s regular you know, so, you know, like. You have to-- how many pieces are in a loaf of bread, on average? Twenty? Depending on what brand you buy. And depending on what brand I buy depends on the week [laughs] of my budget. Sometimes it’s ShopRite brand. Sometimes I might treat myself, reward myself and get like Stroehmann Bread or something. [Laughs] Like, that’s a reward for me. I’m gonna upgrade my bread. And you can taste the difference in the quality. But, so, there’s a big difference in flavor between buying Dannon yogurt when it’s on sale for seventy-five cents and buying Walmart yogurt. There’s a tremendous difference in price. But Walmart yogurt is regular price twenty-five cents and it’s decent yogurt, so I am not going to spend money on Dannon that’s seventy cents on sale. So you do taste a difference but you know where you need to be at your budget. And, you’re right, mathematically my mind works just like a calculator. You know? I don’t need to… Coupons don’t help me. Honestly. Because people think like, “Well if you use coupons.” Coupons these days is like buy one-- buy three get one free. And like, that is not really saving money for me [laughs], and I’ll tell you why-- I’ll tell you why! ‘Cause I don’t have enough money in my pocket to buy three boxes of cereal that week. That’s out of control, you know, for me. I don’t have enough money to buy three boxes of cereal so that I can get one for free. You know, and still put gas in my car?
That, that would be a long-term savings but you can’t…
I can’t afford it for that week! ‘Cause I, I need gas in my car. ‘Cause my, fifty-six dollars in food stamps by the middle of the month that’s just, just gone. It’s just-- raisins at two eighty-seven a container, cheapest price. Milk-- two eighty-five right now the cheapest price. Other things such as apples, uh, dollar ninety-nine a pound at ShopRite. Um, dollar twenty-seven, I think, a pound at Walmart, so definitely buy your apples at Walmart. But you gotta… You can’t think thirty days in ahead. You can’t think twenty-eight days ahead. You have to think seven days. The only times you have to think bigger picture, budget in thirty days is stuff like, like I have a laptop here that is pointless to use because there is no internet
01:00:00
Um, my TV doesn’t work, I mean, it works if I wanna get like, a Red Box movie, but right now, that, that’s. My laptop hasn’t been on in, in two months. And I get pay-per-month internet. And people are like, “Oh! You don’t have to go through Verizon, you could get pay-per-month internet through, like Boost Mobile, so you don’t get the penalties when they turn it off.” You
know. And I’m like, well, I have that. And they’re like, “Oh that doesn’t work for you?” And I’m like, well, I don’t have forty-five bucks to just do something with it! So the only difference between me having internet service and not, is if I could afford it that month. So I’ll go a week with having my cell phone turned off sometimes if it need be, cause I have pay-per-month phone service. So yeah, it’s, sometimes it’s really hard and I’ll just make up some reason my friends, family, you know, I may not. You know, just kinda not feeling well or something for a couple days. So those are your long-term budget items, you know, your phone bill. Internet scratch, cable TV scratch. You can go to the library to use the internet if you have to. My cell phone has you know, internet stuff like that, that’s fifty bucks. So that’s, your rent would be your, your long-term issue. Your car? Well, I’ve been caught driving without insurance two times in my life so that’s where I have to be a mature adult and be a responsible person and say, no, the car’s sitting there until I pay my car insurance. Whereas ten years ago, I’d say, well, I gotta go to my doctor’s, it’s not my fault that I can’t afford my car insurance, I’m gonna drive anyway. You know, so, you have to make responsible decisions. But as far as a budget, you know, long-term, long-term. It’s always best to buy… it’s always best to have ten times pair of socks more than you need, because in the middle of the month you’re not really gonna be able to afford laundry detergent. Now, Dollar Store laundry detergent is alright, but it actually damages your clothes, okay? [laughs]
[Laughs].
The chemicals they use I just, I noticed that, alright. So, you at some point have to take the lowest level of laundry detergent. But at that point you have to make sure that you have plenty of socks that you don’t have to wash. That you have a stockpile because by the middle of the month, laundry detergent-- that becomes a luxury. Laundry detergent bec-- it’s, it’s five dollars and six bucks, it’s a luxury! So make sure that you have like thirty pairs of socks just ready to go because you might go a week without doing laundry. Not because you don’t have water, but, soap. You could wash, I’ve washed my clothes in, in dish soap. Okay. It’s, not the thing. And that’s living here. You know, that’s living here in this beautiful condominium complex. I live here in this beautiful place but yet sometimes I can’t afford laundry detergent. So having a rental subsidy isn’t exactly everything it’s cracked up to be. It’s a savior for me. And I’m blessed and I’m fortunate but, um, you know. I don’t know. You know, I take a look around and I’m just like… I don’t know. I wake up every morning and I’m just like how long, how much further can I crunch this budget just to be able to live here? And now that I have to report my income in two months, am I gonna be able to handle that? Probably not. Dig up money from somewhere… family, knock on their door if they have it. Um. I’m too embarrassed to ask friends for help so what do I do? I don’t eat. That’s what I do. Or I don’t… or I just make sure I have plenty of socks. Or I don’t drive my car for a while. But the problem is you kinda count on your car and then even with Medicare it’s like, you save a lot of money but like… The problem is, you never have more than like, three dollars in your wallet. And you never really have more than four dollars and seventy-five cents in your checking account. There is nothing more embarrassing to go to the Wells Fargo over there, and wait in line, and make a withdrawal of like four dollars and fifty cents out of four dollars and seventy-five cents. But you need that four dollars and twenty-five cents so you can take the train somewhere. Cause you get a discount with Medicare. So you literally have to wait in line, you know, ‘cause and withdraw four dollars and fifty-cents. And of course privacy at a bank there’s no, there’s no independent offices so when you want to make a withdrawal. And like, sometimes, even the tellers, you know, they should know better. But they’ll be like, “Okay, let me count that out for you.” And they’ll be like, “One, two, three four. And fifty cents!” [laughs] And you’re just like walking out with your head down in shame. You know. But that, that’s a reality too. You know? You need that four dollars and fifty cents. You can’t use the ATM ‘cause you only-- you can’t deposit money in the ATM ‘cause it’s not enough. You need a twenty dollar bill. You know, eh. [laughs]
It’s, I mean, it’s a week to week thing and even though at least, you get money at the beginning of the month from, from SNAP, right?
Mm-hmm.
01:05:44
The first of the month. And SSD comes on the third.
Okay. So, you have those two payments come in and you know, the rent subsidy, you don’t have to touch the rent subsidy I guess? That just goes straight to the landlord?
Yeah, the pay - I pay my payment to the landlord and the state pays their payment to the landlord. So.
Between SS, um, SSI and Food Stamps and whatever money you make, um, with your job, that’s where you have to pay your portion of the rent--
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
--Do your food shopping.
Mm-hmm.
--And incidentals. Car insurance, phone, what else am I missing? Are utilities covered?
No, I have to pay those, water and sewer. I pay those. I do receive some financial help for that through uh the LIH, uh, LIHEAP program, which is a humongous help. Um, you know, what else am I missing?
Electric, gas?
Yeah, all that’s helped through the same program, so I’m very fortunate. I have to pay my water bill, that’s not helped, but like electric and gas, because of my disability the antipsychotics that I take, Seroquel, they have an impact in the heat where you can get heat exhaustion or heat stroke. So I qualify for a disability program in the state that says if you have any type of illness that is impacted by heat, you can get extra help from the electric company, like PSE&G or something. So those are programs that can’t be cut. I’m talking, not just for my sake, for people with other illnesses who are, like, elderly. Like, all this stuff is on the chopping block right now. You never know what’s gonna be cut or not. There is, there IS a lot of very good programs. It’s just A, it’s impossible to get them, not because you don’t qualify, not because it’s, it can’t be done. It’s just, there’s such a waiting list and they… You know, I, I could go into a, um, a million and one situations just with the rental subsidy but, you know, we’ll stay on budget for now about trying to get a rental budget and stuff, you know. I actually I had saved, you know, three receipts cause I thought you might want them.
Okay.
BK: I, I, I have them right here You know. And the realistic nature is that the receipts that I saved. It’s, it’s kinda like you said it’s a weekly, that weekly mentality that I have, you know, that, um, you know [laughs]. Eyeglass, eyeglass cloth, a dollar. That’s my, that’s ‘cause I buy, the, the sunglasses that I get at the Dollar Store as well, cause they tend to steam up and you’re driving and so, like, that’s a luxury for me. An eyeglass cloth. Um, you know, mini cups is like your bathroom cups things. Um, fabric freshener is, is more for my work uniform and advocacy stuff but it’s more just the sheets. And these things are luxuries. Normally, uh, eyeglass cloth I only get like once a year, fabric freshener that’s a luxury, mini cups is a luxury cause you could just, you know, use your hand. Um, obviously my shampoo and my bath tissue and everything-- all a dollar. So, what else do I buy at the Dollar Store? Tooth paste, floss, bath soap at thirty-three cents. You know, ‘cause one package is three. Um, deodorant. You know, razors, uh, anything hygienic at the Dollar Store, uh, canned goods, uh, garbage bags. I mean, sometimes I’ll go to the dollar store and this’ll have, in the beginning of the month. In the beginning of the month when I get my SSD check my dollar store receipt will be like this long because I try to stock up in the middle month because no matter what happens, you know, if I buy it in the middle of the month, I’m not gonna have the money for it. So, I buy it… It’s interesting cause you could watch your Dollar Store receipts get smaller and smaller and smaller as the month goes by [laughs].
01:09:58
Hey what happened to the, uh, five week month, which happens, you know, four times a year?
Yeah. That is, um, I dread those. I dread those. Cause that is… like, February is always kinda the month that you celebrate cause it’s like, the shortest. You know? But the five week month, yes, because by the third-- I don’t get my SSD check until the third, and your food stamps comes in on the first. And sometimes I might only get two shifts a month. So it’s like, if you report your income, even for it to be lower, it usually takes two months. So in two months you’re kinda in limbo paying more than you could ever afford. So it’s, when it’s a five week month that kinda lingers ‘til that thirty-first, you know, you dread that month because by the twenty-ninth, you’re just, you know, you’re just buying white bread and putting margarine on it. You know, that’s breakfast, thank god for the toaster oven. And, you know, you only drink water ‘cause you can’t afford milk, you know, so you’re just drinking water out of the tap. That’s your breakfast, lunch, and dinner beverage. And um, yeah. I hate-- you’re not driving anywhere. Even if your insurance is paid for the month, you don’t got gas in your car. I, I drive around my car more with the gas light on than I could ever imagine. And my car will let me know how many miles I have left, how much distance to travel. So I will literally drive that thing down to five miles. Which isn’t good to the car but usually by the thirty-first of the month in the middle of the year on like a five, five week month, you know, [laughs], uh, my car’s sitting there for like a good week with like enough gas in it to like, go seven miles.
So, uh, you know, it’s like all the, all the little things, that um, you know. Uh, you, you don’t wash your hair as much towards the end of the month ‘cause that bottle’ll go right through. You know, shampoo, so you might wanna measure that one out. You kinda finagle that one a little bit. You might want to wear a baseball cap around a little more often. But it works! The baseball cap works. You know, uh, most important thing is to always remember that in the beginning of the month, you have thirty pairs of socks. Because if you can’t really squeeze that one by, at least you know you have enough socks and, you know, obviously underwear and stuff. Those are the things you have a lot of. You know, clothes. You only wanna wear solids. Because you can’t afford things with designs on it because that has to, like, you can’t match that up all the time .So like, pretty much every single article of clothes I have is a solid, and like, black pants or something and like, jeans because that’s the only way I can get things to kinda coordinate. So like, yeah, it’s kind of a weird thing to look at-- does that really matter? No, but, like, it’s not. It’s just interesting to me. It’s like, you know, so your creativity is down a little bit. You know? Um, I entertain myself with puzzles [laughs]. You know, cause I can’t really watch TV and, you know, the puzzles are from the dollar store. Um, my only social outlet is, is softball. Which, it always comes back to sports, you know, and my advocacy days in high school, just trying to play football [laughs]. You know I don’t… I, I, I traveled for the first time ever, not, really like the first time ever, I’m sorry ever, but it just feels like that, but really for the first time in like twenty years in December. You know, like, I, I just like, Hilton called one day and they’re like, “For a hundred dollars we’ll send you to Myrtle Beach.” Like it’s some [laughs]-- I was like, I’m jumping on that! But it’s like an extreme luxury and that will be like my one time traveling for the next twenty years you know [sharp inhale].
But like that was like a taste of the good life, which was pretty cool to me, you know. I, being able to fly on a plane and stuff that like, is, that was a taste of the good life. Um, going out to eat is really embarrassing for me. Even when I go out with my friends at softball because I always wanna fit in and be able to do it, but, like, you know. Um, a lot of times I’m just like, it’s a shame because every-- like I wanna go out but like, I really don’t feel comfortable buying a soda and everyone else is eating. So, like, I’ll buy, like a hamburger sometimes but then, you know, that thirteen dollar hamburger that I buy out, if I go out with teammates afterwards, when I’m just too embarrassed to afford a soda. That, that comes back to hamburger-- you have to make a decision-- do I want this hamburger and fries and hang out with the team? Am I okay with eating bread and butter for the rest of the week because of it? Yes, because this is my only social outlet. So, sometimes, sometimes I'll spend thirteen dollars on a hamburger. You know but that, that’s a luxury. You know, like, that’s like, to me, that’s like going to Myrtle Beach. Or, for someone else, like going to the Caribbean. You know? Hamburger.
01:15:11
So it sounds like you’re, you’re constantly faced with these kinda, really difficult choices.
Yeah.
In a normal situation, right?
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
What, what happens when, when the unexpected happens? Like, I don’t know, how old is your car?
My car is… eight years old.
So you’re probably starting to see…
Oh yeah.
You know, repair costs, right?
Uh-huh! [laughs].
And how do you co-- I mean that’s, that, that money it… you know, it doesn’t come out of a savings account, right? It’s…
My… I’m, I’m driving on tires that, you know, would not pass inspection.
And if you were to replace the tires, what would that mean? ‘Cause what are tires? Like a hundred dollars a tire, let’s say?
Housing or tires. ‘Cause four tires, housing or tires? You wanna live out… I, I could live in my car, with new tires. You know? That’s not a problem. I mean, I, I say that sarcastically. I don’t mean that. You know. Tires would not pass inspection. You know. But, for now, you know, haven’t had any issues, so. You know. Yeah. You know. But yeah, you could hear the little clicks in the things like that, sure [laughs]. Yeah. Car just sits there.
Except when you need it.
Right!
And then if it’s not there, how would you get to your job?
[Sharp exhale] Well. I’d literally have to call out, or stop working for a month or just quit for a while. Because if I were to take the train, I would need to take the bus to the New Brunswick train station. And that’s a dollar-fifty. And then I would need to take the train from New Brunswick to Trenton, and that’s four-twenty-five. So that’s about six… ballpark, six, seven whatever. Then I have to take the train from Trenton, I have to take the SEPTA to Philadelphia. And I haven’t done that in a long time so I don’t know how much that is, even with the Medicare card. Cause there’s no train straight to Atlantic City and then you have to take the SEPTA at Thirtieth Street Station. SEPTA is the transportation system for Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Then you have to take that to, um, Atlantic City.
And I did that before, cause I was in a car accident. And it totaled my car. So, um, during that time that was, uh, December two-thousand-fifteen. So during that time I didn’t have a car for a while, so I did take that long trek. And it takes four hours, because you have layovers in Philadelphia and then you have layovers at the train station and it takes about four hours to get from that street corner on Tices and Eighteen to Atlantic City. It’s one of the things I really work on with my advocacy work, is the fifteen dollar minimum wage. Because that would be a game changer for me. Um, one of my biggest concerns with the min, minimum wage increase, which is a good concern, it’s a healthy concern for the state, it’s a healthy concern for people who receive services. It’s a healthy concern for everybody.
Is with the minimum wage increase, what are the new rules gonna be with food stamps? You know, how, how, are you guys gonna raise the amount, is it gonna, you know, is there gonna be more liberty for people to... ‘Cause the point of raising minimum wage is to give people extra money. So, I haven’t really calculated that into my long-term budget yet, cause I don’t know. But I’m on a wing and a prayer for a fifteen dollar minimum wage because there are some banquet places that I haven’t worked at in the area. And I feel I could get a job there that would lower my expenses, transportation wise, and, you know, I’d be able to afford more. It’s a, it’s a blessed concern, if you will. Because on one-half like, if the minimum wage goes up, we’re gonna have to deal with rental subsidy issues, we’re gonna kinda have to, as a, as a state and legislatively look at, you know, how the food stamp system works. But the free is, the thing is we can’t be afraid to do that. You know, we can’t not raise the minimum wage because it’s like, “Ugh, it’s too much work” to kinda examine food stamps and stuff at that point. So, that’s kind of like, always on my mind everyday.
01:19:50
You know, I listen to Governor Murphy and, you know, things and he’s very supportive of the minimum wage and it’s like, okay great, when? But you know, um, there’s a lot of conflicts with that too, so you know, I try to be an adv-- I mean, I look at it this way, the very causes that I advocate for are things that already help me. So, you know, it’s just not a pers-- I don’t, I don’t do it just for myself. I do it for my friends, I do it for all the people I met in the hospital. One of the hardest parts of my life, and I could close with this if you want--
No, no, keep going.
One of the, uh, hardest parts of my life is, I don’t know where my closest friends are.
Lost-- meaning you’ve lost touch with them? And that’s because they were in the hospital with you or just, you just lost touch with them?
In and out of the system, they… you know. I have friends who’ve… you know, I’d like to tell you one story about a friend of mine. You know, and this is just kind of a really good glimpse into the system. And of course I can’t factually prove it, but, you know, um, it just happened to my friend and I’ll have to leave it at that. But she had gotten a rental subsidy, she was homeless, and she moved in, um, it all happened so fast I don’t even really know where the place was. But it was one of these, um, kinda look multi-dwelling… like a bigger house that has four apartments on the second floor and four on the bottom. And um, when the person moved out before her, PSE&G did not, or that person did not turn off the electric. So the electric was on, even when she moved in and even when the landlord was, um, fixing up the apartment. And uh, for her to move in. So when she moved in, uh, the electric company is just like, okay, this is your bill. And she was like, well, this is not me. So she calls the landlord and she’s like, you know, you gotta either pick up the balance or whatever, you know, this is not my responsibility. And the landlord’s like, I don’t care. You know, this is a lot of people get away, lot of landlords get away with so much when it comes to rental subsidies. So, long story short she was, um, she was held liable for the other person’s thing and, this is, this is an interesting note-- because this is a very big complaint for people with rental subsidies, including myself. Um, if we have our electric turned off, we lose our rental subsidy. So we always have to have our electric on. So because the bill was too much, even though it wasn’t her fault, she couldn’t pay it, she got her electric turned off early at her rental subsidy. She got evicted and I never heard from her, so. And that was like three years ago. You know. Of course I email her, of course I call her. Her phone’s disconnected. A long time ago she had what was called an Obama phone, as they call them, which is-- I think that’s a wonderful term because I think he was a great president and did a lot of great things. But, you know, that’s it. You know, she could be dead for all I know. She could be out in the middle of nowhere, you know, taking care of herself however she has to do it. But those, that’s just one example of stories. If I had my electric bill turned off here, you know, thank god for the assistance program that I have because that’s the only way that I could afford it… I would lose my rental subsidy. So, you know, um there’s many times when I wasn’t, when I, when I didn’t apply for the electric thing I, I really. Like, there’s some weeks where it’s just like, you know, I don’t really need electric. You know, I just… can opener. You know, and uh, canned goods. You know. And uh, I don’t, I don’t need my refrigerator on. You know, there’s things I could buy, granola bars, you know, things like that. So um, that’s one of the hardest things for me to deal with is, you know, a lot of my friends enter the system but they kicked out and I never hear from them again. And that terrifies me because I don’t know if they’re dead, I don’t know if they overdosed. I don’t know if they went back to doing something they shouldn’t have. I don’t know if they’re doing very well and just, you know, toughing it out in another state or something. You never know. You know, um, and that’s another reason why I advocacy. So…
One of the things I think people may not understand about, you know, the system is the bureaucracy can be difficult to navigate, so.
01:24:20
Oh, it’s nearly impossible.
And, well, and many cases where we could be talking about individuals who are not emotionally prepared to deal with that kind of thing.
Right! Right. Exactly. I mean, first of all, if you really want to get in the system you have to lie. You have to lie on your application, you know. Say you wanna apply for a rental subsidy. You don’t have a house, you don’t have a home, you don’t have an apartment. You’re just couch-surfing. If you write down that you’re couch-surfing, your application’s just non… non-factor. You know. So even to just get a rental subsidy you have to be like, completely on the street homeless. And usually part of a program at that point to get a referral. Food stamps. Same thing. You know, they nickel and dime you to the very bottom. So one time, a friend of mine got out of the hospital and her referral for housing was just like, they were letting her go into the middle of nowhere. They were just letting her go to homelessness. So, you know, I picked her up. She had a referral to go to social services of Middlesex County to apply for A, B, and C. And she filled out her application and I just looked at it and I’m like, this is going into a garbage. You’re being too honest. You know, you’re writing down that you’re staying at your friend’s house tonight. You’re writing down that you have twenty dollars in your wallet that you went in at the hospital. You know, you don’t know write these things, you lie. And that sounds horrible, I mean, again just, on the record, I’m just opening up here about how you have to break the law to receive the services that you receive. But ninety percent of us don’t report our proper income. We, we work under the table. We do A, B, and C because we have to. And you have to just to even be considered, you can’t be honest about your situation, as destitute as it is. Because if you put down you have fifty dollars in your checking account even though you’re homeless, guess what, you have money. You know [laughs] they are, they are, they are brutal. Down there. You know, for every dollar you have, they count that as ten dollars. So if you have ten dollars in your pocket, as far as they’re concerned, as far as making being accepted in the programs and stuff, you have a hundred dollars. You know?
So that makes, makes, obviously makes savings impossible.
Savings impossible, and it just makes trying to get services nearly impossible.
And how, how does that affect kind of, you’re living in the system, is there even a sense that you might kind of be able to rise about the system?
There are no transition programs out of it.
So when you’re in…
That’s where you stay.
So to rise above you need, what? Savings…
Savings. Um, the best way, the best shot you’ve got out of getting out of the system is to get into an education program. Funding for school. And if you can do that, if you can manage to get an associates degree or a bachelor's degree through help from an educational program through the Department of Labor or the county, you have a shot. That just maybe you can, um, get a career that can sustain you. I left something out. Um, that’s very important here. If you receive social security disability, um, I don’t know what the limit is for retirement benefits, but I’m just gonna bring it back to me… Uh, with Social Security Disability. I think I can’t make over, I think eleven-seventy. It might be over twelve now. But you can’t get income. You, you lose your financial benefit. For me, of six-sixty-seven. If I make a buck over. Let’s say-- let’s just round it off to twelve. Say it’s twelve hundred, whether it’s minus or lower. If I make a dollar over twelve-hundred dollars my benefits stop.
I keep my Medicare, but in the eyes of social security, if you make twelve hundred dollars you’re no longer disabled. They’ll let you keep your benefits, but now you have to survive on twelve-hundred dollars a month. And if you have twelve-hundred dollars a month, twenty-five percent of your income, well, your, your uh, that would be… your rent would be four hundred dollars. So now your rent’s four hundred. You no longer have social security disability benefits, you have just have Medicare. So if you made twelve-hundred-and-one dollars for the month, and your rent is four hundred… no, I’m sorry, your rent would be three-hundred, your, your phone is fifty. So now you’re up to four-hundred. And your car insurance is one-fifty, so now you’re up to four hundred, you’re up to five-fifty. Um, mind you, you only have six-hundred dol… uh, six-hundred-and fifty dollars left, and we haven’t even tapped into the dollar store yet. Or gas. Or, or, or laundry detergent. We haven’t even brought that into the five-hundred and fifty dollar equation. So even just to get off social security disability in a save, savings manner, you’re screwed. Now I, I went off Medicaid. I went off Medicaid. I denied Medicaid because with Medicaid you are not allowed to own anything-- a checking account, a car over two-thousand dollars. Now, the first car I had, the one that got into the car accident… that was in great shape. And that was only worth twelve-hundred dollars. So I didn’t have to worry about that. To own my car, I can’t have Medicaid. Because my car is worth more than two-thousand dollars. So you’re really kinda, like, stuck. You know, it’s just not savings, it’s like, okay. I can, I can only make this much money. And I can only have this much assets, worth this amount of money. Um, it’s very complicated You know, it’s extremely complicated, you know. Because that’s a lot of things-- that’s one of those things that people don’t understand, you know, is… buy a car off a used car lot for two-thousand dollars and that’s gonna last about two months. Or within three months you’ll be replacing an engine or something. You know, um,medicare does offer a dollar a day car insurance program. To help people who own a car have car insurance but it only gives you five-thousand dollars’ worth of liability. There’s no coverage for yourself whatsoever. It only gives you five-thousand dollars worth of liability if you hit someone else’s car. There’s no medical coverage if you hit someone else. So if you have a dollar-a-day car insurance, or what we like to call “street legal,” um, you get into a car accident, you’re bankrupt. And that person can take you to court. So what good is having a car?
01:31:26
Or car insurance, in that case.
Right. Because you’re actually, you get into a car accident, you’re in more debt than you can imagine. You know, the only thing that you can count on in that situation is, as my friend says, “You can’t get blood from a stone.” You know, that’s how we kinda look at the system. We can’t get blood from a stone. Y’know, so it’s just not about how much you earn, it’s not about how low it goes or high it goes. It’s just about h-how you’re allowed to earn. What you-you’re allowed to have. And a lot of it is really capped off at a low amount. I was once told that the only way I’ll ever be able to get out of the system is to write a book. Because that way maybe I could make enough royalties or something like that, that I would be able to just… be able to take care of myself for a little while. But you can’t buy a house ‘cause you don’t have any savings, h… you, you don’t, you’re not allowed to even have enough money to even get an apartment on your own because y-you can’t afford a security deposit. That’s a really big issue with the state right now. They’ll give you a rental subsidy, but there’s no help to get a security deposit. How on earth are you supposed to manage that one? Y’know. You, you-- here’s a rental subsidy, but yeah, you’re on your own for the, uh, fifteen hundred dollar security deposit you have to put down.
And the security deposit is… covers the entirety of the rent, right? It’s not based upon what you pay.
Right! Right. It-the security deposit is a month-and-a-half rent. So just in case I were to leave this place and, you know, the stove was broken or something-- which of course I wouldn’t do. There, there is another stereotype that I can’t stand. It is the myth that if you have a rental subsidy you don’t care about where you live. When did that start? Y’know? Like, if I have a r… there’s this myth out there, like, if you have a rental subsidy that my floor’s gonna be a mess and, y’know, the windows are gonna be broken and I’m gonna just destroy everything in the apartment and then move out. Like, people think that because you’re poor you don’t care about your life or where you live or… You know, there’s so much stigma you have to deal with. You know, um, that you face every single day. This is a true story, I mean no disrespect to anyone at my job, you know, but I was listening to a coworker of mine was interested in buying a condominium. You know, he has a full-time job during the week and, and works at One Atlantic on weekends. Um, I guess another worker there [laughs], uh, had a friend who has a condominium or something. And he’s like, “Yeah,” he’s like, “you definitely gotta rent to these rental subsidy people.” He’s like, “You gotta buy a condominium and you gotta rent to these rental subsidy people because,” he’s like, “you get paid from the state…” and he’s going on and on and on about making all these state… these like, really stereotypical um, discriminatory statements. And I’m just standing there. And like, my friend who he was talking to knows I have a rental subsidy. So I could tell by the expression on his face that he felt, like, really bad. But, you know, I was just like, don’t even worry about it [laughs]. You know, like, those are the conversations that come across. And like those are the things that really get under your skin, you know, cause there’s like so much discrimination out there.
But, you know. There’s no transition programs. You know. The, the easiest way to get out of the system is if you can get a good education program and if you can follow through with it and get a good job, you got, you got a small chance. But [sharp inhale] that, um, certificate on the wall from Middlesex County College is a phlebotomy certificate. Um. It cost, the program cost, I think, two-thousand dollars and it included the phlebotomy books and stuff. And I got that through a grant from, um, the Department of, uh, Department of Workforce and Labor through, uh, the Department of Rehabilitation. Um, now the funny thing was, like I said, it’s very hard to get services. I qualified for that grant for many years. They wouldn’t give it to me. I, I had to get the legal assistance of Disability Rights New Jersey just to be able to get the funding from a disability program. As soon as disability rights stepped in, within a month had the funding. But for almost a year and a half, I had to debate with social workers. Even though I was fully approved. So there’s an example of how-- I still have some letters and emails from that one. But I made the wrong decision. I chose phlebotomy. Now, going back to start, start what I finished-- I don’t, I don’t have a good track record with them. It’s something I’ve been working on. So I chose phlebotomy because I’ve had my blood drawn, like, so much since I’ve been age twelve I thought it would be relatively easy. And it was a challenge. It was one of the, it was a great educational challenge. But the problem is to get a job as a phlebotomist, I should’ve done a little bit more thorough research.
01:36:29
You have to have two years’ work experience. Volunteer experience doesn’t count. So, like, if you don’t-- how do you get a job [laughs]...
T-two years in the industry? Or just two years?
Two years’ work experience in phleboto… um, as a phlebotomist. Volunteer phlebotomy for like the Red Cross, traditionally, doesn’t count. So how are you supposed to get a job that you can do very well but you don’t have two years’? You know? But, you know, I should’ve went with radiology, y’know, cause that’s where the jobs are at. I chose phlebotomy cause it was something that I really knew and understood. And also with my mental illness, um, phlebotomy just offered a little bit more flexibility in the environment, where in, where in radiology you’re kinda often in, in a room and behind a machine all the time. You know, I have to kinda calculate that a lot, in life, is my illness. You know, I, I always have to calculate what symptoms I’m feeling. You know, right now I’m, I’m actually going through a depression. It may not show that much right now, but, you know, it’s there. So, you know, today’s kind of a good day. Sun’s out, you know, feeling a little better. But, you know, I always have to count… That’s why sometimes banquet serving is a good fit. Because You have the liveliness, the energy, the music. You know, you’re kind of celebrating someone else’s happiness. Not your own, but, you know, at least you’re in that element. But, um, I’d like to, y’know, a lot of times, I’d like to be able to get a job in public policy or something. Um, but uh, you know, I don’t have the education so, you know, and um. It’s very hard for me to do that.
So yeah, you know, the rate I’m going… I’m kinda trapped right now. I-- the things I have going for my life is friends that I have on my softball team, even though it’s tough to identify with them. Um, the advocacy which is kinda like a family to me in many ways. And, um, what else do I got going for me? I receive services, which makes life easier, as hard as it is. You know, I was only homeless a coupl...two years ago. I lived in my car for the summer. You know, I like, bathed and showered at, um, gym membership. Gym membership is vital for someone, um, who’s in poverty. If you can manage it. If you could even just pay, like, ten bucks a month at like, um, you know, I think, um Planet Fitness’ll give you a membership for like ten bucks a month, that is a resource you gotta have. Because if you become homeless at least you have a place to shower. That you can take a, a good shower and, you know, it’s not so encouraged that you brush your teeth when you’re there but, you know, everyone’s there for… people go there in the morning and go to work and you know, brush their-- so it’s not frowned upon. But, you know, it’s at least a place that you can… I was really thankful that I kept my gym membership going to Planet Fitness when I became homeless because, uh, you know, that’s where I showered in the morning and stuff, you know.
And that’s what, like, twelve dollars?
Yeah. Yeah. So I mean that’s, that’s, no matter how hard you’re struggling, like, I have to keep my membership going. Because if I do become evicted, at least I know I have a place to, to change and shower and stuff. So that, that’s a priority bill. Sometimes your gym membership is more priority than… if we were allowed-- let me put it to you this way. If I was, if I knew that, if I was permitted to go without paying my electric bill, and-- keep in mind-- my electric bill is paid by assistance programs-- if I had to pay it on my own, wouldn’t be able to afford it. But if, say I didn’t have the assistance programs and it wasn’t against the rules that you would be evicted if you had a rental subsidy, my gym membership would be more of a priority bill than my electric bill. Because you can survive without electric-- you can use a can-opener, you can, your water’s still on, you know, candles what not. But if you get, if you become homeless, well at least you have a place to take a shower and brush your teeth that very same night. You know. So there’s odd little incidental bills that are must, must-pay. You know, one of those would be your gym membership. And most people would be, like, that is not a priority. Oh, the hell it is! [laughs].
That, that’s one of your most…
And I still have my medi, my medication. You know, that’s thirteen bucks a month. And um…
So there’s an out-of-pocket piece of--
Yeah, yeah, yeah. My, my psychotropic medicines is thirteen dollars a month. Um, my, I’ve had the same therapist for, um, twenty-eight years. And she’s very generous that when, um, you know, she’s just very generous that she doesn’t charge me anything right now beyond what medicare pays. When I’m doing better, you know, sometimes, but right now she’s always been extremely generous and understanding. She’s the biggest support in my life. Um, I owe University Behavioral Healthcare at Rutgers probably, like, I don’t know, fifteen, twenty-thousand dollars at this point because I don’t have Medicaid. But, keep in my mind, if I had had medicaid, I wouldn’t be able to have my car. So I just let them look at that bill [laughs]. And they know I’m poor, but they send me the, uh, they send me the collection notices anyway. You owe us thousands of dollars for not having medicaid for the past four years. And it’s like, well, can’t get blood from a stone, you know?
01:42:17
And that has potential long-term…
Oh, on your credit? Absolutely! My credit, my credit… do I have? After, after four eviction filings? So, you know.
So even if things were to turn around drastically, you know - you were suddenly, not necessarily flushed but you were, you were making enough that you could sustain yourself you, you don’t have the credit…
Starting over-- yes, yes, starting over with credit anyway. So now, I, you know, people always tell me, you know, at this time, well, why don’t you get one of those security cards? And it’s like, I don’t have three-hundred dollars, you know, two-hundred dollars to put down to give Capital One that you have to pay in advance for a security card. That’s not an option. So, you know, yeah, when, when you live in poverty, there’s no such thing as you, you know. Having credit. And, and, you know, the problem is, a lot of times, you really have to keep-- when you’re homeless, God, it’s... I feel so bad for people who are homeless. Because especially in the winter time, they have to seek shelter. Now that, that goes back to the Code Blue story. Don’t even get me started. So, um, but you gotta look at it this way from their perspective-- if you’re homeless, they don’t keep the train stations open anymore. In the wintertime. I went, I went multiple times to the local New Jersey train stations just to do some research on this. To see if the trains, to see if the, um, train station lobbies were open when it was, like, below freezing. And all the train stations were closed. Now the problem is, people need to be in public buildings if they’re homeless. But you kicked out of public buildings and you get a warrant. You get, you know, you get a ticket. For which you have to go to, before a judge, and then some people don’t even have transportation to get to the, um, hearing, so then you get a bench warrant. And then you get arrested for something like being in a public place -- it, it [sighs] there’s…. You’re lucky if credit is the worst of your problems. Your hope, your hope when you’re homeless is that you don’t have a bench warrant out for you for something innocent, which’ll have you in jail for six months. Because it can’t, you can’t even go before a judge ‘cause you can’t afford it. It-- not having credit is bad but if you’re homeless, the key thing is not to have a bench warrant out for you for something trivial.
And the bench warrant would…? And those charges they, they make access to general assistance almost impossible.
Yes! Yes. Very true. Yes. It’s, it’s a, you hit it right on the nose. A lot of times when I think of the New Jersey system, I think of the recycling arrows on a garbage can that three little arrow spiral. ‘Cause it really is a revolving door. And to use the term revolving door, that’s great and all, the spinning it, but it’s really just arrows going in a circle. You know, you nailed it right on the head with that. You know, once you get something like that on your record, you’re disqualified anyway. You know, I, I, um, I… with my advocacy work, the past two weeks I did civil disobedience that comes with an arrest. And a lot of people would say, why on earth would you do that? First of all, for me, emotionally it’s been a very big help. It’s, it’s kind of helped… let me let out some frustration and deal with some personal issues internally. But, you know, it’s like, technically I don’t know what the rules are with that one. But you know, sometimes all it takes is a misdemeanor, but part of the reason why I did it is like, the way my life is headed, housing is gonna be nearly impossible to maintain anyway. So I’m, I’m curious. It’s like… you know, is that enough to make you lose the hous-- housing? You know? Civil disobedience? So even that-- excuse me-- even that was like a little bit of a test. Like, let’s test the system and see how far they’re willing to go with this. Or does my race have something to do with that? You know. I, I do have a tendency to push the buttons on the system to see how far they’re willing to break their own rules. But it should never have to come down to that. Ever. People should be able to apply for services and be honest and not turn in a application and feel horribly guilty. That is wrong. That is wronger than not… that is wronger than not turning… uh… turning in your income accurately. That is more of a crime. That is more of a crime that someone should have to turn in an application to social services and lie about their life, as hard as it is, so that they can receive services and the guilt you feel when you walk away. That is not right. That is just not, you know, that comes back to basic needs and the way we treat people. But, as I always tell people, it’s like, you know, you filled out this application all wrong. You gotta do what you gotta do. You’re, you’ll be homeless and have nothing. I’m like, you know, sometimes even me I’ll fill out for you, you sign it. [laughs] You know? It, it… you know. The system is very, it’s not designed where you can transfer. The only person I ever knew that was on Social Security disability and got off Social Security disability got an inheritance when his grandparents died. So, that’s the only person I know who was able to get off Social Security disability and, and Social Security disability is supposed to be temporary. And you go through a lot of different phases in your life when you’ve lived my life.
00:48:17
So my last Social Security renewal, I actually put on the application-- I have a copy of this, I think, um that I turned in. “I don’t need Social Security disability anymore. I need a job and a career.” And I still qualify! [laughs] So, somebody tell me like, how on earth I’m supposed to get out of this… I don’t know. You know, I live in such a beautiful place. Even with my rental subsidy, don’t even get me started with state inspectors and municipal inspectors… I have my rental subsidy and, I mean, I’ll just sum it up this way-- I one time was up for eviction in one particular apartment two times. Two times. Um, because I refused to pay my rent. I’ll, this is easy to get. Um, I try to keep records of my things, but this is living with my rental subsidy. This is living with my rental subsidy. Um, these are the conditions of the place I was living in. Cockroaches-- the kind with the, the kind that fly. These are the eviction notices I took. I kept my apartment spotless, but, you know, where are the pictures with the-- um, these are all dead roaches. Um, you know, this was me cleaning the apartment. Um, where are all the other pictures? Where are the good ones. I hate to say it, but. The, the paint was coming down. Apparently [sighs] this was when I moved with no furniture and stuff. Where on earth… alright, so obviously the… Oh I know where they are-- I’m sorry, but these pictures just don’t do it justice.
[Drawer opens and closes] This is, this is worth seeing. Where did I put it? But-- this is an important story too, because people often think that you live in a rental subsidy, you got it made. You know, your whole life is planned out for you. You know, you got nothing to fear, nothing to… nothing to worry about. And it’s like, that is just not true. Okay. So. When um, when I lived in this place, you know, uh, where are all the pictures? Come on… This, this was the inside, those were the, that was the size of the roaches.
Phew.
That’s my ba-- that’s the, that’s the kitchen sink. No, I’m sorry, that’s, that’s the bathtub drain. And that’s the size of the roach. They’re literally like an inch to an inch and a half. Um, my bathroom ceiling caved in. It, I just woke up one morning and it just fell. This is with a rental subsidy. This is with state inspectors coming down. Um, you know, the water was just dripping through. That was a roach. You know, and I tried to keep my apartment as clean as I could, you know. But these would just fly across the room and they were everywhere. You know, they would bite me at night. I had mold spores growing out of the bathroom. And I mean, this is, this is situations where you have a rental subsidy. This, this was a, this is a mainstream apartment complex right in Edison called Valley Manor. And I just refused to pay my rent. I said, let the -- the, the state can pay you all they want. I said I’m not paying my rent. I am not paying rent to be bitten at night by cockroaches and take a shower in mold spores. And the apartment complex put me up for eviction. And then the state wouldn’t even help. So it’s like, I asked for help from the state and they’re like, hey, you’re on your own. Y, you know, you don’t want to pay your rent, you’re on your own. And I had an inspector come out once a month. And he would literally see the roaches flying around and be like, this is alright. You know, I have all the documentation from it. So like, even, I am so grateful to live here because this is, this is not an apartment complex. This unit is independently owned. And um, my landlord’s wonderful. And as you can see there’s no roaches, no bugs, no… but I have lived, you know, the state doesn’t care. They don’t care what living conditions you are. I talk about discrimination from people in general - I mean, everyone’s cool here. But, you know, just people in general. The state just discriminates you just as much if not worse. When I went through this, when I went to court because I, I was evicted technically, I did get a lockout. But when I, what I did was I went before the judge. And I went before the judge and I, I just brought a piece of tupperware with dead roaches in it. And another piece of tupperware with um, the uh, the mold spores that you saw. And I said these are the conditions that I’m living with. So I’m like, you know, your honor, if you can justify the fact that I deserve to evicted with knowing all this now, and immediately the apartment complex dropped the case. They’re like, you don’t owe us anything. You know, just pay your rent moving forward and we’ll try to fix up the couple things, and move. So when I, when I went to, um, when I went before the judge-- a couple days before, I started going to my neighbors. And I was like, look, I’m like, um, I’m like, come down to court with me. We’ll all fight this, this is just wrong. And they literally told me straight out, they’re like, Brian, they’re like, we don’t like living here, you know, it’s awful, it’s horrible but, you know, I can’t afford if things go wrong, that we all lose our rental subsidies and get evicted if the judge doesn’t listen to us. And I got kids, so they’re like, you know, I don’t like my kids living here in roaches and mold but, you know, I’m gonna help you. So the state itself, you know, is just as judgemental and you know, prejudiced and discriminatory. ‘Cause they just don’t even help. You know, you’re on your own in the system.
You know, you might receive financial assistance, but you’re on your own. You know.
And, and you come from a background where, you know, one might expect... A healthy...
[Laughs] Right? Yeah.
Um, so, uh, but for a variety of reasons that hasn’t worked, quite worked out that way, right?
No. no.
Um. So, one could imagine what would happen to those who, who didn’t have that to start.
Yes. Yes. Another key component. Very true. And that’s why they have to stay there, because they don’t have any alternatives. You know, um. I don’t, I never… I wish even I felt more...I, I still-- everytime I go to one of these stores and, um, you know, I, uh, I bring out my food stamps card, I’m so embarrassed, and I don’t know why. But a lot of times I just think that is
just a, a side effect of the life that we live. You know, in the system. You know, it, it’s challenging and it’s hard but, you know, it, it’s very hard to find a way out. You know. And the, and the overall consensus is, you know, you’re fine, you’re okay, if anything you live off the government, you take all our taxes. You know. You drain our system so, you know…
Okay, alright, maybe we’ll stop here. And I may have other questions, other follow ups. I may, depending on the, the tape actually listens, I think it’s okay. Um, there may be some…
Yeah, sure, this was the. Um, what did I do with it. This is kinda the-- going kinda back to what you just said. Having um, you know, starting out. This was the, you know, the thing I was putting together. And you know, you’re right. I, um, you wouldn’t-- when, when I look at these pictures of myself growing up with, with my sister. And like I said, this house is just like, a mile and a half down the street-- cats, pets, animals, you know, um. This, I mean, this is the street I grew up on. Not really like something that you would, you know, see someone coming down. But, you know, yeah, I, when I was hospitalized at twelve, I had to grow up very fast. But unfortunately, you know, to that extent I grew up in a way that you just kinda can’t, you know. Or that just has such an impact on your life that it’s very hard to, you know, rebound. So, yeah, if you have anything else you want to see or anything else you want to go over just let me know. I know I kinda went over all kinds of stuff.
The goal here is your story. All I wanna really do is kinda guide you towards some of the topics that…
Yeah.
And you ended up really hitting most of them on your own anyway, so that kinda, that worked out really well.
Okay! I, I, I know I tangent on, or maybe went on some things that maybe weren’t applicable but…
No, you know, everything else.
Yeah, cause, you know, you start at one point it just kind of goes on, and on, and on. Okay, you know, I really thank you for coming over and kind of taking an interest in my story and, you know, um, you know, I really, I really appreciate that.