Girl on the Brink: Surviving Desperate Times with Desperate Measures

While my lawyer prepared a letter to send to my former employer to up my severance, I debated on what other government benefits I should angle for.

I researched my potential entitlements online and thought that I could qualify for food stamps, but I also checked boxes for receiving TANF and medical assistance.  TANF stands for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and I had no idea it had replaced the welfare system. The only thing I knew about TANF (pronounced tan-if) was that I could get extra cash for my kids since they were both under 16 years old.

It is at times like these that you need to put aside your pride and think about the consequences of losing your home. I didn’t know that the medical assistance benefits I sought would eventually lead to making me and my kids Medicaid recipients. My aim was to get as much money as soon as possible because my lawyer said the process to negotiate my severance could take up to 12 weeks. She also didn’t think that my discrimination case would end up in court; only about 4 percent of such cases do, and then it takes years.

My evidence against my company for firing me as an older worker with a disability wasn’t as strong as it should have been because I had trouble remembering events and what was said at them. But I had enough to make my former employer apoplectic and bring the case to mediation.

Online, I began to explore the requirements for receiving certain benefits, such as food stamps, and what documentation I needed to apply. I also downloaded whatever forms I could find and filled them out. Even though it said I could fax or mail them in, I thought I’d get more attention if I visited the unemployment office and applied in person. I’ve always been skeptical of dealing with the D.C. government in any situation other than face-to-face on the big issues.

The food stamp form said I needed to have less than $1,000 in the bank; I had more, so my first swipe at gaming the system was paying off a few bills to deplete my bank account to the proper amount and print out the statement. I could have set up a second bank account that had next to nothing in it and used that. I don’t think anyone in the government checks to see how many bank accounts you own. My $359 a month in unemployment compensation disqualified me for receiving emergency food stamps because it put me in too high an income bracket. I was stunned that you had to be practically homeless to receive benefits when so many middle-class folk like me are the new poor.