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as an Americorps volunteer I lived on various forms of US assistance for 3 years.
assuming you have zero income, you get food stamps (about $100 a month which can only be spent on cold food at the store), Medicaid (all doctor, dentist, and eye care free - as long as you get approved (ie shittier) doctors & dentists), and in Syracuse there was a program called HEAP that paid about 1/4 of your utilities bill over the course of a year.
there is something called Section 8 which will give you free (crummy) housing and an additional payment towards your utilities. however the number of households which can get section 8 is capped so you have to wait for another household to get off before you can get on - the queue in Syracuse is currently over four years. I think it's similar here in NYC.
on top of these things there is something called EBT which helps you buy food - I don't know much about how you qualify because I didn't, but I know you are limited to buying cheap and generally not so healthy food.
and finally there is a general financial assistance check you can get. I also wasn't qualified for that and can't say much about it.
you get more money if you have kids. you get less if you have some kind of income. also I know there are some forms of emergency "we're going to starve/freeze right now" provisions for getting quick payments if you need them.
the first big problem is that the qualifying process is long, complicated, and full of stupid bullshit requirements and assholes who dont' really want to help you.
the second big problem is people living right on the edge between legally poor and not. it is very, very easy to make just barely too much money to qualify for any assistance at all, and still be nowhere near what you would need to make to pay for the cheapest, shittiest private health care, rent, food, etc.
I was able to swing it because I am single and supporting only myself, and was making a small volunteer stipend which didn't count to disqualify me from assistance due to legal reasons (after about six months of legal battles to prove this), and also I have big fat credit cards which are now going to take a while to pay back off. |
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