next time someone talks about welfare fraud, remember that if you’re homeless you’re not supposed to have food stamps and if you lose your home and don’t report it to DSHS so they can take away your food stamps that’s welfare fraud
when i was on ABD (aged, blind, and disabled benefits – the only cash aid available to disabled people while we’re applying for SSI, a monthly $197) literally all money you get can be deducted from these benefits. this means that if someone sees you digging through the trash for food and gives you $20 the government will only pay you $177 that month. if you don’t report that $20 it’s welfare fraud
astute readers might realise that there’s no way anyone in the country can be expected to live off of $197 a month, and that that would have to be supplemented by another source of income. and if that money is going to disappear as soon as that other source of income hits $197, it might as well not exist. you’re right!
when i was on ABD i had a patreon running that brought in a steady $13 a month. the person in charge of my case rounded up the amount of money i was getting to $15. i was penalised by $15 for making $13.
if you’re on SSI you can actually be penalised for having more than $2000 in savings. problem with that is that it takes often far upwards of a year from applying to actually be approved for SSI and once you do get approved the government sends you all the money you should have been getting over the past year or two or three or four. that amount is over $2000. you have a few months to spend it before it starts to count against you.
or, if you’re not an idiot, you can buy a safe and stick it in there, but then you’re committing welfare fraud
in february the government admitted they made a mistake in cutting me off from SSI more than a year prior except i didn’t see any money until this month (september) because my dumb ass made the mistake of reporting one of the fundraisers i ran on here to make sure i didn’t die. the SSA requested excessive documentation of this (including things that didn’t exist like records of when i opened my paypal account) and found the documentation i did submit unsatisfactory three times, once because of the font size and twice because they claimed not to have received it. no attempt was made to communicate with me through any of this and each time i had to physically go to the SSA to find out what the deal was. it literally took 8 months longer for me to see any money because i was an idiot and didn’t commit welfare fraud
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