My SS attorneys were wonderful.They straightened out a couple of snags quickly. I went to them in November and got my first check in January. Unless you are just really good at navigating bureaucracy in general, you should get attorneys to help you.
Have you tried Catholic Social Services? Have you checked around to see what other churches or synagogues might be able to help you? Have you applied for SSI disability? Have you talked to a county or state social worker? As you have no income or savings at all, you should be able to get some help pretty fast, at least enough to stave off homelessness for a while.
You should consider that Go Fund Me here on the board. Best of luck to you.
I agree. Maybe we could come up with another month’s rent so you have some breathing room.
I suspect this is national, but here in the state of Washington, to be eligible for services or assistance (food stamps, Medicaid) you have to be a resident for a year. Keep this in mind if you move to another state.
I started my SSDI claim about a year ago. After meeting with the doctor the government sent me to they denied my claim. I may have made a mistake in using Disability Justice as my representative. I saw their advertisement on television and called them instead of looking for someone local that handled SSDI claimants. I plan on calling them later today to get any update I can get.
Thanks to the input from other Doper’s I have the phone number and address of the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services. I will be trying to contct them later today.
I will also Google Catholic Social Services to see what they might have here to help me.
Thank you The Plutonium Kid for taking the time to try to help me.
As generous as the SDMB people are, I don’t think a 60 year-old person asking for a bail-out for his life’s poor decisions is appropriate. I really do appreciate the input that Doper’s have given. I have some new resources to follow up on.
As I mentioned in the OP, the SDMB has been a place I was lucky enough to find many years ago. I have learned, laughed and lamented over the many posts I have read here. I am not too proud to ask for advice from the citizenry here, but I won’t ask for money.
Thank you again for your help.
Hey LTL, I don’t know if this might help or not, but you strike me as an articulate guy with a good personality just based on your writing here. So I’m wondering if telemarketing or phone based customer service might be an option for you. I did it back in the day and made decent money as a telemarketer. The laws on that have changed over the years, but that also means that there are more business to business calling opportunities which are more legitimate. When I did it I was calling homeowners to offer free estimates on various home improvements. I was an appointment setter and honestly I enjoyed it. No standing, you don’t even need to be able to see well, just use your mind and engage with people on the phone. Customer service presents similar opportunities for employment.
I’m sorry you find yourself here in life right now. I don’t know how things will work out but the only constant in life is change. So there’s no reason to believe that things can’t get better other than feelings after having been beaten down. I know it can be hard to see anything else. I can tell you myself from growing up in a cult that I’ve been suicidal myself and now my life is amazing, a complete 180 from how I felt during those years. I hope the same for you. It may come down to doing whatever it takes to live to fight another day right now, I don’t know, but I do know that it doesn’t have to be that way forever. Just keep fighting man. There are good people in this world and good things can happen. You can get this turned around.
If you haven’t already contacted them Catholic Social Services in Columbus should be able to help with housing and many other things. They help everyone regardless of their beliefs. www.colscss.org
Best of luck
Go to your library and ask for a list of social services. You can get 3 free meals every day of the week here in my city, and our library has a list of all the social service agencies that can help homeless people (or anyone in need).
I have much the same problem with dry eye due to an old shingles infection. I tried every OTC eyedrops I could find, no help at all. Then an eye doctor finally set me up with prescription eye drops which actually help worth a damn. At least for me the key is for the active ingredient to be polyvinyl alcohol. Everything else (glycerin, etc.) was useless.
When you say “going to be homeless soon”, do you mean “run out of money to pay rent” or “forcibly evicted”? Because they are very different things. I don’t know the law in your state, but in many places the eviction process can be time consuming, during which at least you have a place to stay. It’s not ideal, but I imagine it’s better than living on the street.
If worst comes to worse go to Santa Cruz Ca. Warm and they are extremely tolerant of homeless.
Does Ohio have the Medicaid expansion from Obamacare?
When I applied for food stamps (in Arkansas), they tried to get me “expedited / emergency” food stamps. This means they speed up the approval process. You might qualify for that.
I think the main thing you need to do now is step back and look at things in a cold, practical way.
You said, “I don’t think a 60 year-old person asking for a bail-out for his life’s poor decisions is appropriate.” I recognize that kind of thinking, I’ve done it myself. You need to put aside the idea of “appropriate.” You need help. People are willing to help.
Consider this - People like helping. The people offering to help you can afford to help you. You won’t be hurting anyone. And most importantly:
You deserve help as much as anyone else.
I’ve been making about 160 dollars a week doing academic research, surveys and doing simple click work for Amazon MTurk for the past few months. It’s not gonna make anyone rich but it’s covering rent and food. I just signed up and they pay me through Amazon Payments directly to my bank account. I started making money within a few days. I am really pleased with this work and I don’t think it’s anything like those scam sites like Swagbucks where you don’t really earn money so much as win gift cards. You CAN work for Amazon gift cards if you don’t have a bank account though.
I spent today scanning flagged videos on kid-friendly gaming sites. Sometimes I go through social media profiles and rate them or flag images. It’s all very simple work. I’m struggling with vision issues myself so I have to keep my monitor THISCLOSE to my face.
You don’t say how many hours you are working to get $160/week - but again, you can probably find less boring and better paying work at