What would I have to do? Stop working and have no income? Then how much should I expect a month in checks?
In case you’re wondering, I have no plans in mind just curious…
What would I have to do? Stop working and have no income? Then how much should I expect a month in checks?
In case you’re wondering, I have no plans in mind just curious…
Depends entirely on where you are.
In general, it’s a bureaucratic nightmare. No matter how difficult they make it to claim, there are always people who imagine that it’s far too easy to claim and insisting that it be made more difficult.
What kind of welfare? The Clinton-era retrenchments mean you’re not getting much of anything unless you’ve got kids.
As an able-bodied childless adult, you’d generally be eligible for food stamps, and perhaps for unemployment benefits and Medicaid.
If you’re not able bodied, you might be eligible for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), and for state disability benefits in a very few states.
Generally (since it varies so much), you need to have no money reserve somewhere - on a bank account, or in a fund; no valuable assets - if you own a luxury boat, you’d have to sell it, but a car might be considered necessary for transportation; no able-bodied adult you live with, because it’d be expected that they support you; and no work.
Here, you’d get unemployment first, but: if you quit instead of being fired, there’s a wait time (if you have a job, why did you quit?) of (I think) 3 months. You also will get a load of forms to fill out, some of them by your former employer, which takes some time, and then longer time to be processed by the bureaucracy.
It’s also expected that you are willing to work in a new job, so you have to be on call when the work office calls you and says “Good news! We found an opening for you, at McD, for 4 Euros/hr., get your ass over there and stop taking handouts!” (okay, they don’t say the last part).
So if you want to laze around, you still need to go job interviews and make the employer-to-be turn you down - if you decline 3 job offers, your dole will be shortened to combat those “lazy unemployed” (which is mostly a fiction of right-wingers, media, and politicans - if there are no job openings, unemployed can’t take jobs!)
Depends. Unemployement used to be a fraction (70-50%) of your former income; but when you get dropped to welfare (Hartz IV), everybody gets a fixed amount. Which sucks if you live in a big city where expenses are higher, or if the cost of electricity goes up more than the index is adjusted to. (And it takes ages to adjust it).
Basically, you live a sucky live with very little money. That doesn’t mean there aren’t exceptions; one particular guy got (in)famous on talk shows because he openly stated that he didn’t want to work, and was content taking welfare. Of course that hit the right-wingers and Indignation people who lapped it up; but for every one of those, there are literally a hundred others who wish to get off, because it sucks to not be able to participate in cultural and social life (because you can’t afford entrance fees to anything, or a treat at a fair), and every month counting expenses, not being able to afford anything extra.
Extra in this case is an extra pair of jeans or sneakers, because the budget only allows them once a year or so; buying a used book for 1 Euro might be too much, a cup of coffee as you stroll along town is out of the question. And for week after week after week - it’s not like saving up for one item over a couple of months.
In Texas: http://www.hhsc.state.tx.us/help/financial/temporary_assistance.html
Are you single or married? Kids? Income?
Thanks for the replies. And I understand that is mostly a hard and undesirable life but I wonder how much so? I struggle to make ends meet but I have bills. From my understanding people on welfare don’t. They’re housings paid for practically and they get food stamps and what you would call a stipend? I wonder how much worse they really got it because I’m almost inclined to believe them and myself may not be that far apart.
I’d like to see cold hard numbers showing how much average person gets across the country and particularly in my area of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. If you’d like to use me for example, take a young able-bodied college educated guy with a car and a job.
Section 8 will pay for ~2/3rds of your housing, but the waiting list for section 8 housing is pretty long, and usually favor families and the elderly/disabled. As a single person living in a city, and the fact that we’re still in a recession, I’m pretty skeptical you’d get in (actually, googling, it appears Pittsburg has closed even the waiting list to apply for Section-8, so it would probably be years before you could get in the program).
In general, I don’t think there’s actually very much assistance available for able-bodied, non-elderly, non-veteran adults with no dependents. Food stamps will only cover able-bodied adults for three months, I don’t think you can get TANF at all, as I said, your chances of getting into section 8 housing is pretty low.
That leaves Medicaid, which will cover your health insurance.
I plugged in the numbers for a 30 year-old male with no income, no assets and no children into Pennsylvanias public assistance website and all I qualified for are health assistance and food-stamps.
So basically, you get health insurance for as long as you qualify and a maximum of 200$ a month worth of food stamps for three months. I wouldn’t quit your job.
Note, too, that you don’t get unemployment unless you get laid off: if you quit or get fired for cause, you are on your own.
Indepence is a big factor. Over here, people on welfare (Hartz IV) can get an un-announced visit in their homes by employees from the welfare office at any time, to make sure that they don’t have able-bodied adults (= boy-friends/ girl-friends) living with them, or that the children claimed are actually living there and not at the divorced parent; etc.*
You will have to lay open all your finances, often also the finances of your parents or children - it’s expected that they support you, if they earn enough. In fact, the state will first pay you welfare, and then go to your parents/children and take the money from them. After all, it’s the duty of a family to support each other (and that’s why it can be cheaper even for estranged families to pay the wayward son some money, instead of the state taking a large chunk).
Also, the right to privacy of your home means that your landlord must announce visits 14 days in advance, otherwise you can deny him entrance - but the welfare office guys combating “abuse” can come any time.
And there’s the difference in treatment: tax controllers who bring in roughly a million in unpaid taxes each year, far more than their own salary, are not hired nearly enough to catch all cheaters. But poor people don’t have a strong lobby.
The difficulty to get housing because of the long waiting list have already been mentioned. You also can’t choose any longer where you live, because housing gets assigned to you, with a fixed square meter amount per person. So if your current room is too big, you’d have to move out. And renters on welfare are generally dislike by the landlords as scum (although the welfare office pays the rent on time, better than some of the struggling working poor; but because of the right-wing media’s smear campaign, people associate welfare receivers = white trash, ignoring all those who unlucky fell on hard times, but are still decent middle-class people).
Going meta, the solution if work doesn’t pay much more than welfare is NOT to reduce welfare, but to institute a minimum wage people can actually live on. That makes work attractive, not punishments for welfare receipents (sadly, those are more popular with the right-wingers).
Or, instead of going on welfare yourself, you could campaign for abasic income for everybody. Do away with all the bureaucracy that determines if somebody is elegible and for how much, and give everybody enough money to live on. Given the development of economy and the labour market in the last 50 years, this is one of the solutions that could work if done right, as opposed to the current system, which obviously won’t work in the 21st century.
That may vary by state, however.
Regarding assets: What if you have a house with some equity? Does that count against your asset limit?
…and…
You do realize that we don’t know where “here” is, right?
(Yes, those who recognize your screenname know you’re from Germany. But still, you might wanna mention your location more specifically, to offer some context for your otherwise excellent and informative posts.)
Having worked with the homeless, that is what you’d be- homeless. (We’ll set unemployment aside, as it’s hard to get if you leave voluntarily and it’s only for a limited time).
Since you’re not disabled or have very young children, you’d just get food stamps (and often only for a limited time). Local agencies and other programs would provide you with used clothing, some food (American cheese, beans & rice are common around here*), and likely a meal or two a day, if you’re willing to line up. In Downtwon San Jose, I figure you could get 3-4 free meals a day if you liked to stand in line, and didn’t mind who you stood in line with and what you ate.
You’d get some health benefits, ymmv.
Sec 8 is very hard to get, and frankly as a "young able-bodied college educated guy " you’re not going to get in.
The “young able-bodied college educated guys” I have seen who are "on welfare’ are homeless, living in a tent, often in a encampment. They “shit in the woods” or use public restrooms. Showers are rare. They supplement their food doles with begging. It* is *a lifestyle choice (for them, for many it’s not a choice at all).
So, this being the USA you won’t starve.
You can’t get medicaid unless your permanently disabled. In most states you’d get food stamps and that’s it. Unless you have kids, it’s hard to get any additional benefits.
Even with food stamps, you have to do something to earn them, in most states. Like in Illinois you have to work for them at minimum wage. Or you have to attend GED classes or drug/alcohol rehab to keep getting them.
Illinois has a program called earnfare, where you work off your food stamps and you can get an addition check for a bit less than $300 a month. You get that by working at a company at minimum wage. So you’re still working for it. The idea is you have something to put on your resume.
I love the way people still think medicaid pays for poor people. It doesn’t. I have had huge problems with trying to find any cheap medical help. Unless you’re in a life/death situation it’s unlikely you’ll be helped. You’ll simply be told you’re OK for now and to see your family doctor later on.
Depends on the State, I think. The federal guidelines are for elderly, disabled children, pregnant woman and parents with dependants. I think Pennsylvanias program is more generous, though, and will pay out based on medical necessity. But even that probably wouldn’t help the OP, at least not until he gets sick enough.
IIRC, the program will expand to cover more poor adults in 2014, due to the ACA.
How about New York State? I’ve heard they are pretty generous?.. How about if you are kicked out of your living arrangement and need someplace to live? Would they help you with rent?.. And what if you WANT to work and you can’t get a job, or you get a job that pays peanuts and you just can’t get by?
Why do we always hear about people on welfare who “get everything” if it’s not true? I keep hearing those welfare people get food stamps, get their rent paid, medical taken care of, oh, and they get to take taxis everywhere if they don’t have a car! Is that just for people who have young kids, though?
No so much, anymore.
There are shelters. No, except for Sec 8, and we have explained that.
Some places have 'workfare" where you can get a little extra while working a starting job.
That was decades ago.
As far as taxis, I know a dude who is totally disabled, and yes, he can call a special taxi co more or less for free. Not a trade off I’d want.
Yes, women with Infant Children do get some extra benies while the kids are young. Again, it’s not that much.
There *was *a “golden age of welfare”, but no more, not in the USA.
Because right-wingers love to lie. Really, it’s a lot of lying.
And some (very few - the inquisition of the employment office found cheaters on Hartz IV to be around 1 %. Compare that to cheaters on tax…) people do cheat: they lie about their assets, or go to different places under different names to get more than one benefit, or they work “black” = under the table in addition to benefits.
It’s been mentioned often on this board during welfare discussion that the infamous “Welfare queens” driving cadillacs that Reagan once talked about could not be found by any journalists legitimatly (that is, people cheating the system were found, but not people receiving only legal benefits and living luxuriously).
Add to that that since Reagan, welfare has mostly been tigheneted, restricted, limited, etc., and it’s even more unlikely.
Next time somebody claims that, ask them for a source or cite - and right-wing media or politicans do not count, either reputable journalists, or even personal observation if enough detail is known (not “the neighbour looks lazy”, but “my sister is on welfare, and I know her finances”)
My state once had the distinction (and heck, maybe it still does) of being a welfare haven because its benefits were much more generous than other states’. There were people who purposely moved here for those benefits because they couldn’t get them in their own states.
Well, the tide has turned, thanks to budget cuts and such. I think our benefits are still generous, but because they’re not as generous, there’s now an exodus of people heading for greener pastures, as it were.
So like Alaska? Only it’s not welfare there - any citizen gets a check from the oil, right? So if you want to live a slacker, move to Alaska! If the check isn’t enough, you can hunt your own moose or something.