disabilityvents

Affordable Housing and A Failure to be Psychic

2012-02-20T21:54:00.000-08:00

I saw an interesting article linked to on Jesus Creed.

Independent But Dependent which examines the problem of the American middle class sucking up benefits meant for the desperately poor.

“The government safety net was created to keep Americans from abject poverty, but the poorest households no longer receive a majority of government benefits. A secondary mission has gradually become primary: maintaining the middle class from childhood through retirement. The share of benefits flowing to the least affluent households, the bottom fifth, has declined from 54 percent in 1979 to 36 percent in 2007, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis published last year”

Oh yes, oh yes. It’s happening. The state of New Hampshire, like many other US states made deals with towns to ensure that they would build more affordable housing. And well, a lot of the towns still haven’t bothered. Other towns have built affordable housing…but used a loophole in said agreement – in a well to do town, “below the median income” is interpreted to mean only just barely below the already very high median income. In a town where median incomes are $60,000-$50,000, “low income” is interpreted to mean “between $40,000 and $30,000”. In other words, respectable, employed, (often educated) people currently on a budget, not people who genuinely struggle to afford even a minuscule studio apartment in the worst neighborhood or repeatedly get turned down for any decent apartments because of minimum income requirements.

The people being accepted to these “affordable apartments” do not actually have difficulty getting into apartment complexes normally, they are simply more attractive tenants than the genuinely poor or borderline homeless. There are available reasonably priced apartments all over, that your average middle class person should have no trouble affording and qualifying for.

Middle and lower middle class types employed in respectable fields have references, good interview clothes, better social interaction skills, and aren’t terrified to give out personal information lest someone take away what little they already have. They also make enough money to meet the “thirty percent of your income goes to rent” rule, while most of the desperately poor are paying eighty percent towards rent and have no way to save for an emergency. They don’t have the skills or resources, let alone the money, to be accepted into decent housing without government help.

The property management companies that run these “affordable housing” complexes seem to have missed the entire point of low income housing. Or have they? “Affordable” is not necessarily “low income”, it’s affordable. A brand new Honda is affordable compared to a brand new BMW, but if you can't afford a new car, period, the comparison means nothing.

One new “affordable” housing complex in Concord is renting out at between $650 and $950. It’s supposed to be a complex that houses half lower income tenants and half artists. But in order to qualify for the artist rate, you must be making twenty percent of your income from your art. What sounded like such a promising project was revealed to be…just another fake out designed to make it look like the city is doing something about high rents without actually doing anything that involves real poor people. Why, if I was making twenty percent of my income from my art, I'd be making money from my art, period! This attempt to qualify when a person becomes eligible to be considered an artist or not is based on the very non artist idea that you're not an artist unless someone has paid you for your work.

But the point of low income housing is that it's for people who otherwise
wouldn't be able to either afford or qualify for, normal cheap housing. Not just for people who need cheaper housing, because plenty of that exists, but for the genuinely poor, they often can't get even that and are forced to rent overpriced, undersized, or even inadequate, apartments from people who don't ask too many questions. Subsidized apartment complexes are meant to protect them from that.

When middle class people say “Rents are too high, we can’t afford to live in our own towns anymore” people listen. When genuinely poor people say that, they’re told “Why didn’t you pick a cheaper town to live in?”

My therapist said something similar when I complained about Hampton and the general ridiculousness of trying to find cheap housing in Rockingham County. Even though Rockingham County is their “catchment area” and if I left the county I would also have to stop my services with them, I should have considered that before signing up for therapy at a clinic located in the same county I’ve lived in since I’ve lived in New Hampshire which is coming up on about twenty eight years. I guess my parents were supposed to consider what housing prices were going to be like in 2011 before they chose to live here without asking me first (my dad is from Rockingham County, so I suppose his parents should have picked a "less expensive" New Hampshire county to live in). I am SO SORRY my psychic abilities had not developed yet at the age of two and that we were all fooled because prices weren't as bad then as they are now.

I started going to college at Northern Essex in Haverhill, MA, and during that time I looked for apartments near my school. If I'd found one, we wouldn't be talking about this right now. But I didn't, because I couldn't afford any of them because I didn't have a job that paid enough. It was the same with Manchester (in Hillsboro County)- couldn't move there because I couldn't afford the rents because I didn't have a job. But my
parents, who I keep having to move back in with, live in Rockingham County, which means I am already here whether I wanted to be or not.

When I needed therapy (all three or four or five times) I've had to use a therapist in Rockingham County because most clinics and practices have catchment areas and wouldn't take someone from another county. My therapist could live anywhere in NH and still work at the clinic, but I couldn't live anywhere and still be a client.

Basically, they insisted that I could only use their services if I remained within the state's most expensive county, while simulataneously chiding me for choosing to have grown up there and not being able to afford to live there but also not being able to afford to move.

Furthermore, and finally, there is no "less expensive" place to live in Southern New Hampshire. There's nothing left under $550 within an hour of where I currently live and $550 is starting to get pretty rare.

Squagpad: I Have Concerns

2012-02-10T18:33:00.000-08:00

I saw an interview on Thinking Person's Guide to Autism about a new computer program/website thingy called Squag.

It purports to be a "social media space" for ASD teens, tweens and children. The first paragraph does not bode well for it.

"The teen, called a "Squagger" begins by interacting with his or her own "Squagspace"

Attempting to force a meme on your potential customers is a risky proposition. It's better to let the nickname for your users evolve on its
own.

Sara Winter encouraged her ASD nephew to write a letter explaining his feelings after an altercation on the playground. She was "astounded by the level of sophistication" he displayed in his writing.

She created a system called "Squag" to help other ASD kids communicate. Reading over the basic information in her interview, it sounds like a needlessly complicated, redundent, expensive, and overly invasive program.

I am about to explain why.

According to the interview, "Eventually, when a particular Squagger is is ready (according to parents) one Squagger is matched with another, and they can interact. "

The parents decide when their tween child is ready to make new friends? Really? One friend at a time, apparently. It's like computer dating, only platonic and your parents are watching everything you do or say.

And " Parents hold all the username and password information and communicate with their kids through a space that has been curated by us and finessed by the parents to reflect their child’s personal interests. "

The parents decide what their child's interests will be. I suppose the theory is that the parents will actually know and care or at least ask what their child's interests are, but let's be realistic.

Lots of parents have a less than realistic image of what those are. Some parents of disabled kids are listening, and try to treat their kids like they have autonomous, working brains of their own. But others...don't. Which isn't surprising, since many adults appear to not understand that kids in general have autonomous brains of their own. But according to the experiences many disabled people have had with disability aids,
case managers, care givers, etc, they tend to be happier when you don't
show signs of initiative or autonomous desires.

Here's one of my absolute favorite ever posts on the subject. It needs to be said, because a lot of unintentionally terrible parenting/teaching comes from the idea that children do not have the right to autonomous beliefs, desires, and agency. But if you won't let them occasionally defy you, they won't know how to be defiant when they need to be.

A child who hasn't been allowed to truly voice what they want or don't want and has never met a stranger is going to turn into an adult who really
can't be allowed to walk down the street alone.

Anyway, Winters explains "If members want a peer-to-peer enabled SquagpadTM they will be taken through a thorough application process to be considered."

Your child can't have the friend we picked out for them unless you're vetted first. Yeah, allegedly this is about safety but I think they're
going waaay overboard considering I highly doubt anyone would really use
the program to commit crimes. Pickings of any kind would most likely be far easier almost anywhere else. I mean, this thing is already safeguarded within an inch of its poor little life.

"We will also require their credit card and there will be a small monthly fee." Winters explains.

There's a fee for this. And it requires a credit card, so if you don't have
one of those for whatever reason, you're automatically out of the running for "consideration". But then, we all know only families who are at least
middle class can get good treatment for their kids anyway.

She goes on to say " Our staff will be moderating all of the activities"

That's not at all creepy and intrusive.

"
and as well, parents will have transcripts from every squag session – they will be able to see who their child is squagging with and when, for how long" she adds.

GAAAH! Neither is that. It seems, from these proudly touted safeguards, that they are so terrified of any possibility that their children will meet with dangerous strangers or see inappropriate things that the program
doesn't allow children the room to move or think on their own and parents trying to use it would also quickly find it frustrating. Not all parents have the sort of time they'd need to sit there monitoring Squagging and participating in it, filling out lengthy paperwork and paying a monthly fee.

The security protocols seem to be inspired by absolute terror of online crime, you can imagine these people rushing to lock their doors when they see a shabby car driving down the street. Or leaving the park because a single male adult is reading on a bench.

It's supreme overkill.

Now let's talk about why I called it "redundent".

I don’t understand why people who don’t have autism are so surprised when a kid who barely talks can communicate competently and confidently in the written word. But then, people who are apparently incapable of ever just shutting up often believe that because something isn't *said* it isn't *thought* or *felt*.

Winters says " I figured there should be software for kids like “Sam” – something that wasn’t therapy and wasn’t gaming, but somewhere in between; something that took his communication style and sensory processing into consideration and made it safe for him to communicate not only with parents and peers, but with himself!"

With himself! guys, with his very own brain!

The problem is, this already exists. It’s called the internet. Winters says that other social networking sites are problematic because of the whole issue of making someone your "friend" who really isn't. But there
are already ASD forums online and the ability to blatantly categorize people on social networking sites makes understanding the difference between a "friend" and a friend much easier, IMO.

Plus, the internet is already basically ASD Paradise.

1) You can have conversations with multiple people at once without having to hear their voices. You never have to ask someone to lower their voice, or suffer through a conversation with them while desperately fighting not to cover your ears because even though they’re in another room it feels like they’re shouting in your ear. This is ditto, btw, if you are someone who speaks with an odd cadence. You feel more confident expressing your thoughts because no one can hear you actually speaking. You don't have to listen to anyone else's loud horrible music.

2) You don’t have to read facial expressions, so you can’t misread them and no one can misread yours.

3) You can filter the information coming into your brain and consume it as fast or as slow as you prefer.

4) If your online world becomes overwhelming, you just type “AFK” or “BRB” and go calm down. No one can follow you or try to stop you. No one online ever tries to hug you.

5) If you’re the sort of person on a spectrum disorder who struggles with appropriate personal hygiene, you can shop and make friends without being ridiculed, lectured or ostracized because you forgot to wash your hair (or you just didn’t feel like it, because that sort of task involves sensory difficulties you have to psych yourself up for). It’s also why the internet is wonderful for people with chronic illnesses or physical disabilities.

6) Everyone online is obsessed with something. The ASD tendency to obsess and focus narrowly on a specific set of interests is not only welcomed with open arms but is in many cases a badge of honor which can lead to prestigious positions on websites and in fan clubs. I mean, when I discovered TV Tropes, it only took a few visits to realize that I loved those people. Because their collective brains seemed to work exactly like mine, with their ability to recall with perfect clarity facts about obscure media that no “normal” adult would admit to remembering or caring about and link them all together in a gloriously searchable encyclopedia. I don’t actually post there, because reading it sucks me in enough, if I started contributing, I’d never leave the computer, but the mere idea that they exist, I mean, wow.

7) Social skills are required online as well, geeks have standards too, it’s just that all of the irrelevant parts that other people think come with “social skills” are not as important, what you actually have to say counts more.

A lot of people who don’t have any Spectrum disorders or social issues and a lot of people who aren’t particularly tech savvy(especially if they only really encountered the internet as an adult learning to use it on the fly) have trouble understanding that the internet, to us (people with ASDs or other social issues), means this amazing freedom to be a real person. To them, the internet is not really a real place. It’s a communication tool that you use because everyone else is using it, but real communication, the kind that matters, happens face to face. I always found it a source of both frustration and amusement on Craigslist housing ads where the ad would end with “no emails, please” and then list a phone number. Apparently, many landlords believe that people who contact them by email are not “serious” inquiries, you clearly can’t trust anyone who won’t deal with you via phone. The internet isn’t real, and people who prefer to communicate via the internet cannot be trusted.

But to people who don’t communicate well in the “real” world, the internet was the best, most life changing invention of the twentieth century. And because ASD kids would be more comfortable and confident in such a place, it’s probably the one place on earth they don’t need much help. So anyone who has created a special web site where autistic children can learn to navigate the internet has clearly not spent enough time online. The majority of social interaction problems I've had in my life where I needed someone else to facilitate for me or nothing would happen, occurred offline. Online, I don't now and never have, needed anyone else to do anything for me.

Granted, for autistic children under the age of nine, who clearly demonstrate a lack of age appropriate competency with the written word (not talking much or not talking well does not count), this program could work as a supplemental therapy. After all, I guess for parents of the generation born into a world with widespread home internet, children under the age of eight or nine usually don’t get much unsupervised computer time anyway. Never having a single moment when you’re not being hovered over is the new normal for children (although I do agree that a child who can’t ride in the front seat of the car probably shouldn’t go online alone any more than they should wander the mall alone, I find it all symptomatic of a more widespread problem).

So for children under 9, whose parents have the time and money, it might
be a good program. But any child hitting puberty is going to hate this program.

Especially if they’re autistic. For one thing, as I mentioned above, if they can type and use the written word well and they’re intelligent enough to navigate the internet, they’re going to take to it like a duck to water. Which means having some adult who is perhaps less tech savvy hovering over them while they use the computer is going to get really irritating really fast. Especially if it's a program that allows their parents to police their language and thoughts and restricts them to only communicating with one other kid at a time (not all ASD kids are shy!) who is chosen for them.

As an in class room project with a teacher instead of a parent, it might work but it is NOT a good substitute for regular socialization on normal websites.

As a tween or young teen, being forced to use this program alongside an adult who insisted on speaking for me and wouldn’t let me have the password to my own site and made me talk to friends they chose for me, would’ve simply caused me to shut down even more.

There's something about how this is structured that is reminicent of how
a non autistic person might believe an autistic person would prefer to make friends. Via a carefully selected pool of peers using an overly secure computer program which doles out precisely one friend at a time.

But NT friendships do not form this way, and if you want to make friends with people outside Squag, the method doesn't work. Friendship is personal chemistry, a thing you can't program or even really control. I met someone I thought I'd be good friends with, and if we'd been in a computer database it would've put us together based on how perfectly matched we seemed to be. Close in age, same race, not entirely dissimilar body types, same religion (sort of), lived within fifteen minutes of each other, similar taste in books and movies. We tried, but for some reason, we're not really good friends after all. We haven't even spoken in a year and a half. And it's not about being busy, because when you want to hang out with someone you find a way even if it's less often than you'd like. She didn't even tell me when she's going to be at the same event, so it's not like she just didn't want to be good friends, I swear at one point she might've been trying to avoid me.

A computer would've made us friends. Real Life personal chemistry didn't.

Squag friendships wouldn't be real, they'd be play dates.

This program would be good for children ages six to nine, used in classrooms by teachers, to train them in interpersonal skills using live (but at a safe distance) interaction with other kids. Especially if it was funded by the child's school. It would not be good for finding your child real, lasting friendships or giving them the confidence to do things alone.

I love this comment from a blog reader
Real friendship requires intimacy and privacy. A service that doesn't even begin to allow that is DOA, in my experience as an ASD kid.
This. Because I’m still totally in touch with any of the friends my parents picked out for me as a child.

Five Right Wing Economic Fallacies

2012-02-06T13:45:00.000-08:00

1 “If I don’t pay income taxes, I go to jail”.
Yes, you do. If you make enough money to be considered able to pay income taxes. Then you are, yes, expected to contribute financially to the programs you are benefitting from, such as road maintenance, public schooling, and the police and fire departments. The more money you make, the more you are expected to contribute. Our tax system is very fair that way, as long as people actually play fair in the first place. How is forcing every American citizen to pay taxes “fair”? For one thing, if no one had to pay taxes, no one would spend that money voluntarily to do the things the government needs to do. And where, pray tell, do you think the government would get the money then? Every penny the government uses comes out of our taxes.

Taxes are the bill for all those services you get from the government. If you don't want to pay your taxes, there are ways to opt out, but it means you get nothing in return. For example, one way to opt out is to be dirt broke, to make so little money that the government doesn't consider your income to actually exist.

But being asked to pay taxes means you're an adult, an adult with a job that pays enough that you're considered able to contribute to the financial wellbeing of your government. Only children and people on welfare don't have to pay taxes.

Think about that.

2 But income taxes weren’t originally part of this country’s operation, therefore they are illegal and tyrannical
People owned slaves. The population was smaller. Industrialization was far less prominent. And also, there were very few government services available.

No one maintained the roads. No one picked up the garbage. There was no such thing as “the fire department”. Hospitals were usually private, often religious in nature. Our military had won against England, but wouldn't neccessarily fare all that well if we found ourselves stretched thin in a war with some nation less inclined to play even remotely fair. England didn't really want to hurt us. Japan did.

There was no such thing as a “public school” after you finished your basic lessons at a village schoolhouse or “Dame” school (a small school taught by a neighborhood woman). After that, you only went on to more schooling if your parents could afford boarding school. Girls usually didn’t progress beyond the Dame school. There were few government sponsored universities and most private ones had a religious basis. The universities were the only places that had libraries. Mandatory public schooling didn't occur until the Edwardian era, and that means that any time before that, well, of course you didn't have to pay for the government to build and maintain public schools...if you couldn't afford private, you did not go.

There were no social workers and no one really oversaw orphanages. There was no Board of Health. The automobile hadn't been invented yet but there were no traffic laws concerning coaches and carriages.

So no, you didn't have to pay as much in taxes, but you got zilch in return.

There's no country on earth that doesn't have taxes, except in places where they basically don't have a government either. The battle cry of the American Revolution was "no taxation without representation" not "no taxation". We threw a hissy fit because we felt that the taxes we paid entitled us to be treated equally as British citizens. Not because we just plain didn't want to pay taxes.

3“I don’t want to pay for other people’s disabilities or retirement or the stupid mistakes they make”
Okay, well, the money is there for you as well, should you ever need it. Everyone gets to claim Social Security upon retirement, even people like Donald Trump. Disability is based on what you’d be worth if you were working (what you got paid, how many hours you worked and how many years you were on the job, for example) so the longer you worked and the more you originally got paid, the better off you’ll be when you’re sidelined. My disability “occurred” in my early twenties, when I was in college and had only worked a few low paying, low skilled jobs, so I get paid what I was worth when I “became” disabled, and that means I don’t get the maximum allowed. I’m actually placed in a special separate category for disabled people too young to have earned their share but too old to count as having been disabled as a minor.

Yes, folks, I am still receiving less money than I need to live on because I didn’t have enough to live on when I “became” disabled. Because I hadn’t “earned” it, because I wasn’t “worth it” because my disabilities prevented me from getting a good job.

The more you’re able to originally put into the system, the more worth you’re assigned and the more you benefit when you find yourself in a situation where you have to ask for your share back.

Social Security, the kind you get on retirement, well, anyone who works gets that when they reach a certain age. By paying into it now, you ensure that system remains stable for your own retirement.

4) “The free market should take care of all those things”
The free market doesn’t though. Or at least, it rarely does and when it does, there’s always a devil’s bargain involved. Walmart is one of the few US retailers to respond to the prescription drug prices crisis (heh) by providing $4-$10 generic prescriptions from their pharmacy (Target followed suit later). This is the free market providing innovative ideas to counteract a problem consumers are having.

However, it’s Walmart, a corporation with a reputation for aggressive business tactics and poor treatment of workers, a corporation that obliterates independent businesses and even smaller corporate chains in suburban and rural towns across America and strongly discourages unionizing. Many of the people who can’t afford their prescriptions lost their jobs directly or indirectly because of Walmart. Other complaints about this particular department store are too numerous to get into here. Target, of course, has been in the doghouse with consumers twice now for its contributions to anti gay political agendas and once for allowing its pharmacies to refuse Plan B. Yes, they offer low cost prescriptions but in taking advantage of those, you enter into a Devil's Bargain with Walmart and Target, forced to come to them to beg for low cost medicine even though you hate much of what they stand for.

5) Taxes just keep getting higher and higher in America

No. Actually, US taxes are the lowest since the 1950s.

And American taxes are actually quite low compared to taxes in other countries. Really low. Laughably low enough that foreign rich people like to buy homes here and claim them as their "permanent residence" while not surrendering their citizenship in their home country, to take advantage of all the benefits offered by the other nation's high taxes while not actually having to pay them.