“There are only 52 affordable homes for every 100 extremely low-income renters according to an analysis by the National Low-Income HousingCoalition. Montana would need to see an additional 16,467 housing units to make up for this shortfall.[6] “, Quoted from the Montana Budget website back in 2016. Have we even come close to meeting even a thousand of those units? Maybe some of the poor can bunk in the barn with the cattle after all didn't the Trump Administration want all the cattlemen to calculate the amount of poop their animals contribute to the greenhouse gas problem?
Are we going to pay the low-income Disabled and Seniors for this job, or is the roof over their heads enough to demand they should just be grateful? Where are the contractors who are willing to put the all-mighty-dollar aside and give back to the people of this state that not only put bread on his table but the table of those who work for him? Are there any good Samaritans left in this arena or have they all been blinded by the bottom line?
Does it even matter that the most a vulnerable population is still facing a housing crisis? I am not sure it really does when HUD faces an 18% reduction in the https://www.montanabudget.org/post/2020-president-trump-budget 2019/2020 Presidential budget. In this budget, the president's request would eliminate 140,000 Home Choice Voucher's nationwide. All housing programs will be effected, $3.2 billion of those housing costs will become the responsibility of Seniors, Disabled, Working poor families who can not meet the demands of keeping up with the out-of-reach necessities while being forced to maintain luxury items like the internet to be able to update their information.
With the work requirements being attached to the supplementation of government funds the poor need, we still do not have enough affordable units for these people to move into. The cost of renting has become so far out of reach many of Montana's low-income people are considering living in camp trailers, or out of their vehicles as it is the only way they can afford, medical, food, and clothing just to be able to go to any job they are able to secure for themselves.
Working for $9.50 an hour at my temporary, seasonal job for six months out of the year, I was flabbergasted to learn that I needed to make sure that I worked 20 hours every week as my rent was based on the increase in income this job would have given me plus my social security disability benefit that I worked for over twenty-seven years. Thirty percent of this gross income goes to my landlord. What is the incentive for a person like me, who has a physical disability, as well as mental, am older, have managed to secure a temporary job not qualify for any of the work incentive programs that would allow the money I make be uncountable? Just because the state or some the county agency isn't getting paid to train me, or because my employer is the State, I do not qualify for any of the work requirement job training or placement programs.
I will no longer be able to work that $9.50 an hour job this winter, as I have been limited to 12 hours a week and no more than four hours a day at a desk job. It looks like this blog and whatever else I can find that might make income for me is the only choice I have. Now how will that affect my housing you ask? Your guess is as good as mine.
If things keep going the way they are in Washington, D.C. you will probably be able to find me at a local McDonald's, as I will be living out of my vehicle, and that will be where I can utilize the internet most often.
I hope that will not be true, but as the parade of mistakes, broken promises and injustices are trotted out in public once more this coming election year, let us remember They have not finished the job they started in 2016!
Let’s vote for those who can actually put a program together and finish it so that those in the present are left hanging and those in the near future continue to face uncertainty.
We can not continue to pretend that the housing crisis has been dealt with when so many people face the possibility of losing their housing because the United States Government has better use for those appropriated funds, and besides the majority of the population believes this will root out some of those who are illegally on these programs.
Do not forget that some of us who play by the rules will be squeezed out as well, just because we either fall in the age group where we should be able to train for another job or because the amount we receive in benefits is so nominal that it shouldn’t matter anyway.
You try and live off eight hundred dollars a month, find a job that is only 12 hours a week and would pay enough to warrant going there when everyone is taking their cut off the top of your total gross income regardless of who else has their fingers in your pockets. I just wish the pickpocket was a homeless child than the United States Government.
