This is the last story I will post today. I have many more that I will share over the weeks and months to come. I hope this insight will present a very real picture of life as a welfare recipient. All of my stories are true. Over time, it has bothered me that I have watched people place so little value on their lives in pursuit of easy money, otherwise known as welfare. I have watched these same people live in poverty, filth and cockroach infested apartments, with little regard for their own health or the health of those in their charge. I have learned lessons taught by my tenants on how they manipulte the system to get more money. It has been a real education, and now I am telling the stories of those who have been part of this broken system we call welfare.
Barbara B. was a welfare mother of 4 children when she came to my apartment looking for a new place to live. She listed her income as welfare and SSI, totaling $1200 a month. She also was a felon and fully disclosed that on her application as well. Upon reviewing her background check, and determining that she was honest in her application, I approved her for the apartment. She moved in and all was well until I started to get to know her a lot better. I always did work at my apartments, I wanted to be hands on to get to know who was living there & also to solve problems before they became too big to solve. In Barbara's case, she was a professional scam artist. Of course, I didn't know that at the beginning, but then again, if she was any good at it , I clearly wouldn't have picked up on it would I?
Barbara was very busy - in fact too busy to take care of her children. However, she was excellent at using her kids to make money. SSi payments came in for one son's learning disability, another had asthma and she was pregnant with #5 to get 6 weeks paid maternity. She would sell her children's information (social security) to various people including her own mother, at tax time, for a small portion of what the person filing would get back. Yes, I know - Barbara B. was committing fraud. How do I know this? Because while Barbara B. was a very effective hustler, she wasn't the brightest bulb on the tree and loved to brag about how crafty she was. Last, Barbara was helping her boyfriend up the street sell drugs to people in the lower apartment, thus making money for every sale she made. So, what did I do? I called CPS because her 14 year old daughter was missing school staying home caring for her younger siblings while Barbara was out hustling. CPS didn't do a damn thing. Then I called vice to monitor the property because drugs were being sold to my tenants and I told them the source of the drugs up the street. Vice watched the house, and eventually arrests were made, but by that time Barbara knew the heat was on and moved. The people downstairs were arrested, and eventually got out on probation.
So how did Barbara's kids live? How did welfare and SSI benefit her kids? Well, while they lived in my apartment, they often went without food, and Barbara would tell me how hungry they were. They had one dorm size refrigerator in their kitchen - no freezer. They had a stove that didn't work and the place was crawling with bugs because Barbara never cleaned. Her baby drank juice, his teeth rotting. Her kids wore dirty clothes and often, her son Jerry was in his sleeper all day and all night, for I don't know how many days in a row. At night, Barbara would make the kids sit in her room and watch TV to fall asleep while she made calls on her cell phone or hung out with her friends. She always had pirated movies, who know where the heck she would get them but sure enough, rated R wasn't off limits for her young children.
When they moved out, I found the place where Barbara stashed her drugs. She hid her drugs in a panel of a bookcase that was previously boarded up and painted over. Of course I called police, but couldn't tell you what became of it. She left the place a mess - spoiled food all over the kitchen. She left her stove and her refrigerator. We found tons of books from her kid's school library that were discarded like trash. We found a school laptop that was also discarded like trash. Tons of clothes were left behind in addition to letters and a diary written by her daughter Ashely.
I read the diary and realized Ashely knew how awful her mother was, but didn't have a choice for anything better. Ashley wrote one entry that told about her misery of having a mother on drugs, who stole her money and didn't take care of her. She titled it "bad mom". I called CPS & turned over the letters and diary & doubt CPS did anything with it. Unfortuately, I know all too well that Ashley will grow up a product of her welfare environment & most likely end up like her mother. Ashley watched her mother abuse the system, adding children to the family to boost income. And it worked. It didn't matter to Barbara that the kids lived in filth, had no role models or even knew who their fathers were. The whole point was the the kids are a means to an end. Along the way, the kids are deprived of a normal childhood, an education, and a nurturing parent(s). If we took away Barbara's children (thus taking away her means of income), and told her that by having more children she would not be entitled to any income, do you honestly think she would contine to get pregnant?
The answer is no - she would not get pregnant if she knew that there was no monetary benefit in it for her.
Thank you for sharing this shocking story of a woman abusing the system and her children. It is so sad and makes me angry that there are people like this in the world, and the fact that I hear more and more of these stories is hardly comforting.
I honestly hope those kids get lucky and do get help from CPS. That woman does not deserve to be a mother.
Thank you for reading about Barbara's abuse of the welfare system. I have so many stories from my years as a landlord that I hope they show the reality of what is happening. I hope people feel empowered to fight against the rampant abuse and fraud of the welfare system & fight for better allocation of their tax monies. Last, I hope that people will put pressure on CPS to actually realize that children are not always in the best care with their biological parent(s). So many of these children, because their parent and CPS fail them, will simply be part of the welfare system sooner than later. Somehow, we must intervene to stop that from happening and encouraging these kids to seek higher education and let them actually enjoy their childhood instead of learning the harsh reality of survival of the fittest inner city style.
You'll find some sympathetic ears here, and people who might be able volunteer some ideas towards alleviating this problem.
It's nice to see a blogger now and then with a serious progressive goal, too.
Thank you for your comment. I seriously hope exposing this issue will bring solutions to a long term problem that we, as a nation, can no longer bear financially, socially or morally. Given the current economic climate, I don't think we can afford to continue to let welfare abuse continue, nor do I think we can continue to ignore the plight of the children who clearly need to be removed from their homes & into safer, stable environments. This is a complex issue, but at a time when so many people are vunerable, losing jobs, losing health care and wondering how we can financially stay afloat as a nation, we have to find ways to empower every American to do their part in their communities as well as contribute to the tax burden to ensure prosperity for all, not just a select few.