Maid - Stephanie Land Page 0,15

Program). It’d been a year since I’d attended a three-hour seminar on how to use electricity most efficiently. The information was so redundant and common-sense, I tried to find humor in it, separating myself from my situation, that learning how to turn off the lights was required in order to receive a grant for $400 of heating fuel. More and more, I got the feeling that people who needed government assistance were assumed to be a very uneducated bunch and were treated accordingly. How degrading, to learn that since I needed money, I must not know how to keep my utility costs low.

Now I had to sit through several hours of learning how a rent assistance program paid landlords so I could assure them they’d get paid. To the government and everyone else, it was inherent they shouldn’t trust me. All of it seemed so counterproductive. I’d taken time off work to be there and had to arrange for childcare. I sat there, glaring at Mark, who stood at the front of the room. He wore the same long-sleeved flannel shirt and high-waisted blue jeans pulled up to his abdomen he’d worn when he taught the LIHEAP class. His thin ponytail had gotten a little longer over the year since I’d seen him. I smiled at the memory of his suggestion to save money on the electric bill by not preheating the oven and by letting it cool with the door open. He’d said, after a bath or shower, to never immediately drain the hot water because the heat from the water could go into the house and heat it.

“Section Eight is great for landlords because it’s guaranteed rent payments. They just don’t like to rent to the people on Section Eight,” Mark said. “It’s your job to show them how it’s worth it.”

I thought of how many times the police, firemen, and paramedics had come to our building in the last couple of months; of the random checks to make sure living spaces were kept clean or to make sure broken-down cars in the parking lot had been repaired; to patrol us so that we weren’t doing the awful things they expected poor people to do, like allowing the laundry or garbage to pile up, when really, we lacked physical energy and resources from working jobs no one else wanted to do. We were expected to live off minimum wage, to work several jobs at varying hours, to afford basic needs while fighting for safe places to leave our children. Somehow nobody saw the work; they saw only the results of living a life that constantly crushed you with its impossibility. It seemed like no matter how much I tried to prove otherwise, “poor” was always associated with dirty. How was I supposed to present myself to landlords as a responsible tenant when I was faced with a wall of stigmas stacked so high?

“Those of you with TBRA will have to explain how that program transitions into Section Eight, but make sure you highlight the benefits of both equally!” Mark insisted. “What these wonderful programs do is break down rent into two payments—yours and the portion paid by the program.” He looked thrilled by this statement. You would have thought he was auctioning items, not talking to Section 8 applicants. “Landlords don’t like that the Section Eight payment comes on a set day; they want it to come at the first of the month, but you can convince them!” He picked up another pile of papers to hand out. “Section Eight is guaranteed money,” he repeated.

There were more hurdles to jump over after you broke through the walls of judgment and convinced a landlord to take you on as a tenant. Though it was supposed to be the landlord’s responsibility to get approved for funds from the program, the house or apartment had to meet several safety standards, including working smoke detectors and other safe living conditions, and most of the time that meant if a house or apartment didn’t meet the standards, it wouldn’t be available for a family with a voucher to rent. Which set us up for a conundrum, since landlords in the nicer neighborhoods didn’t want to rent to “Section 8 people.” We had to look for housing in places that were run-down and where we risked not passing the move-in inspection.

“Landlords are required to meet Section Eight standards, but a lot of them just don’t want to do it,” Mark pointed out. “It’s their