Today I cried on the phone to a stranger when she told me I was denied emergency SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) coverage because I make too much money; I make less than $2,000 a month to support myself and my child.
I have been waiting for my unemployment to be approved for five weeks, and I have $2.17 in my bank account. Apparently, The United States Department of Labor (DOL) made a mistake when I reapplied back in March for the annual renewal, an application that I had waited for six weeks to be approved. When I had finally gotten my money, the first time around, I paid my rent and had about $200 leftover for food for that month.
Then, about two weeks later, the payments suddenly stopped.
I kept getting prompted to create a pin and was told they didn’t have my social security number on file. After a year of receiving Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits, I wasn’t in their system.
How could that be, I asked myself.
I couldn’t get through to their helpline; they notoriously don’t answer. Their automated system just says “Sorry, we have too many people waiting,” and it promptly hangs up. No matter what time you call. No matter how many times you call, you will never get through.
I don’t know anyone who has tried and succeeded since the pandemic started. (It’s so defeating.) There really isn’t any feeling like the panic of knowing you’re about to have no money, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.
I’ve applied to 11 jobs today. I have $2.17 in my bank account.
I truly had no idea what to do. Do I wait for them to suddenly find my social security information because this is clearly a glitch? What if I wait for the glitch to clear, only to find out that all along they wanted me to reapply? What if reapplying restarts that horrible waiting process all over again, and it wouldn’t have if I had just waited for the glitch to be fixed?
So I took a wild guess at what to do, and I reapplied. After I applied, I was prompted to call a number to complete my application. This number is the magic special number that actually has a person on the other end. I was connected to a woman with a lovely sweet voice, and she explained to me that there was a mistake made by someone on their end from my previous application in March. “They filed it as an extension, it should’ve been filed as a new application.” I held in my anger because she seemed kind.
She said that this application should take another two weeks to process. I told her the first one took six weeks to get approved.
She seemed to laugh and said “Well, it shouldn’t have taken six weeks.” Her chuckling pained me. I understand that from the outside that’s wild to someone who’s not unemployed, but when you have $2.17 in your bank account it’s really not funny. In a society defined by consumerism and such little resources at my disposal, it’s far from comical — it's life or death.
I replied “But… it did… and I don’t have any more money for food, and we’re gonna run out soon… I really can’t wait another six weeks.”
Silence.
I begged her. “Is there anything else you can do?”
She replied. “This application should take two weeks.”
Five weeks later, I’m here again. No money, no food. No hope for any help. Every day I check the status of my application and it’s still processing. Every day I check the balance of my Key card and $2.17. I make too much for food stamps even though my unemployment claim is pending, and for five weeks I’ve had no unemployment benefits, and I have no money. This system is fundamentally flawed. How do they expect people to survive? Easy, the answer is they don’t know, and they don’t care.
People think if you’re poor, it’s because you deserve to be poor.
My daughter stayed home from school today because she has terrible headaches and is throwing up. I’m afraid to admit that it’s probably the MSG from eating too much of those ramen packets that I know are toxic. That’s all we have at home, besides canned veggies, which she won’t eat. That’s what I’ve been eating.
When I had $12 in my account I found an app called Too Good to Go. That saved us for a few days. I was able to spend just under $10 to get a huge bag of bread from a deli down the street that was going to throw them away, and a bag of pastries from a coffee shop that we ate and froze. Having a chocolate croissant in my freezer made me emotional, even now thinking about it makes me cry. The fact that I had something of a comfort to offer my sweet baby when things sucked made me feel like I wasn’t a total failure.
I’ve been a single mom for a long time. We’re actually in the best position of discomfort we’ve ever been in. By that I mean that: out of all the times things have sucked, this is the least they’ve sucked.
I think one of the very hard parts about being a poor parent is how isolating it can be. You’re alone and invisible.
Living in San Francisco as a 20-year-old single mother was no joke. When she was two we slept on my friend’s floor for three months. During that time I couldn’t afford to pay a nanny while I worked because SF nannies made more money than I did. Back then, I was disqualified for unemployment because I wasn’t “Willing and able to work.” That’s not even close to how hard some mothers have it but I’m not here to compare, this is just my story and right now we’re here. We’re here, and it sucks. And things aren’t any better in NYC, where I currently live with my child.
I think one of the very hard parts about being a poor parent is how isolating it can be. You’re alone and invisible. There were times when it felt like SF, the city I loved so much, didn’t love me back like it had some sort of vendetta against me. For so long I could never catch a break. But since moving, I know now that it wasn’t my city that was the problem, not by a long shot. The country doesn’t want to see its low-income people. Y’all don’t want to see me.
I have to write under a pseudonym because if anyone who knew I was looking for work read this, there’s no way they’d hire me. Being desperate for work is the number one thing that you can’t be. It’s like dating, you have to be aloof like you could take it or leave it. People think if you’re poor, it’s because you deserve to be poor. So, you have to pretend like you already have everything you could ever ask for… as if you’re proving you deserve it. Professionally, I also have to keep under wraps that I’m even a parent because it’ll keep me from getting hired, let alone being a single parent.
Then personally, I have to pretend like I’m some kind of superhuman; a single mom who just somehow figured it out, and is nailing it. I spend a lot of time pretending my world is really okay. I spend a lot of time crying in secret, and alone. Crying because I can’t let my kid have playdates at our house because I don’t have any food to feed her friends.
I’ve applied to 11 jobs today. I have $2.17 in my bank account. I don’t know when I’ll get my unemployment. My SNAP and Emergency Cash Assistance applications have all been rejected. I have the Food and Hunger Hotline number written on a little scrap of paper in front of me.
I have a pot of canned corn and a pot of ramen on the stove. I will eat the corn; my daughter will eat the ramen. And I suspect I will cry on public transport sometime again soon.
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