Saturday, May 16, 2015

Can You give 5 mins of your time?

I met a mother & son, Donna(age 60) & Jeffrey(45), I sat down and asked how we could serve them bettter. Mother replies, "We are happy for the free meal". Asking if they are homeless the mother replies "No, we are both on SSI(disability) and live in a dowtown hotel, that takes most of our money to live, by the end of the month, we have very little left, so we are thankful to this church for serving lunch(2nd Pres)." They cannot afford regular housing, thier only options are cheap hotels, they tell me it's clean, and they get thier sheets changed once a week. I look at the son, who I later find out is my sisters age, b/c he gave me his birthdate. I tell him he looks sad, "are you OK?" He replies, "I'm Bipolar, I haven't had meds for one year." Me, "that must be tough, is there a reason you went off of them?" "I lost my medicaid card, we've moved so much, they told me it was sent a year ago, but it never came."
I offered to call for him, at first he was reluctant to give me his info, I got as far as I could with medicaid, they wouldn't give me his info. I did call them at thier hotel, and tell them what needed to be done, They told me "We'll see you next Monday, the hotel charges us for being on the phone!" The were tickled to get the Medicaid NUMBER (Toll Free), Donna needed reading glasses, to them, thier world was better.
BTW: There is Disability housing in Richmond, the application is 65 pages long, its available. I don't know enough about it. It's more prorated for thier income. I will find out more about it, but this couple tells me they are moving to OHIO at the end of the month, going to move where family is.

No comments:

Post a Comment