Posted on 12/11/2011 9:30:24 AM PST by Nachum
WASHINGTON (AP) - Mary Power is 92 and worried about surviving another frigid New England winter because deep cuts in federal home heating assistance benefits mean she probably can't afford enough heating oil to stay warm.
She lives in a drafty trailer in Boston's West Roxbury neighborhood and gets by on $11,148 a year in pension and Social Security benefits. Her heating aid help this year will drop from $1,035 to $685. With rising heating oil prices, it probably will cost her more than $3,000 for enough oil to keep warm unless she turns her thermostat down to 60 degrees, as she plans.
"I will just have to crawl into bed with the covers over me and stay there," said Power, a widow who worked as a cashier and waitress until she was 80. "I will do what I have to do."
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
These are difficult times for too many people who played by the rules and who were screwed in the end by this economic disaster.
I can’t imagine how difficult it would be for an elderly citizen to stay warm in a trailor in Boston, no matter the cost of heating.
She lives in Roxbury so she’s not surrounded by neighbors and family who are any better off than she is. She might be the richest in the family and hood.
My mother is 91 and doesn't live like this woman lives. She makes it on her own and another thing is that I and my brothers and sisters would simply not allow her to live that way.
Has she no family at all?
That stuff is from the olden days. Nowadays people depend on government to be their mommy and daddy and make life "fair" for them whether they deserve it or not.
Congratulations to the Democrats. They won.
Well said. Who knows why she didn't have $500,000 saved for her retirement, as some other posters have cynically asked. Maybe she had to quit school during the Depression to help her family out. Maybe she had a sick husband. Maybe the place where she worked for years went bankrupt and shut down. Who knows? What we do know is that she worked until she was 80. That tells me a lot about the lady.
When I “loan” money, I do so with the intention on never getting it back.
If I want (or need) it back, I do not “loan”. My sister is my sister...I’d take a bullet for her. In my time of need she was there for me.
I only have a couple of people, except for those who are strangers who need it more than I do, that I would “loan” money....not that I have it.
There is a verse in the Bible about a widow who could only afford 5 something (whatever money was called back then). She gave double of what she could afford with her right hand giving and her left hand covering what she gave.
That is what I try to base my giving on.
Not everyone can get natural Gas. At 4 dollars a gallon for heating fuel then you should be able to figure out what just a couple of 275 gallon tanks of fuel will cost. And some local governments tax it on top of that. How would you like to pay an additional 4%? Wall street, and wall street bankers are responsible for the price of oil. It is not supply and demand. We must pay whatever oil costs. What better commodity to make a fortune on. It is one of the best bailout tools that they have.
We have lots of welfare money to spend on Europe, and the government is all for supporting $700,000 dollar mortgages, and much more crap. But People are just going to freeze to death if we have a really long cold spell. And ultimately it is government who Approved wall streets abuse of oil. In fact it is government who provided the liquidity to wall street in order to drive the price to the moon.
Right on, right on, right on!!
This is a creepy thread...
Nice job, thanks..
Why not just go into a senior apartment. Hate basic stupidity.
Spot on!
My Mom (who has passed) lived in a real nice Senior Home here in Burlington, VT. and 30% of them were reserved for low income.
She got about $1,000/mos. SS and she only paid 1/3 of her benefits and that included heat, elctric and basic cable.
Can't imagine that the equally Socialist Republic of Taxachussetts does not have similar living arangements.
Why not have the agency, if they have to get involved at all, do a one-time insulation job on that "drafty trailer" and use the savings in heating aid as a pay back. Right now it just seems to be a way to insure their buddies in the heating oil business get paid.
Pension + Social Security should be AT LEAST 20K. Being a trailer and her retirement age, there’s no property tax and nearly no other income taxes. 20K for one person who owns their home, the rest of her costs should be low to minimal. 20K should leave her enough, depending on medical costs, to pay for heating oil AND all other living expenses.
Sorry....All you have to do is go to any Senior facility and they will tell you exactly how they count your income and assets. You’re making stuff up and you’re very wrong. Been there...done that.
Sounds like the perfect opportunity for private charities to step in and prove that we don’t need a bigger, more intrusive government in order to take care of people.
She does draw some sort of pension and she worked enough to qualify for some SS. Obviously, she worked at some low-paying job and her retirement needs have escalated due to inflation for food and energy. She is far more representative than some anomaly, in today’s world.
You do know what wages were for non-professionals back in the 30s-to-90s, compared to the cost of living? A vast majority of real people in the real world may have never even seen $1000 all in one place in their lifetimes. If anyone gets ill or hurt to the point of not being able to work, they cannot then even get life insurance at any premium remotely payable, if they even qualify. There was no such thing as employer-provided health insurance prior to the 1960’s, except to government workers. People worked hard and it showed in shortened life spans and early disabilities. I remember back in the early 1960s that people in their 50s looked older than most 60-year-olds do, today.
None of us know this lady’s story. I have driven past Roxbury and cannot imagine having to live there, let alone end up in such a place at 92. This woman may have been stubborn and refused to go into care, wanting to stay independent. Some of us have been fortunate, but we have absolutely no guarantee that will continue. Yes, we saved and invested and perhaps had the education/skills to earn above the median and then, nearly overnight, even the most savvy and well-diversified and skilled found themselves having lost so much at an age when their skills were not wanted that they suddenly dropped quantums below their previous station in life. Their hard real estate assets, even those paid for, are not salable in this market for anything near enough to support them for very long, just enough to delay their own hardships. And they still owe taxes on those assets, every year and it is factored into their rents if they are not owners.
So many people who did save have been impoverished just in the past 3 years and it is only going to get worse. So many of us are on stringent budgets, yet manage to find a few dollars for the Salvation Army kettles or some canned goods for the local food pantry or we volunteer if we have no extra money to donate because we all know there but for the grace of God, go we all.
To round out what may be dismissed as trite cliches, pride goeth before a fall. If there isn’t sympathy and outreach from those of us still standing, we simply insure that the government is the payer of last resort. Then, of course, the day will come when the government has no revenue to spare, so I suppose the oligarchs can then be excused from having limited sympathy for whomever is left. While I am sure that will not apply to you, I am very cognizant that it could apply to me and mine.
Private charity needs to kick in. If taxes were lower people would have more $ to donate. And there needs to be huge scissors cutting gov red tape for charities.
any reason you posted it three times?
Not me but the hiccup on FR.
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