Lazy Or Just A Struggling Human Being?

After my partner and I got kicked out and I had used up almost all my savings to buy a car, we were broke. I had $500 to my name. We had been dancing around the idea of going on welfare for a while since we hadn’t had jobs for about a year. But we hesitated because we lived at his parents' house and they paid for food and the essentials. Then we were thrown out and all that was ripped away.

Before I was receiving welfare, I had the same opinion as other people: that people who did were lazy. That, if they really wanted to make money, then they would work for it. Then I realized it wasn’t that cut and dry. People receive government financial assistance for a myriad of reasons. Some people have partners that can’t work, so that little bit of money that comes from welfare makes a huge amount of difference. My mother received financial benefits when we were growing up because my father was the only one working and he wasn’t making enough to support three children. And my mother couldn’t work because she was raising those three children. It was not much money. Some weeks my mother stretched the money as far as she could so there was food on the table for us, as well as paying for the power bill on time. I avoid eating mince now because of the number of times I had to eat it growing up because it was cheap. However, thinking about what life would have been like without that money, I would prefer to stomach my next spoonful of mince than the reality of being homeless.

In early 2020, my partner and I applied for and received the welfare subsidy known as the Jobseeker Payment, also known as the Unemployment Benefit. The application process was tedious but really, that was just the start of our problems.

Housing Crisis

Having welfare as our only income made it difficult to find a safe place to live. Most applications require you to already have a job or to have a job lined up. It didn’t matter if we said that finding a place to live would make it easier to find a job. It became clear that we would not be considered for any house we applied for because it seemed like we could not afford the rent, even though we went for places we knew we could afford. The only places we were considered for were honestly scraping the bottom of the barrel. One place was in a part of town where people would set cars ablaze for a fun pastime. Another had a neighbour with a dog that had a habit of mauling other dogs. The realtor more or less confirmed that would happen to our dog if we were to move in. In the end, we did find a safe place, but only because a friend was able to prove we could pay the rent.

Not-So-Mutual Agreements

There are flaws in the system. You have mutual obligations when on welfare. You attend your appointments and they keep giving you money. When you attend these appointments, you are required to sign a job plan, which states how many jobs you are required to look for based on the hours you work. My partner got a full-time job, so he had to go see his employment services provider and sign off on a job plan that said he was working full-time. Seems easy right? Wrong. Because my partner was working five days a week in a different town than where he lived, he couldn’t make it to the appointment to sign his job plan. He explained this and their response was if he couldn’t make it to his next appointment, they would remove him from the system. Contacting his provider was a nightmare because she either said she would call at a certain time that suited my partner and didn’t or would call at a time when my partner was working. In the end, my partner got half the day off because there was an event happening in the town he was working in and he was able to see his provider in person. They expect you to find work, but if that work interferes with their system, it is your fault. And you have to go out of your way to fix it. So much for it being mutual.

The Stigma

Not long ago, I was told that I needed to get off welfare. It was said in a way like, “you’ve been on it long enough, it’s time to get a job.” Bear in mind, I had been actively looking for work for over a year at that point and the whole reason I was on welfare was that I still didn’t have one. These people, that had comfortable, secure jobs, looked at me with disdain for my efforts. Being on welfare was a necessity; it was either that or starve.

When I finally got a job, I wasn’t doing that many hours, so having that little bit of extra money from welfare meant I could pay my rent. As of right now, because of COVID-19 restrictions, my hours have been cut down to almost nothing. If I had ‘got off welfare’ when I was told to, I would have no income and would have had to move back to an unbearable living situation.

When COVID-19 happened, so many people were made redundant. People who had secure jobs were suddenly in the same boat as us. So many more people needed money to eat, pay bills, do those essential things that allow them to live. They were eligible for government financial help and it was seen as okay. Yet when I did it for the same reason, I was viewed as lazy. Something that had been so stigmatized for us was now normalized.

Sometimes I think we get lumped in with those that abuse the system. I’m afraid to tell people that I’m on welfare because I’m convinced that they will see me as white trash as so many others have. Some people blatantly lie about their situation and get rewarded. And when those people get caught out, all those that are getting the same benefits suffer because it’s assumed they will do the same thing.

It’s not true to say that all individuals that are on welfare are lazy. Sometimes people just need a little help when life throws you so far into the deep end you feel like you’re drowning.

And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Thanks for taking the time to read my story. It truly means a lot. Feel free to drop a like if you wanna see more content like this and subscribe if you want to read more content by me :)