Autism: The Hunt for Housing

Earlier this week, Aran and I met with a woman named Miriam at the Oakland Macomb Disability Network.  She asked us what kind of housing might best suit Aran, and I learned that Medicaid covers the cost--it wouldn't come out of his SSI money.

Wow.  Okay.

Aran needs to be in a shared home, not in an apartment by himself.  He needs to have other people who will interact with him.  But he also needs independence, to be on his own.  In other words, assisted living with roommates.

Miriam clicked around on her computer and generated a long list of facilities in our area, printed it out, and gave it to me.  I should start at the top and start calling to see who has vacancies and what kind of residents they accept, she said.  Okay.

Today, I started calling.  At the first place, I got voice mail.  Left a message.  At the second place, I got voice mail.  Left a message.  The third place had no vacancies.  Fourth place--voicemail!  Does anyone answer the damn phone?  After leaving seven messages, I got hold of one factility who asked why on earth I was calling.

"You aren't supposed to be calling yourself," she said.  "You're supposed to be working with Macomb Oakland Regional Center. You do an intake with them, and they find out who has vacancies and what residents they work with.  I'm not actually allowed to register you.  I don't know why the woman you talked with gave you that list.  That's not how it operates.  She should know that."

What the hell?  I spent an hour on the phone chasing down bind trails?  I wasn't happy about this.

She gave me the number for the MORC.  I called it.

Voicemail.  I left a message.

I stopped calling other facilities.  I also called Miriam.  Voicemail!  I left her a message.  So I'm guessing tomorrow I'll get a lot of calls.

I'd better.

ETA

This morning I talked to MORC. They said there's yet ANOTHER agency I have to talk to: Oakland County Community Mental Health Authority.  Aran has to do an intake with them, THEN he can do an intake with MORC, THEN they can start looking at housing.

I called OCCMHA.  The woman there took some basic information and said someone named Sharon would call in the next business day or two.  Jesus.  How many intakes and meetings and agencies does this take?

Then Miriam from the Disability Network called.  She said she'd never heard of all these steps before.  WTF?  The people =I'd= talked to sounded like all this stuff was long-established ground, gone over hundreds of times.  But this was new to Miriam.

Now I'm waiting again . . .

Needing Money to Save Money

It's a truism that to save money, you need to have money.  It makes it hard for the poor to save.

Case in point:

Darwin uncovered a refinancing program called FHA Streamline.  Basically, if you have an FHA-backed mortgage (as we do), you can refinance it quickly and easily on-line and over the phone.  Because Brexit has caused ripples across world markets, interest rates have dropped, including mortgage rates.  Darwin contacted our mortgage lender, who ran numbers for us.  Basically we got this:

--Our mortgage dropped by half a percentage point.
--Our mortgage went from 30 years to 25 years.  (We already had two years in, so we essentially have a 23-year mortgage.)
--Our monthly payment DROPPED by about $200 per month.
--Due to various financial finaglings, we'll make half a mortgage payment on the first month of the new mortgage and no payment on the second month, putting one and a half months of house payment in our pockets.

This gets better.

I mentioned earlier on this blog that we had the windows redone.  We had to finance them.  I didn't like this idea, but Darwin pointed out the financing was 0% over five years.  "You can't beat that," he said.

I asked the windows sales guy what happened if you were late on a payment, or if you missed one. "Then they charge you 20% interest, back-dated."

Darwin swore to me that, as the bill-payer, he wouldn't let that happen.  The windows will save us a great deal of money in energy bills over the years and will increase the value of the house immediately.  He said we have the budget for it.

Then we came across the mortgage refinancing. The amount that our mortgage payment decreased is about the same as the monthly window payment.  Well, that worked out!  And we'll still get the savings from lower heating bills this and every other winter.

So in the end, Darwin and I increased the value of our house, reduced the length of our mortgage, got new windows, and skipped one and a half house payments.

Now imagine that we were renting.

I've rented on and off for years.  I've never had a landlord install new windows for me so my heating bills would go down.  And I've never in my life had a landlord who REDUCED my rent.  It always went up.

Darwin and I were able to reduce our housing expenses and get more out of our home investing because we already had the money to own a house and make improvements on it.

This is grossly unfair.  People who can't get a mortgage are forced to pay rent at the whim of the landlord and never get anything back for it.  People who can't afford new windows are forced to pay higher heating bills.  Meanwhile, someone who already has some money is able to save yet more money.

But as a society, we scold the poor and claim it's their own fault for being poor.  How are they supposed to spend less in a society that requires people to HAVE money in order to SAVE money?