Help a Disabled, Homeless Writer

My editing reel from my last part-time job (October-November 2012):


Some of my singing:

Tuesday night singing lessons with David Friedman:




I have been living in a homeless shelter since May 25, 2012.  I earned a Master of Arts degree from in cinema studies from the College of Staten Island in 2005 and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and communication studies from Indiana University in 1999.  I have completed five screenplays, three stage plays, a novel, and many shorter works, but have yet to find an agent willing to read my material.  I blog about my homelessness experience at http://scottandrewhutchins.wordpress.com and would like to develop the material into a book exposing the scandal of the New York City Shelter System. Homelessness skrocketed 71% under Mayor Bloomberg, and the private shelters make at least $3,533 per resident per day for providing a barest minimum of service.  I am not the only person there with a degree, let alone an advanced one.  

I am active with social justice groups such as Picture the Homeless, New York City Community Land Initiative, Occu-Evole, and Occupy Wall Street Alternative Banking, where we study and educate others to the root causes of these issues.  I am currently working on composing an opera and have an idea for a musical.

I have scoliosis, multiple herniated discs, neurogenic bladder, sciatica, plantar fasciitis, and gout, but SSD says that I can work a desk job, and am thus ineligible.  I have no mental health or substance abuse issues (the only things that the shelter system considers disabilites, other than HIV, which I don't have, either).  I can stand for up to three hours intermittently per day, and all standing for me is very painful. I use a cane if I expect to stand more than an hour. I have applied to over 2,500 jobs in the past year.  This has resulted in eight interviews with staffing services, seven interviews with marketing scams, four interviews for part-time temorary work, two of which I accepted and are now over, and one full-time job, which I was not offered.  I have experience as a copywriter, proofreader, adjunct professor, tutor, and administrative suppport.  I was working as a tutor at the time I was evicted from my apartment, making not nearly enough to cover rent in a low income neighborhood in the Bronx where a man was shot at 5 in the afternoon two blocks from my building.  I was on unemployment insurance until the end of 2013, after which I was required to apply for welfare in order to be allowed to stay at the shelter, which is tied to all sorts of obligations.  I have $1,501 in savings from my unemployment and from the part-time, temporary jobs, which I am not allowed to touch without sufficient cause.

At present, I am provided with 2-trip Metrocards to go to a job program that seems to have no ability to help someone in my situation.  I need unlmited ride Metrocards to get around the city, to my church, to meetings, to the library and Workforce 1 to use the computers, etc.  These are $112 a month.  I receive only $45 a month from welfare, for which they keep me quite busy doing obligations for the city.

I am wearing shoes in desperate need of replacement.  I have been unable to find shoes that fit properly since I was a teenager.  The only brand I have found that provides adequate width at the toe is the SAS Time Out, which costs $200 including tax.  This is not considered a legitimate use of my savings because Dear Feet accepts Medicaid, but they were unable to provide me with shoes of sufficient width.  All of the pairs of these shoes that I currently own are no longer suitable for interviews, and not really even suitable to wear unless taken to a shoe repair store (repairs can cost as much as $80, but I have nothing to wear in the meantime, since all but the one I'm wearing are in storage).  I first learned of these shoes on a prescription from a podiatrist to an othropedic shoe store.  Prescriptions used to knock off taxes in the shoe store, but I learned on a visit to Eneslow Pedorthics that the law changed and they no longer have any effect in-store.

My disposable contact lenses run out at the end of June 2014.  Medicaid will pay only for glasses.  Last time I got glasses from Medicaid, the correction was so poor compared to my contact lenses that I felt unsafe in subway stations because of the effect on my depth perception.

The shelter does not allow laptops, or else I would ask for help with that.  Now that I am a shelter resident receiving cash assistance, the welfare office curently pays for my storage, which costs $226.21 per month for a 10'x15'x8' unit.  My biggest fear is that my job program will get me such a low wage job that I will be forced to rent a small room that will not hold the contents of my storage, and not afford me enough to pay for it, losing both hard and soft copy manuscripts (I have access to electronic copies of only my longest works) on my two desktop computers, along with book and video rarities--everything I own that isn't in my mother's attic or crawlspace.  I have no interest in selling these items in bulk for far less than their worth, let alone any desire to sell them as it is.  I am not going to ask for that unless it becomes an actual problem, but I do need bus tickets to get there.  The most space I could find for the least money that was close was in New Jersey. The round trip is $8.50.  This has everything I need to put in an unfurnished apartment, including an extra long bed, furniture, bookcases, kitchen equipment, clothing, etc.