Help Was No Help

Every week at the shelter I’d sit and do my housing logs. I’d open the Internet, go to craigslist, and search for all the two-bedroom apartments I could find that were $1200 or less. It really got to be monotonous. Like I said previously, the local papers didn’t have enough leads so craigslist was my only option. Occasionally a craigslist ad would direct me to another website or I’d go on places like rent.com but they never resulted in anything viable.

It got to the point that I actually Googled Long Island real estate companies and found a really great site that had a huge list of agencies. I started with A in Suffolk County and worked my way through the alphabet. I called each agency and had one of four results: a) I’d leave a message on voicemail and never get a call back; b) I’d speak to a receptionist who would take a message and I’d never get a call back; c) I’d speak to an agent, give my information and my needs, and would be told I’d get a call back – never did; d) I’d speak to an agent only to be told that the agency doesn’t work with renters who take programs.

The staff at the shelter always told us to NEVER tell the real estate agent or the prospective landlord that we were on government programs – I explained those in another post – because, they said, we needed to “get a foot in the door.” They instructed us to go through all the basic questions first and when the apartment sounded like something we were interested in we could ask if the landlord accepted programs. They told us that we ought to even set up an appointment to see the place before mentioning SSP or SHARP. That was one of the dumbest things I’d ever heard.

Why in the world would I waste my time and that of a real estate agent, or prospective landlord, by going through all the preliminary shit first, possibly go see the place, and then mention programs later only to be told that the landlord didn’t accept them? I always started out by explaining that I needed a two-bedroom apartment for $1200 or less for three kids and me, and that I needed a landlord that accepted programs. That was the easiest way to weed out those I didn’t need to continue calling.

I got so frustrated at not being able to find anything, even through real estate agents, that I finally told CM that I needed some sort of assistance. I was told that I had to call Central Housing to get a referral to the Family Services League. I needed a fucking referral. Gimme a break. But I called and I got the referral. A day later a guy, M, from FSL called me to set up an appointment to do an intake on me so he could find out what I was looking for. Dude worked with state agencies on a constant basis; did we really need to meet? Couldn’t he just ask me the questions over the phone? Yes and no.

M arrived a few days later for our appointment and he asked me a bunch of bullshit questions, questions that were basically a given because he answered them for me; I was just there to confirm the answers he already knew. Whatever. He walked me through his spiel and told me he’d start looking immediately to try to find me a place. When I asked what the odds were of him finding me a place to live and he said, “It all depends on the real estate agency. It’s hit or miss.” HUH? What did his job have to do with real estate agencies?

Come to find out that M spends his days calling real estate agencies to try to find me a home. I told him that what he was going to start doing was what I’d just spent weeks doing to no avail. I told him I believed he’d be wasting his time but he said he was going to try anyway. Guess what. He wasted his time. In the entire seven months that he was ‘helping’ me find a place he came up with only one and it was a mobile home all the way back out from where we’d come, only a few miles farther. I told him I wasn’t interested because I’d spent almost a year out there when I was living with my friend and couldn’t find a job to save my life. I told him I needed something closer to the middle of the Island.

He said that was fine, that he’d keep looking, and he even called me once a month to find out how I was doing, but he never again called to tell me he’d found me a place to live. Why? Because there weren’t any available. I believe I told him that when I first met him but he insisted that there were places out there. I guess the joke was on him. So much for the only home-finding assistance New York offered to residents of shelters being of any use. It didn’t matter because I finally got fed up with the housing log bullshit and started doing things my own way. Fuck ‘em.

Until next time…peace to all.