For two very long years my family had to endure the knowledge of government funds being misused by our neighbors. These persons were maybe a family of 8 with about 3-4 children, it was a bit hard to tell as some where in and out of the house. This family blatantly misused welfare funds to purchase marijuana (possibly other drugs), destroyed the 2-3 bedroom trailer that they lived in, and more or less stole from the county government.
On the first note, there was only one person that lived at the trailer that actually worked, though it was a low paying job at KFC, at least they were working. Several of the children and 2 of the adults were receiving welfare and Social Security benefits, these checks were probably higher than the single person's wages from KFC. It was a rare time that you walked out of our front door and not get a contact high from the amount of marijuana smoke coming from the house and yard, it is best assumed that the illegal drugs were bought with welfare and Social Security monies.
On the second note, at one point the manager of the trailer park informed me there would be some 'construction' going on at our neighbors house the next few days. The answer to my "Why?" was that the Department of Family and Children Services (DFaCS) had purchased carpet for the trailer because what was in the trailer at the moment was filthy from food, baby 'waste', a number of bodily fluids and so on. The Landlord was told by DFaCS that it was his responsibility to have the carpet put in, with new padding at no expense to either the renter or DFaCS. Within two months, I was informed of a second 'construction' project where they would be replacing the carpet that DFaCS had 'donated' to the family the first time. Within two months, this family had completely destroyed the brand new carpet that the county government had purchased for them.
During the two month period mentioned above, the family was given a large Rainbow Vacuum cleaner. The model that was 'given' to them by DFaCS was NOT the $167 Industrial Business model, more like the $599+ model. After about a week, the park manager came around collecting rent and informed me that because the people living in the house could not pay rent, they had pawned the government 'donated' vacuum to pay bills. Now our rent for a trailer much the same size was $350/month. The people living next door had a reduced rate due to their 'poverty' level status, somewhere around $175/month. From what I know about the 'system' in that county, they were receiving food stamps, welfare, Social Security, power bill assistance, and rent assistance. There is absolutely no reason why they could not pay the reduced bills that they had with the extra funds that they had coming into the house from the government and the one person's meager income.
Lastly, I will mention what they did have. They had a TV, the children, though dirty a lot of the time, wore new (in most cases, age inappropriate) clothes, a very loud stereo system in the house and in their car, they had at least some type of food in the house as the children were constantly seen with some type of junk food (chips, candy, cookies, sodas), a home phone and at the least 2-3 cell phones, all the while there were 4 able bodied persons that could have gotten out and obtained a job...
We were considered "poor" yet we still provided for ourselves on one income. We still live off of one income, but its much larger due to hard work and certain decisions that I have had to make.
If you want my opinion, the "poor" that have no appreciation can just go screw themselves.
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