Every Time We Move
Jun. 17th, 2025 10:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeThis is a post about the Kafka-esque process of moving while living legally disabled in Massachusetts.
Every time we move, we have to update our address, not just with our bank and phone people, but also the myriad social services agencies who control our existence. Since we have to move every few months to few years, depending on our housing luck, this is a cyclical, regular occurrence. We have streamlined our procedure over the course of a decade plus, studying the augurs of obscure bureaucratic paperwork errors, reading the signs in the entrails of the bald eagle.
Of course, the exact procedure changes every few years, and there is no way to find out except by accident or error.
We are thankfully no longer using a welfare phone, solving THAT red tape black hole. So now it's just three groups: Social Security (SSDI disability, health insurance), SSI (mysterious agency neither DTA nor SS, gives us poor people disability which pays us $0 and requires we keep to a $2k savings limit but ALSO is instrumental in our health insurance), and the DTA (welfare/food stamps/health insurance). And this time, we had an even stronger motivation to get it done ASAP: because if that Big Buttfucking Bill passes, those agencies will become decimated and updating our address with them will become EVEN HARDER.
We had learned from previous red tape disasters in 2015 (there were 3 comics pages about it only in the floppy version of AllFam3... I should put those on the fanpoll pile, I just realized), we had learned that Social Security was the address-change hub. We HAD to tell SS first, and they'd tell everyone else, but otherwise, trying to update our address with SSI or the DTA would be a waste of time. (OR WOULD IT????)
Now Social Security requires address changes be made in person; their online system won't allow it, and the phone system will lie and say it can but then not do it. (Or at least, that was our experience, and it was horrible enough and caused so much havoc in our life that it's easier to just suck it up, schedule a day to spend in the Social Security waiting lobby with our lease, and get it done within a few hours.) That went smoothly, thanks to the sacrifice of our 2015 selves: we went with our lease, spent a couple hours reading a book, updated our address, and ate our lunch in the yard. No problem! We were in the clear!
Now, coincidentally, we had a SSI phone appointment a few days later. This was to prove we were still ineligible for SSI monetarily but would still be on it for $0; that's normal. We get the call, they ask our address, and we say, "Oh, we updated it already with SS."
And they said, "Oh, SS doesn't do that anymore."
Without that one random SSI call person (who only calls me every few years), I never would've known that the protocols have changed. And since the food stamps people usually check in every summer, they need my new address PRONTO! (I had a mail forward, but you can't trust that. Any unexpected change tends to make social services freak out, and when they freak out, the end result is usually disaster.)
Fortunately, this is EXACTLY the kind of thing that the DTA phone and online system are good for! So I go to log in!
It won't let me.
I try calling.
"We are experiencing technical difficulties. Please call again later. Goodbye."
Okay. Well, how long can their damned systems be down, right? I put the DTA Contact page (with its "technical difficulties" banner) on my quick check links and every morning, I see if it's still there.
That was Tuesday. It's still up there.
I am starting to get more and more nervous, when I get a text this morning from my roomy, who is having to APPLY for food stamps in this madness. They want to tell me: they got in! Not much, but it's something!
I go, "Congratulations" and roll over and go back to bed.
Then I go, "wait," bolt out of bed, and frantically text, "you're out of town and the systems are down. How do you know???"
"Oh, I logged in this morning."
I dash out of bed. The error banner is still up. The banner is lying. (And on some level, I'm pissed at myself, because of course it lies, these agencies always lie, you always check religiously every day with your own two eyes and your own ten fingers, because that's the only way to break this unwinnable game they require you play to survive.)
I dash to my desktop. I log in. I update my address. I upload my lease.
AT LONG LAST, MY PAPERWORK IS IN ORDER! (Until the DTA get mad about me sending my lease ahead of time and demand something else, but they at least are pretty good about making their demands in a timely fashion.)
Every time we move, we have to update our address, not just with our bank and phone people, but also the myriad social services agencies who control our existence. Since we have to move every few months to few years, depending on our housing luck, this is a cyclical, regular occurrence. We have streamlined our procedure over the course of a decade plus, studying the augurs of obscure bureaucratic paperwork errors, reading the signs in the entrails of the bald eagle.
Of course, the exact procedure changes every few years, and there is no way to find out except by accident or error.
We are thankfully no longer using a welfare phone, solving THAT red tape black hole. So now it's just three groups: Social Security (SSDI disability, health insurance), SSI (mysterious agency neither DTA nor SS, gives us poor people disability which pays us $0 and requires we keep to a $2k savings limit but ALSO is instrumental in our health insurance), and the DTA (welfare/food stamps/health insurance). And this time, we had an even stronger motivation to get it done ASAP: because if that Big Buttfucking Bill passes, those agencies will become decimated and updating our address with them will become EVEN HARDER.
We had learned from previous red tape disasters in 2015 (there were 3 comics pages about it only in the floppy version of AllFam3... I should put those on the fanpoll pile, I just realized), we had learned that Social Security was the address-change hub. We HAD to tell SS first, and they'd tell everyone else, but otherwise, trying to update our address with SSI or the DTA would be a waste of time. (OR WOULD IT????)
Now Social Security requires address changes be made in person; their online system won't allow it, and the phone system will lie and say it can but then not do it. (Or at least, that was our experience, and it was horrible enough and caused so much havoc in our life that it's easier to just suck it up, schedule a day to spend in the Social Security waiting lobby with our lease, and get it done within a few hours.) That went smoothly, thanks to the sacrifice of our 2015 selves: we went with our lease, spent a couple hours reading a book, updated our address, and ate our lunch in the yard. No problem! We were in the clear!
Now, coincidentally, we had a SSI phone appointment a few days later. This was to prove we were still ineligible for SSI monetarily but would still be on it for $0; that's normal. We get the call, they ask our address, and we say, "Oh, we updated it already with SS."
And they said, "Oh, SS doesn't do that anymore."
Without that one random SSI call person (who only calls me every few years), I never would've known that the protocols have changed. And since the food stamps people usually check in every summer, they need my new address PRONTO! (I had a mail forward, but you can't trust that. Any unexpected change tends to make social services freak out, and when they freak out, the end result is usually disaster.)
Fortunately, this is EXACTLY the kind of thing that the DTA phone and online system are good for! So I go to log in!
It won't let me.
I try calling.
"We are experiencing technical difficulties. Please call again later. Goodbye."
Okay. Well, how long can their damned systems be down, right? I put the DTA Contact page (with its "technical difficulties" banner) on my quick check links and every morning, I see if it's still there.
That was Tuesday. It's still up there.
I am starting to get more and more nervous, when I get a text this morning from my roomy, who is having to APPLY for food stamps in this madness. They want to tell me: they got in! Not much, but it's something!
I go, "Congratulations" and roll over and go back to bed.
Then I go, "wait," bolt out of bed, and frantically text, "you're out of town and the systems are down. How do you know???"
"Oh, I logged in this morning."
I dash out of bed. The error banner is still up. The banner is lying. (And on some level, I'm pissed at myself, because of course it lies, these agencies always lie, you always check religiously every day with your own two eyes and your own ten fingers, because that's the only way to break this unwinnable game they require you play to survive.)
I dash to my desktop. I log in. I update my address. I upload my lease.
AT LONG LAST, MY PAPERWORK IS IN ORDER! (Until the DTA get mad about me sending my lease ahead of time and demand something else, but they at least are pretty good about making their demands in a timely fashion.)
no subject
Date: 2025-06-17 05:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-06-17 09:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-06-18 01:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-06-19 02:42 pm (UTC)And that’s why I will never move over state lines again. THE END.
no subject
Date: 2025-06-18 04:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-06-19 02:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-06-18 06:46 am (UTC)I have an absurdly common legal name (think Jane Smith) and it runs absolute havoc through lazier agency databases. I’ve had car insurance cancelled because someone with my first name, last name, birthday, and the same make and model of car missed payments. Walgreens periodically tries to give me other people’s prescriptions.
All of which is to say, I feel your pain. Wishing you SO MUCH REST.
no subject
Date: 2025-06-19 02:43 pm (UTC)