Mary

 A couple of weeks ago, while Pat and I were on vacation, I got a text message on my phone from a woman I’ll call Mary.  Mary had never contacted me before, and got my cell number from an acquaintance of hers.  As you know, I am the primary contact at our church for benevolence needs, and Mary was needing some help, so she contacted me and sent along a photo shot of her most recent electric bill.  She needed about $150 to make a timely payment on the payment plan she had set up with the utility to settle some past due charges.

What you need to know up front is that the utility, Evergy, is willing to set up a payment plan for past-due charges in many instances, but if a payment on that plan is even one day late, the payment plan goes away, the entire amount is due at once, and disconnection comes rapidly following unless the full amount is paid quickly.

Since we were on vacation several states away, I had no way to help, and in fact my policy is to not respond to requests for help on my personal cell, because if I did, I would be getting requests all hours of every day.  I insist that those needing help come to the office for a personal chat, and that they bring a copy of whatever bill with them so that I could contact the utility to verify the need.  So, I didn’t respond to her at that time.

Once we got back to Wichita and I started back to work, I contacted Mary.  She told me that the deadline for paying the payment plan amount had passed…they had shut off her electric service, and she owed well over $700 in order to get it turned back on.  I told her we could pay up to the maximum per our guidelines…$150…on her bill, but that she would have to find other means for the rest of it.  We then visited a little more.   Here’s what I heard from her.

Mary is a caregiver for her adult, autistic, disabled son.  He can’t work, and she needs to be with her son pretty much 24-7 so she can’t work as well.  They have no transportation and walk everywhere they have to go.  She had applied for the LIEAP utility assistance funds long ago, but hasn’t heard anything from them.  She called the LIEAP offices and was told that they were so far behind that it would be another month or more before they even got to her application to consider her for help.

She has also contacted the usual utility help organizations in the metro area.  One national organization was out of funds, which is a normal response for them.  Another requires a person to get in a line on Tuesday mornings…that line forming as early as 5 AM…in order to be one of a limited number of people allowed to enter the facility to get…not help with a utility, but an appointment time on a later day to discuss one’s needs with a social worker.  Other places also gave the usual, “out of funds” story to her as she looked for assistance or didn’t return her calls.

Although her son has a disability designation, she doesn’t yet have that designation for herself, even though she applied for that status a year ago.  So, they have been trying to survive on about $900 a month, which is her son’s monthly disability check.  They have SNAP assistance, so that helps some.

And oh, by the way, had her landlord found out that her electric had been shut off due to non-payment, she and her son would have been evicted with three days notice for breach of rental contract.

I’ll stop here and tell you that what she told me about her efforts to find help match pretty much exactly with stories I’ve heard from dozens of people over the years as I’ve worked with this ministry.  I totally believe what she has told me because it does match up, almost word for word, with those stories from past encounters with many others.  This scenario plays out among the Wichita area poor literally hundreds of times a week, just as Mary described it to me, with changes only in some of the more minor points.

Well, time went on.  A little over a week later, I hadn’t heard back from Mary regarding her effort to find other funds to supplement our promised contribution.  She, however, later called the office and told me that she hadn’t been able to raise more than about $200, and had been without electricity for eight days.  We visited a little more, then hung up.  But I couldn’t get her situation out of my mind…especially the fact that had I been available in the office when she first contacted me, we might have been able to pay the payment plan amount and keep her from being disconnected.  I didn’t take that responsibility personally on my shoulders, but it did weigh on me as I closed out my work day.

In the process of my visits with Mary, I got her address.  Continuing to consider Mary’s situation concerning possible eviction, no transportation, lack of help from other organizations, and caring for a disabled son, at the end of my work day, I called my wife, explained the situation, and asked if she would accompany me to Mary’s apartment.  She agreed, and I picked her up at the agreed-on meeting place and we went to the apartment.

Mary’s apartment was on the top floor of the building on the west side.  It was sweltering hot in her apartment, and very, very dark.  She had kept the blinds closed to try to prevent the heat of the day from coming in so much.  Mary is a woman in her mid 50’s, and rather frail in appearance.   Her health overall did not look very good.  We also met her son, who appeared out of a back room in the apartment, coming to the door.  We visited more about her situation and what little progress she had made in paying the electric bill.  She still owed over $600 in overdue bills, plus now her current billing, which brought the total to over $700.

There was no way I was going to leave her and her son in that sweltering hothouse of an apartment, fearful of eviction and turned down by other organizations for help, and go home to a comfortable evening in my easy chair.  So I asked her for a copy of a bill, contacted the payment service for Evergy, and paid the entire amount owed from the church credit card.  The electric service came back on about three minutes after I had paid the bill.

Think about this.  How could she have traveled to the organization where one gets in line just to get an appointment for later in the week with no transportation and having to care for an autistic son?  Even the city bus service doesn’t run that early in the day, and the organization’s office is about 6 miles away from her apartment.

The LIEAP utility assistance program is so understaffed that the people who rely on it for help with their bills once the cold weather rule goes off in the spring can’t get that help until well into the summer…by then too late to avoid their utility being shut off due to the discontinuation of the cold weather rule.

And why does it take a year or more to process an application for federal disability benefits?  If that would have been adjudicated timely, she may well have had the funds to pay her bills.

One more thing.  Where would these people have gone had they been evicted?  How would they have moved their things with no transportation and no money?  How would they have navigated that crisis?  Have you tried to rent something in the Wichita area recently?  Do you know the cost of doing that and the things you have to do in order to just be considered for an apartment?  Those two people would have been on the street, so far down in the poverty whirlpool that they never would have seen the light of day again.

I tell you Mary’s story simply to tell you this.  There are hundreds…no, thousands…of Marys in the greater metro area.  Their stories are the same.  Their struggle to just survive the day is real.  If you have a roof over your head, food in the refrigerator, turned-on utilities, and a machine that will take you places where you want to go…with fuel in it to get you there, you are blessed beyond measure.  Rejoice in thanksgiving for those blessings, and bear in mind your responsibility to help those in need like Mary.  Then do it…fulfill that responsibility.  Blessings.