If the Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership continues to insist, entirely spuriously, that I tried to conceal getting Social Security benefits while I was living at Braintree Village, MBHP will also insist that the repayment that I owe them is about $2000.

July 31, 2014

That's my calculation of the numbers, based on my having gotten about $800 a month after I started getting benefits, until I started working for Labor Ready in February, 2014, when I got evicted from Braintree Village.  After I had worked a few days for Labor Ready, the supplement was discontinued and I started getting $702 every month.

They have scheduled a meeting for me for August 6th "to discuss and sign" the repayment agreement.  I'll have that one meeting to "discuss" the situation, during which I'll be browbeaten and condescended to, in addition to being sexually harassed with the coughing and other gestures by anyone who wants to do it.  Since I will be at that meeting because of my supposedly dishonest behavior, I'll be in even more danger than usual of being threatened with security dragging me from the building if I object to being sexually harassed or if I ask what the person interviewing me considers to be too many questions before I sign what they're telling me to sign.  That was what happened when I was trying to ask questions about the lease for Braintree Village last year; my reasonable questions got the wrong answers, and when I asked to speak with someone who knew the right answers, I was screamed at, told that I had been disrespectful to everyone in the office, and essentially told to shut up and sign or security would be called and I would be thrown out of the building.

If I don't go to the meeting which they have scheduled for me, or if I don't agree that I owe them thousands of dollars and sign their agreement to pay them, they'll take the voucher from me.  If I agree, inaccurately, that I concealed my monetary status from them, and I agree to pay them, it will be part of my permanent record with them that I was dishonest, and that record will be sent to the housing authority of any state to which I try to move, and it will be part of what those next housing authorities consider when deciding whether or not to allow me to pay for apartments with the voucher in their states.

Add to that my eviction from Braintree Village and my many extension requests while trying to find decent housing, and there's practically a criminal record for me that my ever agreeing even to apply for this voucher created for me from the beginning.

If I lose the voucher, I'll be at the Pine Street Inn for a lot longer than I was thinking I would be before I got the letter from James Birney, Program Representative at the Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership, this afternoon.  That is, I'll be at the Pine Street Inn until they think of a way to bar me in retaliation for my public documentation of the sexual harassment and other problems at this and all of the shelters.  Since I was already barred from almost every shelter in the Boston area for the same reason before I got the apartment at Braintree Village in 2013, my being barred from the Pine Street Inn will probably result in my using whatever money I have when that happens to buy a bus ticket to another state.

Then I'll be living in homeless shelters in the state where the bus deposits me.  Since I won't have a housing voucher or the chance to get one, I'll hopefully be able to get work.  Hopefully, the harassment of me at work will only be the sickening coughing and other hateful and lewd gestures, and won't also include being treated like I'm colossally stupid, being grabbed, and then being called a liar when I report being verbally abused and physically invaded.

Which number, from the general numbers listed in the letter from MBHP,  do you think I should call to try to talk to the program representative that I had when I was living at Braintree Village?  These are the numbers:

(617) 859-0400

(800) 272-0990

Copyright L. Kochman, July 31, 2014 @ 5:02 p.m.