treated like thieves by welfare officer

When the small business run by Minette and her husband folded, they spent four months looking for employment and, after many job rejections and mounting debts, they asked the welfare office for financial assistance -- as was their right to do -- but never expected to be humiliated and treated like thieves.

"Honestly, we were treated like thieves trying to gain unlawful benefits or something," says Minette. "We had to expose every aspect of our private lives to a supercilious clerk who, at another time in history, would have made a great concentration camp guard, and when she saw that we had quite a bit of equity in our home she enquired why we were seeking benefits when we could sell our home and support ourselves."

"When we protested, she pointed out that selling up would allow us to move to an area with higher employment prospects," explains Minette. "We sat there stunned and wondered about all the tax we had paid over the years to protect us from this very situation."

"Why should we sell our home? We weren't expecting to be unemployed forever," cries Minette. "Every industry goes though seasonal slumps and if we couldn't find employment in the areas of our expertise then we needed help finding alternative employment. That help, and financial assistance, was why we turned to the welfare office in the first place and we couldn't believe how unhelpful and rude the social security clerk was!"

"Were they running a racket or something? Was the game to target the more well-off unemployed, brow beat them, encourage them to sell their homes at a loss and either buy them up themselves or get a cut from the agent or purchaser?"

"Sure, we'd heard horrible stories about the welfare office," says Minette, "but that sort of stuff only happened to the deadbeats, the drug addicts and the serial single moms didn't it? Wrong, it happens to decent people like us, too."

"So, what is the alternative to accepting welfare?" asks Minette. "Sure, we could have sold our home at a loss and used the money to rent a place and pay for expenses while waiting for a suitable job to materialize -- but eventually we would have been forced into a career change, having to re-train and do all of that stuff -- and in the meantime we would have lost our home and eroded our finances to such an extent that it might be years before we built up enough to pay a deposit on another home."

"I know that a lot of people are so turned off welfare and being treated like a social pariah that they resort to pawn shops and loan sharks, run up huge credit card debts, redraw from their mortgages until the debt is worth more than the asset or beg loans from family members," says Minette. "Some even think that prostitution and crime are better alternatives than going to the welfare office for assistance."

"And this is the sort of reckless behavior that our government encourages by making welfare benefits so hard and humiliating to get, and by turning all welfare recipients into thieving social pariahs."

"Proposals to cut payments and bring in a system of food, gas and clothing vouchers is just another draconian idea designed to abuse the unemployed -- and the sick, disabled and elderly," says Minette. "Sure, they say it is to prevent abuse of the system, but in countries where food stamps are used their recipients only exchange them at half face value for drugs -- and the point I'm making is this: why should the majority of genuine unemployed people looking for work be penalized by the minority of those abusing the system?"

"We both found good jobs eventually," says Minette, "but our experience with the social security system -- which is a total misnomer -- will live in our memories forever as the most humiliating experience of our lives and never again will we be so naive as to believe that the taxes we pay are any sort of insurance for us and that our government cares."

"The government, as far as we are concerned, is a big fat thief," says Minette. "It takes our money and pretends it's using it for social services, but when you need to tap into those social services you're given a kick in the guts."

"Frankly, we have less respect for the government than we have for the guys who regularly raid our neighborhood for items of value they can sell to support themselves," says Minette, "and we've now found a clever accountant who has arranged our finances and assets in such a way that we hardly pay any tax and can draw on our own funds should we ever get into trouble again."

"And that, guys, is the best alternative to welfare should you be in a position to do it," laughs Minette. "If we had known these 'tricks' when we had our business maybe we could have remained afloat, but we were young and naive and thought we knew it all, you know how it is."

buy a fortress for retirement security

Dulcie is 46, divorced, works as a doctor’s receptionist and when her two children started to lead independent lives she sold the big old family home, downsized to a small house in a cheaper suburb in preparation for retirement and went on a spending spree. Unhappily, she is finding her new neighbors to be less neighborly than her old ones, and her new suburb less secure.

"I've always lived in a house," explains Dulcie, "and I could never understand why any woman would choose to live in an apartment when houses are really not that much more expensive to buy, but I soon started to find out why when I moved to a new neighborhood!"

"One of the most unpleasant facts about a cashed up woman living alone in a new and cheaper neighborhood," says Dulcie, "is that sooner or later you are going to be robbed - not just once, but twice, possibly more - depending upon how vigilant your neighbors are and how honest the local tradesmen are."

"For all the time I lived in my former house -- first with a husband and later with my children -- I've never once experienced being robbed," says Dulcie. "but since moving to a cheaper neighborhood I've been through this experience twice."

"I've done my best to acquaint myself with my neighbors and get to know who the trustworthy tradesmen are," says Dulcie, "but it's almost as if the people around here don't like me, don't care what happens to me or are just as thick as thieves."

"Both robberies happened shortly following a tradesman's visit -- one of whom was recommended to me by a neighbor," sighs Dulcie, "and I've come to the conclusion that he set me up to be robbed and as such the fewer strangers visiting my home the less likely I am to be robbed a third time."

"What really upsets me, though, is that both robberies occurred during daylight hours and not one neighbor saw anything suspicious."

"Hello? It's normal to see a guy delivering a big box to a house but since when has it been normal to see a guy removing something from a house when the owner is at work?"

"There is an elderly woman over the road who sits on her porch from sunup to sundown," says Dulcie. "She watches me leaving for work every morning and coming come in the evening and she can probably tell you what everyone on this street has for dinner, too, yet she was unable to give me any useful information about either of the robberies."

"I kind of blame myself for the first robbery -- which happened after I had delivered a new plasma television set," says Dulcie, "but all the same someone must have seen the television being stolen a few days later and is keeping quiet about it."

"I blame myself because I was so excited at the arrival of my new television that I thought nothing about allowing the delivery guy into my home when he offered to unpack and set up the television for me."

"It was probably not part of his job to do this -- and I certainly didn't need help to do this task -- so I guess it was a case of being courteous in a new neighborhood and not wanting to hurt his masculine pride."

"To thank him for his kindness, I offered him a cup of coffee and then he asked to use the toilet."

"Now what could I say?" asks Dulcie. "No - because I had underwear drying in the bathroom and it was my inner sanctum? No - because it meant that he would get to see the layout of my home? Of course not. How could I refuse such a request?"

"A few days later I returned home from work to find the television set gone. Nothing else had been taken. The window in the bathroom had been forced open as an entry point, and the guy must have walked out the front door with my television. I called the police, they gave me the necessary forms I needed in order to claim on my insurance but they were not at all interested in investigating the robbery - even though it was obvious that the delivery guy either did the deed himself or tipped off someone else."

"Why should the police bother?" sighs Dulcie. "A robbery happens every second, right? Their general attitude seemed to be: ‘You're getting compensation from the insurance company - what's your problem?’ It was as if they were wasting their time coming to my home!"

"The second robbery happened shortly after an electrician and his apprentice came to do some re-wiring," says Dulcie. "This guy had been recommended by another neighbor and he was so pleasant that I had no hesitation about giving him the run of the place while I was at work."

"The job took two days and on returning home at dusk from a Sunday outing a few weeks later I found my front door smashed open."

"Because the electricity had been cut off and I was scared out of my wits I called on my neighbors for help."

"This was the same guy who had recommended the electrician to me and when I told him what had happened he had a smirk on his face, can you believe that?"

"At least he had the decency to get a torch and switch the electricity back on at the mains, but when the lights came on I could not believe my eyes," says Dulcie. "The whole place had been ransacked."

"I called the police who said that this sort of robbery is typical of a drug user, searching for small valuables, and sure enough they had taken jewelry, my laptop, my music collection, about $300 in cash and just about everything that wasn't bolted down."

"Again, the police gave me the necessary forms I needed in order to claim on my insurance and they were not at all interested in following up on the electrician and especially his apprentice who could have been left working on his own at my place for two days, had plenty of opportunity to check out my stuff and the ransacking had been done deliberately to give an appearance of a random hit."

"Who else would know where the electricity mains box was let alone think of cutting the power supply?" sighs Dulcie.

"Can you believe that my neighbors hadn't heard my front door being smashed in or seen someone stashing all my goods in a vehicle on a Sunday?"

"Knowing how upset I was, my neighbor didn't even offer me a bed for the night or some help boarding up the front door," says Duclie. "I just drove to the local motel and spent the night wondering about my bad luck and the weird neighborhood I had bought into."

"I decided that night that I won’t be moving to an apartment like a scared rabbit," says Dulcie. "I am determined to keep living in a house, but I won't be staying in this neighborhood. It's almost as if my neighbors were in cahoots, seeing me as easy pickings. For all I know, the old lady over the road and my next door neighbor were part of a thieving ring."

"My next house -- my final retirement home -- is going to be in one of those suburban fortresses that are protected by private security guards," laughs Dulcie. "At least when you live in a fortress you can be reasonably assured that your neighbors are not going to be thieves."

"It means I will have to cut back expenses in order to pay for it -- but at least I have time on my side in this regard."

"Imagine how terrible this experience would have been had I actually been older and retired!"