Hey everyone. My name is Alex, I'm from Philly. I'm a steering committee member in the City of Philadelphia Department of Planning on the Comprehensive Planning Committee. I am about to go homeless a 2nd time while serving in this role. It is not full time. Its a 2 hour meeting every few weeks or so. But I can't work a normal job because of my latex allergy and mast cell activation syndrome. I also have other barriers after a few tbi, and a neck injury, and BPD. I am waiting for SSDI. I'm on a lot of public housing waitlists. I run the reddit r/section8listshoppers to help people shopping for section 8 waitlists because I don't know what else to do right now.
I'm afraid that leaving Philly I'll have to wait months to years to get back in treatment for my MCAS and BPD. So I'm trying to figure out all of my options. But because of the severity of my latex allergy and MCAS, I am not really able to do a lot of work repairing or cleaning out a place. I was wondering what other folks with significant physical disabilities do to survive this situation? I can't be around folks dogs, I cant go to our library, city hall, county assistance office, etc because of their use of Latex and I am meeting with the City of Philadelphia Mayors office for People with Disabilities on Monday to discuss more things the city needs to do to bring equity and empower people like me with a life threatening latex allergy, since we account for approximately 6% of people. How do I survive this next round of homelessness? I've couched surfed in the past, but I'm really afraid of overstaying my welcome.
Parents home isn't safe for me. My partners family has a dog that I am allergic too so I can't live with them. I've got prayers for section 8 or other public housing opening up in time. But I don't know what to seriously do at the moment. I can't talk about specifics but I've spent years doing housing activism in my city. But there are too many barriers to accessing public housing in the 2nd most population dense city in America, and because it is not a latex free state, no matter how much effort I put to point out the barriers, I have to rely on law makers to listen to my input in the committee, and as resident using the means available to everyone else. I hope to listen and learn a lot from you folks, and take the advocacy you share to try and change things here over the next 25 years in Philadelphia city planning. I just have no idea how to make that happen if I can't stay housed with these existing barriers. I don't have the eviction notice yet, but it will arrive in the next month or two probably. My dog allergy and latex allergy are severe enough that I would need to be hospitalized after a short period of exposure.
I hope to learn from all of you and use this as a resource to listen to how I can also do more to help others as my experience alone isn't enough to represent or help everyone with this hardship.
I'm afraid that leaving Philly I'll have to wait months to years to get back in treatment for my MCAS and BPD. So I'm trying to figure out all of my options. But because of the severity of my latex allergy and MCAS, I am not really able to do a lot of work repairing or cleaning out a place. I was wondering what other folks with significant physical disabilities do to survive this situation? I can't be around folks dogs, I cant go to our library, city hall, county assistance office, etc because of their use of Latex and I am meeting with the City of Philadelphia Mayors office for People with Disabilities on Monday to discuss more things the city needs to do to bring equity and empower people like me with a life threatening latex allergy, since we account for approximately 6% of people. How do I survive this next round of homelessness? I've couched surfed in the past, but I'm really afraid of overstaying my welcome.
Parents home isn't safe for me. My partners family has a dog that I am allergic too so I can't live with them. I've got prayers for section 8 or other public housing opening up in time. But I don't know what to seriously do at the moment. I can't talk about specifics but I've spent years doing housing activism in my city. But there are too many barriers to accessing public housing in the 2nd most population dense city in America, and because it is not a latex free state, no matter how much effort I put to point out the barriers, I have to rely on law makers to listen to my input in the committee, and as resident using the means available to everyone else. I hope to listen and learn a lot from you folks, and take the advocacy you share to try and change things here over the next 25 years in Philadelphia city planning. I just have no idea how to make that happen if I can't stay housed with these existing barriers. I don't have the eviction notice yet, but it will arrive in the next month or two probably. My dog allergy and latex allergy are severe enough that I would need to be hospitalized after a short period of exposure.
I hope to learn from all of you and use this as a resource to listen to how I can also do more to help others as my experience alone isn't enough to represent or help everyone with this hardship.
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