LETTER: System Fails Single Dad and Teen Daughter

Editor’s Note: Ben Jackson, now living in Framingham and formerly of Natick, wrote this letter to Governor Charlie Baker, State Senator Karen Spilka, State Rep. David Linsky, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, and Representative Katherine Clark. He asked Framingham Patch to publish. Pictured is a photo of Jackson’s daughter Emma.

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My name is Ben Jackson. I am a constituent of yours, and I am newly homeless.

On the surface of things, I am the last person one would expect to find in these circumstances, and it is because of huge failings in both our social safety nets and in our courts that I find myself here. I hope you will be able to legislatively help to ensure nobody else in similar circumstances finds themselves where I am.

I am a single father to the coolest 13-year-old-girl in the history of 13-year-old-girls. My daughter Emma is the greatest joy of my life. She also happens to have been born with a rare cancer that kept her in the hospital for her first year, and left her with life-long physical disabilities. She has no voice. She has a tracheotomy. She has difficulty swallowing, and she has been continually susceptible to recurrent pneumonias.

In October of last year, her health began to deteriorate. I lost my job because of the time I had to miss to care for her. She has since been hospitalized a dozen times--nearly every other week since January--preventing me from working. It is here our social safety net fell apart.

There is no easily located, browsed, or applied for set of benefits for the parents of disabled children who lose their income because of the disability. In fact, there are very few benefits available at all, through the government, for which I will qualify. If I was disabled, I would qualify. If my daughter was an adult or independent, she would qualify. But because I am a caretaker and not a disabled person myself, there is a giant brick wall thrown up.

Which leads us to the second, enormous failing of the Commonwealth: our courts.

On June 5th, I happened to find on my front door an eviction notice. I had missed court dates because the papers were sent to the wrong address. I was evicted by default, without the opportunity to plead my case--and while I will be making separate complaint about the conduct and demeanor of judge Douglas Stoddart to the SJC, that is not the point of this letter.

I went before the court and said “If you do not grant me more time to resolve my situation or find new lodging, my disabled daughter and I will be homeless.” Essentially, the answer was “too bad.”

At no point in the process was there intervention. There was no direction to resources which might have prevented my current homelessness.

There was no acknowledgement that there even were resources or that there was any way to stave off the eviction pending an appeal. There was simply “Next case.”

We live in one of the wealthiest states in the wealthiest nation in the history of the world. This cannot happen here. We cannot be the nation that allows children and families to go homeless and destitute because we lack adequate resources. We always seem to have money for the National Guard. There doesn’t seem to be any problem waiving parking tickets for the city council. Speen Street is torn up and repaved every year, and giant corporations get tax breaks left and right. The wealthiest residents pay the least of their income in regressive taxes while those of us struggling at the bottom continue to struggle for their benefit.

I humbly ask you, first, to present a bill mandating courts to hold indigence hearings in all eviction cases--especially those pertaining to disabled residents of the Commonwealth--prior to any other eviction action.

In addition, I would request that prior to any eviction actions, the court direct both mediation and provide access to intervention services which may prevent the need for eviction or assist in finding new housing if eviction is warranted.

Secondly, I strongly implore you to fight for people like me and like my daughter. The sole function of government is to provide for the welfare of its citizenry, and I would argue that prior to international trade missions are undertaken by the governor or corporate tax loopholes are written into law that we must ensure the most vulnerable among us are protected.

Sincerely yours from the Sheraton Framingham,

Ben Jackson