Issue 14 : Aug 17, 2025

Imagine you have a disability that requires use of a wheelchair and makes it hard to work. You spend years filing and re-filing to get on either SSI or SSDI. When you finally get approved, you start looking for a home only to be unable to find one you can enter safely, let alone navigate in. This is because though 15% of Michiganders require mobility devices only 1% of homes are wheelchair accessible. Unable to find such a home, you are forced to buy a home you cannot even yet use the bathroom in and pay for the renovations yourself. Unfortunately you are unable to pay for these renovations on your $1,000 a month. That’s ok you think, you’ll just fundraise. Actually, you learn that you cannot fundraise in your own name without risking losing what little SSI funding you have. That’s ok, you think. Worst case scenario, you end up in a homeless shelter. Wrong again. Lansing currently does not have a single homeless shelter which accepts disabled folks. How can this possibly be legal you think? They are able to get away with this discrimination because all Lansing shelters are religiously affiliated. This would also be true if you were trans.

As Dawn says in her interview, the government is not going to take care of us. We have to take care of each other. Read this week’s issue to learn more about some of the challenges faced by our disabled neighbors and what you can do to help.