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Comment by prepend | Hacker News Reader

> She can’t stop thinking about how most of what she brings home from her full-time job as a caretaker – two $900 checks a month – goes to rent for the two-bedroom apartment with a mold problem she shares with her disabled husband, teenage son and five pets.

Not the point of the article, but someone with her low income and only a two bedroom apartment should not have five pets.

Rent is expensive, but this subject is a bad example for “needing” a rent decrease. Her issue isn’t rent so much as it’s income and expense based. Disabled husband should have SSI income of $1k/month.

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The article doesn't say exactly what her rent is, but if you're pointing at this woman's pets and going "See! Ha!" instead of wondering why she is only paid $21k a year for full time work, please tell me how much you make.

If her husband is disabled medicare may be paying her to be a “care taker”. I think it’s like $12/hr. A good scammy home health company can usually find disabled people, get them registered, hire one of their household as a “care taker”.

I didn’t read the article. But she shouldn’t have 5 pets. Maybe a turtle.

Am I understanding correctly that you are now both dictating how many and what kind of pets this person should own AND accusing them of medicare fraud, while continuing to ignore the fact that $21,600 is not fair annual compensation for 1/3 of one's life?

It’s not Medicare fraud. You just don’t know how it works.

If you would like to give people money, i encourage you to donate to charitable organizations.

And yea, 5 pets for an impoverished person is too much.

You can’t anticipate a 25% increase in your largest expenses living on that salary. Pets are awesome, and people want to live life.

Pets are awesome but 5 is a lot. And pets are expensive to keep healthy.

If I’m having trouble paying bills and can’t support 5 pets then rehoming is something I need to consider. I don’t think I can expect government support to help me take care of them.

I'm sure we could find things for all the people who live there to lower their expenses. But there is an asymptote to how much people can save.

> Her issue isn’t rent so much as it’s income and expense based. Disabled husband should have SSI income of $1k/month.

Did you just suggest that $12k/yr is a living wage?

The opposite actually. I’m suggesting that she needs to make more. And that her husband’s condition should be bringing income into the household. So her condition should improve with those two factors more than decreasing rent 10% or whatnot.

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