Help hard to come by for Manassas man

Jim Kendall is living on the edge and he’s about to plunge over a financial precipice.

Kendall, 59, who once washed windows for a living, is caught in a social services gray area.

In February, he got into a wreck that he said wasn’t his fault. The other driver was uninsured and Kendall’s car was totaled.

He can’t afford another one.

“The only thing I could do with the little amount of money the insurance company sent me was pay my rent,” Kendall said.

Without a car, Kendall can’t get from place to place to wash windows.

So, he’s out of work.

Thanks to a benevolent landlord, Kendall has a roof over his head, but that could come to an end at any time. He owes about $4,000 in back rent.

That’s where the gray area comes in.

He’s not homeless yet, and since he’s not homeless, he said, he can’t qualify for much help from any of the area’s social services.

“I or anybody else shouldn’t have to be homeless to fix something,” Kendall said.

Kendall said that he called all of the area charities that offer cars to people who need them, but was told that the cars mostly go to people with children.

To make matters worse, he had a stroke in April and he doesn’t know if he could drive even if he had a car.

“I know from stuff I’m reading about strokes that people who have had strokes have trouble judging distance, speed, turns and all kinds of things,” Kendall said.

Escape to church

To escape from his troubles for stretches of time, Kendall goes to church.

One of the churches where he likes to sit in the sanctuary and calm his mind is St. Mark’s United Methodist Church in Manassas.

That’s where he met Pastor Jim Johnson.

Johnson said he noticed right off that Kendall’s mind works in a “circular” rather than “linear” fashion.

“It’s obvious that he’s essentially disabled,” Johnson said.

Kendall said people treat him as if he’s “stupid” or they think he’s been drinking. He thinks those things combined keep him from getting work, he said.

“I’m not opposed to working, but I don’t think a whole lot of people know what it’s like to have had a stroke,” said Kendall, who now walks with a cane and carries an Alcoholics Anonymous coin in his pocket, signifying 28 years of sobriety. “I’d much rather be working than to deal with all this stuff.”

Johnson said he doesn’t think Kendall is capable of interacting effectively with co-workers and customers anyway, given his current cognitive condition.

“His life changed enough now to where going to work is virtually impossible,” Johnson said.

Over the months, Johnson became familiar with Kendall’s story and watched as he tried to navigate the social services labyrinth.

Johnson saw that Kendall wasn’t getting anywhere and decided to jump in.

He said he hit the same obstacles and wound up in “voicemail hell.”

“Once you get past SERVE and calling the county, it’s this hodgepodge of phone numbers and answering machines. Trying to navigate it — if you are absolutely on top of your game — is a massive headache,” Johnson said.“Trying to figure out just where to go to ask a question is difficult.”

Johnson, who describes Kendall as “desperate,” said he’s in a no-win situation, but has never asked the church or its members for any help.

Car wreck injuries

Greg Ayotte, cognitive rehabilitation specialist and director of consumer services at the Brain Injury Association of America, also tried to help Kendall navigate the system.

He said Kendall was probably doomed from the minute he was in the car wreck.

Kendall got brain scans after the accident, but nothing showed up, which Ayotte said wasn’t unusual. Kendall didn’t get any brain imaging after the stroke, Ayotte said.

Kendall tried to get help at several brain injury services, but he didn’t have insurance and wasn’t able to get “neuro-psychological” testing that might have shown that he had a brain injury, Ayotte said.

Free clinics don’t have the expertise to diagnose a brain injury, according to Ayotte.

Still, it was clear to Ayotte that Kendall is disabled.

“There was a lot of problem solving and a lot of memory issues initially,” Ayotte said.

“He couldn’t follow the steps. He really wasn’t capable of handling long, drawn-out tasks,” Ayotte said of the processes Kendall needed to follow to qualify for any kind of disability payments.

Living at the edge of poverty as Kendall does exacerbates all of his troubles.

“Even if you have excellent documentation when you apply for Social Security disability, it’s easily six to nine months before any decision is made and you start getting a disability check,” Ayotte said. “Most people on the edge are not going to have six to nine months of operating expenses on hand.”

Kendall said he’s not looking for any handouts, but he’s “embarrassed and ashamed” of being without work.

He said he would like to see the whole system revamped so that it would be easier for people to get help.

Yet, he seems to be taking his situation in stride. He knows he’ll probably wind up homeless any day now, but he’s genuinely upset that he’s going to have to give up his dog, Chance, a black-and-tan coon hound.

“A lot of things happen along the way when something like this happens,” he said.

Manassas Bureau Chief Keith Walker can be reached at 703-369-6751.