As I sit to write this article, it’s been almost four months since I moved back to Puerto Rico after living in New York City for the last 12 years. Before making the move, many friends, both in the states and in Puerto Rico, had cautioned me to carefully ponder my decision of coming back to live on the island. The warnings were always the same: the employment situation in Puerto Rico is precarious; salaries are low and expenses are high; public transportation is bad and unreliable, sometimes making you wait long hours just to get home or to your job if you have one, you are going to be forced to buy a vehicle—with all the costs that that entails in terms of gasoline, a monthly payment, maintenance and unexpected repairs. And people who knew of the many services, subsidies and programs for the disabled that are in place in New York and most states had also told me that in Puerto Rico I would find a somewhat disconnected and occasionally cash-strapped disability services system. I have to admit that in the time that I’ve been living in Puerto Rico, I have already seen and lived through some of these problems firsthand.

It took me almost three months to find a decent job--and I mean decent by Puerto Rico standards. I was told to consider myself lucky, as I spoke to several people who had been jobless but actively looking for employment for five to six months already. These are the people who are adamantly refusing to hop on a plane and migrate to the U.S. mainland just to find job security—the local press reports that 1,000 Puerto Ricans per week are fleeing the island to the U.S. in search of jobs and a better life.

I found a part-time job at a telecommunications company. The company, like many other American-based companies, closed down some of their major operations in the U.S. mainland and outsourced, in this case to Puerto Rico, in an attempt to cut down operational costs, lower its corporate tax bill, and increase profits. Rumor has it that one of the direct results of this is that a position that in the States paid some $10 to $15 dollars per hour, in Puerto Rico is only paying a meager $7.50 per hour. And this is done without affecting the quality of services, as there is a very high-skilled, fully bilingual work pool in Puerto Rico that equally matches the skills and the services provided by workers on the U.S. mainland.

Some people tell me to feel as if I hit some sort of jackpot by finding a job that pays a little more than the minimum $5.15 per hour. By some accounts, between 37 to 40% of Puerto Rico’s job force only earn the minimum wage. The rest earn not too much more than that, but creditors and landlords expect the citizens to meet whatever obligations they have incurred regardless of their ability to pay. That’s one of the reasons why popular attitudes here are that if you are lucky enough to have a job—any job, regardless of how mediocre or low-paying it is—you should hold on to it as if your very life depended on it.

With so many financial hardships and a high cost of living when compared to a barrage of ridiculously low salaries, it is no wonder that the number of repossessed cars, adults still living with parents, people with bad credit or no credit at all, people getting very high interest loans just to make ends meet, seem to be the rule and not the exception for a great number of Puerto Ricans. It is true that there are cases of money waste and mismanagement at the level of working families, but this is not the root of most of the financial hardships that Puerto Ricans face.

As posted on the Social Security website, the monthly limit for Substantial Gainful Activity (SGA) for 2007 for non-blind individuals with disabilities is $900 dollars. People with disabilities in Puerto Rico who want to work to improve their standard of living will see that the choices are difficult: should we try to get jobs that will cut us from disability benefits because we’ll go way beyond the SGA limit? Do those types of permanent, high-paying jobs even exist? If we do so, will we mistakenly abandon disability income benefits just to end up stuck only earning some 100 or 200 dollars more than what we’d make by complementing our disability income with part-time work? And let’s not forget that for many Puerto Ricans, a $900 dollar a month job is not part-time, but indeed full-time. Will we ever be able to have savings? Will we ever be able to own our own homes? Will we ever be able to allocate some of our income for leisure time entertainment or even vacations, whether abroad or within the island? And what about our health—physical or emotional—that made us depend on disability income in the first place? Will we be stretching the challenges of physical and/or emotional conditions for the sake of some level of financial health and freedom?

As far as I have discovered, in Puerto Rico there is no program that covers the Medicare Part B premium, which went up from $88.50 in 2006 to $93.50 in 2007. That amount is automatically deducted from your Social Security Disability check once you relocate to the island. This is a common confusion among people who move from the States to Puerto Rico, and a Social Security representative I spoke to told me that they usually explain to the client that their recently-reduced amount in their disability check does not mean a “cost-of-living adjustment,” it just means that you are now paying out of your check the Part B premium coverage. And for those persons who do not enter into a Medicare Advantage plan, the average payment for the coverage of prescription medications could fall anywhere from $30 to $45 dollars per month when you choose a Medicare Part D provider that does not require an initial $250 dollar yearly deductible. For many people with disabilities who aim for things like owning their own homes or living lives without poverty and financial limitations, all of these income reductions and new out-of-pocket costs make the need for finding well-paid jobs and/or initiating profitable business ventures in Puerto Rico even more important.

That said, there are several income-based housing programs in Puerto Rico, like the Egidas apartment program that serves the elderly and disabled. The residents do not become the owners of the apartment, but it is permanent housing with the tenant paying 30% of their monthly gross income as the rent. One Egida apartment building that I visited in the town of Carolina, east of San Juan, was in a very clean and pleasant neighborhood, the nine-story building itself looked like any other nice-looking condo complex, and the apartment I checked out was fairly spacious, clean, and had a beautiful view of the area. In this particular building though, the maximum monthly gross income that an elderly or disabled resident can make to qualify for an apartment is $850. Thus, if you are disabled and your SSD check does not exceed that amount, you automatically qualify. Likewise, if you get SSD and also work, and your combined gross income does not exceed $850, you still qualify. But if you get SSD and have a job that pays more, even if it doesn’t exceed the 2007 SSA-SGA limit of $900 dollars, you automatically do not qualify for an apartment. The Egidas program seems to be a good housing option for elderly and disabled people who do not have any source of income besides their Social Security retirement or disability checks, or who have jobs that bring a little much-needed cash for daily living necessities, but don’t disqualify them.

Getting situated in a new state or country always momentarily distracts you with the logistics of rebuilding the standard of living that you want for yourself, but putting Puerto Rico’s overall problems aside, I can say that I am indeed enjoying life back in my home country again. I know that things for me will be fine, and will improve in the future. I continue to focus on achieving a successful career as a writer. Soon I’ll publish my first novel, a suspense thriller about the politics of Puerto Rico, and I have already written more than a hundred pages of my second novel, a thriller about the life of Lucifer.

One thing that I can say with certainty, and it’s been said many times before by many people, is that having a positive attitude and outlook on life—regardless of whether you have it easy or a little more challenging—is what will determine your achievement of the goals you’ve set for yourself.

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