Thursday, December 15, 2016
Friday, December 2, 2016
What the heck is a Block Grant
and why are they sometimes not a good idea?
Block granting SNAP (food stamps) would break a crucial anti-poverty program
Read this Washington Post article.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/01/11/block-granting-snap-food-stamps-would-break-a-crucial-anti-poverty-program/?utm_term=.3017d93da355
Monday, November 14, 2016
Debtors Prisons?
Monday, April 11, 2016
Alarms Sound for Poor Families in the
Commonwealth
by Georgia Mattison
By making several alarming changes this March the Department
of Transitional Assistance DTA will make Transitional Assistance for Families
with Dependent Children (TAFDC) in Massachusetts even harder to access.
Meanwhile, the TAFDC caseload is shrinking significantly every month.
First, DTA plans to require the 1,100 households that are
exempt from the work requirement because they take care of a disabled parent or
grandparent or sibling, to put their family member in a nursing home in order
to comply with the work requirement. Deborah Harris from the Massachusetts Law
Reform institute in a letter to legislators wrote: “The requirement that a
caregiver should put her disabled relative in a nursing home is cruel and
irresponsible.”
Furthermore, nursing homes cost the Commonwealth more in one
month than the average TAFDC grant for a year. If a caregiver refuses to put
her disabled relative in a nursing home, she loses the benefit for her and her
children.
The second alarming change in March will be a stricter
disability standard for exemption from the work requirement which will affect
2,200 households.
The third and worst
major change will be the pre-application work search requirement which is
predicted to keep an estimated 50-80% of applicants from accessing TAFDC.
Currently the caseload is approximately 35,000 households according to the DTA
website. The program is losing 3-4,000 households a month. The Welfare
coalition attributes this alarming decline to routine denial of appeals once a
24 month time limit has been reached, and the uptick in the application of
sanctions.
The Welfare Coalition cannot get statistics or information
on these appeals and sanctions. We are going up the legal chain to try to get
this public information released. And the continuing problems with the new DTA
access system have put both TAFDC and SNAP (Food Stamps) under threat of
serious caseload declines. This is all happening even before the new
requirements are implemented! The Coalition has been meeting weekly to work
against this tide of shameful effort to deny families the benefit they deserve.
The Welfare Coalition has expanded its membership to
advocacy groups for the disabled and the elderly. We have been meeting with
legislators since last August to file a bill to eliminate the new disabled
standard and pre-application work requirement from the welfare reform law
passed last year. A bill is due out of the Senate soon. The caretaker change
which is a policy rather than a regulation or a law has been a subject of
meetings with legislators and the DTA Commissioner. DTA has now delayed the
caregiver exemption change until next October.
DTA has also announced a delay until next December of the
drastic change in the Disability Standard till next December. But a new DTA
plan just announced is to deny the benefits severely disabled parents receiving
Supplemental Social Security Income SSI the TAFDC benefits they are receive
just for their children. This will terminate benefits to 6900 households by
next July. The Coalition will be working with Legislators to block this current
proposal.
As the caseload
declines there is a simultaneous uptick in families living in deep poverty in
the Commonwealth. Given the unreasonable and systematic denial of benefits, in
a year or two, there may be virtually no families in the program. Families will
get SNAP, WIC (Women, Infants, and Children’s Program), and Medicaid, but no
cash assistance. Currently according to the Center for Budget and Policy
Priorities, there are 120,000 households in Massachusetts in deep poverty. Deep
poverty is defined as 50% and below of the federal poverty line.
Massachusetts may soon mirror most of the United States with
virtually no TAFDC benefit. In 1996 Congress passed the Welfare Reform Act
changing the program from a federal entitlement program to a state block grant.
Block grants essentially capped participation in the program. SNAP is a federal
entitlement; therefore, all applicants who are eligible receive the benefit.
For the most part states can do anything they want with this money and they
have. The number of families in the United States and Massachusetts has slid to
a quarter of the households that were receiving the benefit in 1996 when it was
a federal entitlement program. The Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has proposed
making SNAP a block grant.)
In the book, “$2 Dollars a day: Living on almost nothing in
America,” authors Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer found most of the poor did not
believe the TAFDC benefit still existed. The book described a vast pool of
people who live in deep poverty, who struggle to survive, find work (often
perilous work), and avoid homelessness. Only one in four U.S. jobs can support
a family of four. Housing instability is a hallmark among those in deep poverty
as housing subsidies are rare.
Georgia Mattison is
the PPUF Project Director. She is a member of the Welfare Coalition, the SNAP
Coalition and a Governor’s appointee to the Boston DTA Advisory Board.
Friday, February 26, 2016
Congressman Spends Night In A Shelter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTvAFIdfjMQ&authuser=0
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
February 25, 2016
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CONTACT:
Abraham White 202-308-8430
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McGovern: Here’s Why I Stayed at a Homeless Shelter
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Jim McGovern (MA-02) spoke on the House floor today about his recent overnight stay at the Interfaith Hospitality Network (IHN) of Greater Worcester, a local homeless shelter. This was Congressman McGovern’s second time staying at the shelter and part of his ongoing efforts to raise awareness about homelessness and increase support for efforts to reduce it in Massachusetts and across the country.
Full text of Congressman McGovern’s speech is below:
“Last week during our district work period, I spent the night at the Interfaith Hospitality Network, a family homeless shelter in Worcester, Massachusetts. This was my second time spending a night there in recent years. It was a wonderful opportunity to hear firsthand the stories of families who are facing tough times and to see the incredible support provided by groups like IHN.
“In today’s media environment where every development in the presidential campaign gets a breaking news banner, it’s easy to lose sight of the real issues impacting real families and homelessness is one of them. In 2015, more than 500,000 Americans were homeless on any given night. Of that number, more than 200,000 were people in families and nearly 50,000 were veterans.
“Even in Massachusetts, one of the richest states in the nation, homelessness continues to be a challenge in many of our communities. In recent years, state budget cuts have led to a record number of homeless children in Massachusetts and the overall uptick in homelessness has led to overcrowding in shelters with thousands of families being turned away.
“In the richest country on the planet, it is simply astonishing that anyone is homeless, but the fact is this continues to be a persistent problem. Fortunately, there are amazing organizations like the Interfaith Hospitality Network that are making a difference.
“IHN works in partnership with the faith community to provide shelter and assistance to families with children who are homeless. Their primary goals are to assist families in increasing their income and to help them secure permanent housing, while providing the critical support services necessary for them to succeed.
“It’s a ‘community bed shelter’ that provides private bedrooms and shared living areas for six families at a time who are homeless but don’t qualify for state-funded shelters.
“One of the points that the people I met made very eloquently was that sometimes life is very complicated and sometimes things don’t work out as you expect them to.
“Many of the families that I met during my stay included at least one working parent. But they had fallen into the gap where they earned too little to make ends meet but too much to qualify for other housing assistance programs.
“Some of the residents included college-educated parents with families that fell on hard times - maybe a parent is sick or a child’s sick, or a parent got laid off from a job. Those families are not there because they made poor choices; there were a series of events that led to this. One thing parents at the shelter have in common is that they love their kids more than anything and are working tirelessly to get back on their feet.
“The families at IHN are not charged rent and work with a caseworker to budget and save money for their own apartments. The caseworker also helps families access necessary health care or counseling, learn job skills, enroll in job training or educational classes, and assists them with other life issues.
“IHN is a very special place. It’s a home. It’s comfortable. It’s safe. Families prepare and eat dinner together. Children do their homework together, color in coloring books, and play games. IHN provides a sense of normalcy during times of turmoil and uncertainty for families.
“With each visit to the IHN shelter in Worcester, I am inspired to see that within our community, there are so many wonderful people who care about their neighbors who are going through difficult times and who want to get back on their feet. The volunteers and staff are incredible people. Places like IHN represent the best of our community and there is a real need for places like this.
“Too often in this chamber, I have heard colleagues demonize and disparage America’s poorest families. But those who are homeless don’t fit into a stereotype. Every family faces different challenges. It’s hard work to be poor in America and the families I met are working hard for a better life for their kids. We should be helping them get back on their feet, not kicking them while they’re down, and certainly, we should not be indifferent to their struggles.
“To help more of these families get ahead, we must do more at the national level to strengthen the social safety net to better address homelessness, food insecurity, and poverty and many other issues which deserve to be front and center.
“Looking at the big picture, we need to be talking about how we can make sure that work pays enough so that all working families can afford rent and place to live, and be able to put food on the table for their kids. We might start by increasing, at long last, the federal minimum wage so that it’s a livable wage. If you work in this country, you ought not to be poor and you ought certainly not to be homeless.
“In the richest country on the planet, I know we can solve homelessness. Spending a night at a homeless shelter is an incredible experience and I encourage more of my colleagues to do the same in their districts.
“Those of us who serve in Congress are blessed that we don’t have to worry if we’ll have a roof over our heads on any given night. But there are many families, too many families, in this country who do. We need to do a better job of listening to their stories and lending a helping hand so they can get out of their difficult situations and move on to a better life.
“I urge my colleagues to listen what I said today and do what I did and spend a night at a homeless shelter in their district.”
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