Work program needs funding action (New Haven Register, 09.08.2010)
A statewide employment program that has helped more than 6,000 low-income individuals and youth find work would have to be scaled back significantly if Congress does not extend funding by Sept. 30.
According to the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities, a nonprofit research and policy organization in Washington, D.C., Connecticut is among 37 states that would have to shrink or shutter job creation programs by the end of the month if the U.S. Senate does not vote to extend what’s known as the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Emergency Contingency Fund.
The House of Representatives already has voted for an extension.
The Emergency Fund was established using funds allocated under the Recovery Act. TANF was created by federal law in 1996 and provides block grants to states to help needy families with child care expenses and promote job preparation and work opportunities. Connecticut’s unemployment rate is at 8.9 percent.
“It makes no sense to shut down an effective jobs program and put more people out of work right now,” said LaDonna Pavetti, co-author of the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities report. “It’s the opposite of what the country needs. Jobs will evaporate, unemployed mothers and fathers will struggle to make ends meet and it will add more strain to the already fragile economic recovery.”
David Dearborn, communications director for the state Department of Social Services, which receives the federal funding, said the state Department of Labor and regional Workforce Investment Boards operate the jobs programs.
According to state data, a reported 6,461 individuals participated in a summer employment program, bringing enrollment 6 percent higher than initially expected. State labor officials estimate that 60 percent of participants would stop working as of Sept. 1 and return to school. The remaining older youth and adults will remain at work sites through Sept. 30.
After that date, “There are some federal funds designated for youth services that the (regional) Workforce Investment Boards use for year-employment services for youth, so some employment may continue along with other employment-related activities, but for a smaller number of youth,” Dearborn said.
Some state funds through the Jobs First Employment Services also subsidized work programs and will be used to continue employment assistance, but at a lower level, absent additional federal funding, Dearborn said.
Final reports on the participants’ demographics, including age, are expected by late October.
Thursday, September 09, 2010 9:45:00 AM
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Alliance Online News: HRI Releases Latest HPRP Quarterly Report
HPRP Provides Housing Assistance and Placement for 92,000 in 13 Cities
Tuesday, September 07, 2010 3:15:00 PM
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Quarterly Leadership Council HPRP Report: April - June 2010
| The Alliance released the third Quarterly Leadership Council Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-housing Report, which documents the progress of 13 cities implementing their HUD-funded prevention and rapid re-housing programs.
Tuesday, September 07, 2010 12:45:00 PM
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Group gets homeless on feet and running (USA Today, 09.07.2010)
WASHINGTON — Torrey Brockman is glad to be running for himself instead of running from the police.
An alcoholic and drug addict, Brockman, 35, checked into a drug rehabilitation center and found Back on My Feet, a running group for the homeless.
For four months, he has been up every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 5:45 a.m. to run with 15 other men on the streets of downtown D.C., past the Washington Monument, the U.S. Capitol and the Supreme Court.
"It's different being on this side because running from police, that first mile wasn't anything," he says, laughing. "It's after you do that first mile, that's the hard part, trying to get your wind back. But now that I'm doing 2, 3 miles, it's getting better."
Back on My Feet is a support group for the homeless, many of them on drugs and alcohol, that is meant to help them get their lives in order by instilling discipline and improving their health and self-esteem.
The program, which began in Philadelphia, is going national. It started groups in shelters and transitional housing in Baltimore last year and Washington and Boston this year. It plans to be in Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta and Minneapolis before 2012.
The program began three years ago when marathoner Anne Mahlum regularly ran past a homeless shelter in Philadelphia and began talking to the guys hanging out in the front.
"I enjoyed talking to them," Mahlum says. Their sarcasm and wit reminded her of her father, who struggled with alcohol, drug and gambling addictions.
She decided to invite the guys to run with her and called the shelter about starting a group. It started with nine runners. Today, Back on My Feet has about 600 participants.
Mahlum says that as members complete a run, they feel a sense of accomplishment. Success is rewarded. Members run with volunteers and a coach, who charts their increasing mileage and awards prizes such as running clothes, medals and watches. That boosts their self-esteem even more, Mahlum says.
"The organization uses running to help people to succeed," she says.
'A lot of positive effects'
Those who show up 90% of the time in the first 30 days get a stipend of up to $1,250 to be used for rental deposits on apartments or to pay for furniture, classes, transit cards or clothes for a job. The stipend goes to the merchants, not the participant. The money comes from corporate and private donations, and shoe stores donate the sneakers.
More than half of those who have started the program are still participating or have left because they found jobs or homes, the group says.
Nan Roman, president of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, says it's hard to measure Back on My Feet's effectiveness, because it is not a typical program designed to house or employ the homeless.
Roman says if the group boosts self-esteem, that's a good thing.
"Homelessness is a debilitating experience for people, and it takes a lot of energy to get out of homelessness," she says. "Running is not the solution to end homelessness, but programs like this have a lot of positive effects."
It is a challenge to work with the homeless, says Sandi Maro, a Back on My Feet vice president. "You do see your heart broken," she says.
'New mentality'
Cory Walker, 26, says he's an example of the struggle homeless addicts face that running alone can't cure.
Walker was the captain of his Back on My Feet team at a rehab center in Boston. He accumulated 100 miles by running up to four days a week and finished a 5-mile race in 39 minutes.
Then, he says, three weeks ago he relapsed. Walker, an electrician apprentice, was installing a fan at his boss's house when he found a bottle of painkillers on a nightstand and stole several pills. He confessed and got booted from his rehab center and from Back on My Feet.
Once on the street, he says, he realized he had two choices: Fall deeper into his drug habit or find a new rehab center and start again.
Within a few days, he says, he got into a new center. He credits the lessons he learned from running with Back on My Feet.
"I have a new mentality," Walker says. "If I fall, trip or stumble, I'm not going to give up. ... That's not an option anymore."
Brockman says the motivation he gets from running with Back on My Feet is helping him get his life in order.
He says he started drinking and taking PCP two years ago after his mother died. "She was my backbone, and after she died, I just started experimenting," he says.
He was working in maintenance at a hospital and living with his older brother, but he says he was neglecting his four children and his relationship with his brother suffered.
His wake-up call came five months ago when his oldest child, Tinya Ford, then 8, said she wished he'd get help. A few days later, he was in Clean and Sober Streets in Washington.
He says he has gone with the other runners to parties that don't serve alcohol, he's considering going to culinary school, and he's rebuilding his relationship with his children.
"I'm tired of smoking and drinking," he says. "Every time I do, I end up fighting or in trouble. I need order in my life. So far, this has been giving me order."
Tuesday, September 07, 2010 11:45:00 AM
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Thousands of Jobs to Disappear by the End of September (Public News Service, 09.07.2010)
CHICAGO - More than 25,000 of the neediest residents of Illinois are scheduled to lose their newly found subsidized jobs by the end of the month. That's because the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) emergency funding, which subsidized 250,000 jobs nationwide, is set to expire on Sept. 30.
In Illinois the funding was used for the "Put Illinois to Work Program," which enables low-income parents and young people to get the skills they need to transition to permanent work once the economy improves. Sheena Howard, a single mother who was a ward of the state as a child, had been trying to go to school when the "Put Illinois to Work program" placed her in a job with a CPA firm, just a couple of months ago. Now she has been told that if the funding is not extended, she has less than a month to find another job. Howard says she has learned new skills, but no one seems interested in her new resume.
"I've been looking, looking, looking, calling, but nothing yet."
The director of the "Put Illinois to Work Program," Jill Geltmaker, says those who think of it as an entitlement program are misinformed.
"It's actually building on what the idea of welfare reform is: Give people skills, give them something that they can work from, and in fact they will work."
Geltmaker says it is beginning to have an impact on the economy.
"People are working 30, 40 hours a week, and those wages are taxed. In addition, we're putting anywhere from $9 million to $12 million a week back into local economies."
The problem, Geltmaker contends, is that the program needs more time to take hold.
"The hope was that there would be a faster recovery of the economy. What we're really seeing, and what most economists are saying, is this is a pretty slow recovery process - it's not an overnight fix."
Because the economic recovery is taking longer than expected, the U.S. Senate is considering an extension of the emergency funding. Opponents say it's just a back-door way to undo welfare reform. Supporters say the jobs that these funds create are getting people off welfare, sending tax money back to the states, and helping small businesses get the help they need to keep their doors open.
Tuesday, September 07, 2010 11:45:00 AM
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Marin Voice: Support for ending homelessness (Marin Independent, 09.05.2010)
WE KNOW that there can never be enough partners in the effort to end homelessness in Marin County.
At Homeward Bound of Marin, we feel special gratitude for our partnership with the Marin Board of Supervisors and county officials.
Not all organizations serving homeless families and adults enjoy support from their local authorities. This year, the county will provide funding to maintain emergency shelter services.
The county's partnership in supporting Mill Street Center, Marin's only year-round emergency shelter for adults, and New Beginnings Center, our transitional housing program at Hamilton, have helped hundreds of people advance on a path to a new future.
Mill Street Center last year welcomed 593 people who appreciated having one of the 55 beds and a hot meal prepared by one of 40 Marin congregations. They came to Mill Street for hope and perhaps for a first step out of homelessness.
Current and former residents tell amazing stories about their journeys - journeys that are in and of themselves compelling reasons for the county to provide funding for these critical services.
These people are beacons of resilience for others who struggle to gain connections and a place to call home. They are resolute in addressing the demons within and without that play havoc with their intentions and aspirations to recover their lives.
They are courageous in their resolve to make progress toward self-sufficiency and independence.
A short stay at Mill Street Center leads many of its residents to our New Beginnings Center, a transitional housing program that offers meals, job training, counseling and other services.
While 72 percent of those residents enter the program with a high school education or less, 83 percent of them move to permanent housing.
Their record of success shows the importance of maintaining programs that let them "open the door" to an independent future.
Those of us with the privilege of doing this work on behalf of the community often find ourselves in awe of the changes we see and the transformations that occur.
We come to this work with eyes wide open about those who are not yet ready for the depth and breadth of change that is needed or for those who do not want or need services that we offer.
But none of us knows when that moment of change takes hold. And when it does, for that moment, we want to be there to open doors to safety, dignity, hope and independence.
Thank you, Marin Board of Supervisors.
Tuesday, September 07, 2010 11:45:00 AM
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The Depressing State of Our Safety Net (Mother Jones, 09.03.2010)
As we head into a midterm election where odds are high that Republicans could take back both the House and the Senate, here's a grim reminder of the long-term horrors that can be wrought when a Democratic president governs in the shadow of an unusually rabid right-wing GOP Congress. The Institute for Women's Policy Research just released a new study (PDF) based on recent Census data showing that despite the nearly 10 percent unemployment rate, almost 90 percent of poor women with children are struggling through the recession without any financial assistance. The numbers range from 60 percent of poor women not receiving aid in DC to fully 96 percent in Louisiana who aren't getting a dime. The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, which is supposed to help such women, has been so utterly gutted that it is virtually useless as an anti-poverty measure, and precisely when one is desperately needed.
For this we can thank former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton, who teamed up back in 1994 to "end welfare as we know it," as Clinton had promised during his campaign. You may recall that welfare, as TANF used to be known, was the bête noir of many white southern Republicans, and a lot of white southern Democrats, too. Welfare used to be a classic entitlement program that increased automatically in times of need (like now), and decreased when people were able to go back to work. It served as a critical buffer not just for women but for their children during hard economic times. But Gingrich and the GOP Congress linked arms with Clinton, who was looking for a bipartisan success, to turn the program into a block grant with a fixed budget that wouldn't change regardless of need, and its mission was overhauled to focus on putting women to work. When Clinton signed the bill, several outraged members of his administration quit in protest, claiming that the bill was so draconian that it would leave poor children begging in gutters.
That didn't happen, at least not right away, thanks to a thriving economy during the Clinton years, which led supporters to declare reform a huge success. But the real impact of the "reform" is becoming crystal clear now that the economy is deep in the tank. Since the bill was signed, the TANF block grant has lost 27 percent of its value, a budget cut that would have been virtually impossible if the Republicans had proposed it head on. Meanwhile, as Gingrich and Clinton claimed that the block grant would free states from burdensome regulation and allow them to experiment with innovative ways to serve the poor, states spotted a windfall. Welfare reform created perverse incentives to drop poor women from the rolls, especially when state budgets are in trouble. As I highlighted almost two years ago in this story, the state of Georgia dropped nearly 90 percent of the women off its TANF rolls between 2004 and the end of 2007, even as unemployment soared by 30 percent, and then diverted millions of dollars in federal anti-poverty money to other parts of the state budget. Thanks to this, only 18 percent of all children in Georgia living below 50 percent of the poverty line—that is, on less than $733 a month for a family of three—were receiving TANF in 2008.
It's a big change from the days of welfare when most children living in deep poverty were getting some sort of federal cash assistance. But these are the sorts of nasty compromises that can come when Democrats attempt to make nice with rabid anti-government Republicans who never return the favor.
Meanwhile, the IWPR study has other depressing news about the state of the nation's safety net:
Health coverage and food stamps reach more women in poverty than TANF, but still leave many uncovered: nationwide, nearly one‐third of women in poverty are without either public or private health coverage and 62 percent of poor women do not receive food stamps. The variation across the states is much greater in health coverage than in nutrition support. In Massachusetts, the best state, only 8 percent of poor women are without health insurance, while in Texas, the worst state, 50 percent of poor women have no health coverage. For food stamp benefits, 44 percent of poor women lack that support in Maine, the best state, while 77 percent go without that assistance in California, the worst state.
Democrats in Congress have been trying to remedy this situation by, among other things, reauthorizing an emergency TANF jobs measure that was included in the stimulus bill in 2009. The measure provided subsidized jobs for a quarter-million unemployed parents and teenagers, but Republicans have repeatedly blocked their attempts to send some help to those most in need. The original stimulus money runs out at the end of the month. Given the Republicans' election-season focus on reducing the deficit in the middle of a recession (and the fact that Gingrich himself is helping lead the charge from the sidelines as he contemplates a run for president), the odds are good that there won't be any more where that came from.
Tuesday, September 07, 2010 11:45:00 AM
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Urge Senate to Extend TANF Funds
Urge Senators to Extend Critical Support for Low-Income Families AND Create Jobs
Friday, September 03, 2010 10:15:00 AM
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Congressional Sign-On Letter: Extending the TANF ECF
This is a Congressional sign-on letter written by Senator John Kerry (D-MA) to urge senators to extend the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Emergency Contingency Fund (TANF ECF), which expires on September 30. The deadline for senators to sign on to Senator Kerry's letter is September 15 at noon ET.
Friday, September 03, 2010 9:30:00 AM
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Homeless shelter residents rehab house to give away (Indianapolis Star, 09.03.2010)
On a block speckled with vacant, run-down houses, one home boasts spotless new blue siding and a bright white trim.
The three-bedroom house at 1531 N. Rural St. has gotten a makeover from people struggling with homelessness and drug addictions. They stripped the walls, rewired the electricity, leveled the floors, installed insulation and repaired the roof.
Later this month, they'll give the house away.
"You'd be amazed how much it changes people, getting their first house," said James Odell Davis, associate pastor at For God So Loved the World Ministries, the Southeastside homeless shelter and church that has managed the project.
The home will be finished in time for a Sept. 15 open house and will be raffled off to a low-income family at a benefit and concert on Sept. 25.
The ministry is remodeling the home to raise awareness of issues the ministry tackles daily. About 100 people sleep at the shelter, which teaches them skills to get back on their feet.
"Most people that are homeless just don't know how to manage," said Pastor Rhonda Langston. "That's a big problem in our city. We're a lot of starters and quitters here."
But she found that among the starters and quitters were electricians and builders, plumbers and painters. So she put them to work.
The house, left empty for years, was purchased from the city for $2,500 with help from Gene McFadden, a local businessman. McFadden founded the tea-distribution company Coginec to benefit the ministry, and he also has footed the construction bills -- $15,000 so far.
McFadden said he wants to establish partnerships with the city to continue refurbishing abandoned homes and with organizations to furnish them.
"We have not only an obligation" to revitalize the neighborhood, he said, "we have a strong commitment."
Next door, weeds have crawled up the sides of an abandoned house that a neighbor said was broken into six months ago. On the other side, a few houses down, shrubbery on a boarded-up home has overtaken the front door.
And at the renovated house, a lot of work remains. A black, rotting treehouse sits in the corner of the lot. The mildewed porch needs to be painted. The rocky, uneven backyard is covered in scraggly grass.
But there is a vision. Davis, a supervisor of sorts, tours the house with inspiration.
The kitchen will be tiled, and it will have new cabinets and an open space where the family can sit and look into the back porch. The master bedroom will have a closet and high ceilings; the smaller, child-sized bedroom has built-in storage space; and the downstairs bedroom could be converted into an office.
"Someone will get this house," Davis said, "and maybe they've never had a house before. So I want this to be the best house."
Davis leads a team of a few ministry members -- maybe 20 at most, but about seven regulars. Some, such as Lester Collins, 41, who lined the walls with insulation, start their stories by describing what they've had to overcome.
For him, it's a felony conviction and problems with drugs and alcohol.
But others look so far forward that they're almost reluctant to look back.
Andrew Lavender, 29, who wired the electricity, said he has changed the part of his life that led to drug dealing and using.
The house, too, has undergone a transformation. Once filled with trash, it will be going to a family the ministry hopes will be invested in the community.
And, Lavender said, "it's going to be beautiful."
Friday, September 03, 2010 9:00:00 AM
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Center for Capacity Building
Thursday, September 02, 2010 10:30:00 AM
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Refugees face homelessness all over again in U.S. (Seattle Times, 08.29.2010)
Every few weeks or so, the family of 10 would pack up and move yet again — the father and boys finding a bed or space on the floor with family friends in one part of King County, the mother and girls in another.
Somali refugees who were first resettled in upstate New York before relocating here last fall, they shuffled between the homes of friends willing to put them up, sometimes sharing two- or three-bedroom units with the eight or 10 people who lived there.
Once, the mother recounts, all 10 shared a single bedroom in a home, using each other as pillows to get through the nights.
Refugee families like this one — displaced people from war-torn parts of the world — are confronting homelessness all over again in their new homeland.
As tough to navigate as the homeless-support system can be for growing numbers of families in the Northwest, it can prove profoundly challenging for refugees, who may be unfamiliar with how the system works, may have few if any marketable job skills, often don't speak English and don't understand the culture here.
Yet despite those obstacles, advocates for refugees lack any real voice or influence in plans underway to change the homeless-support system.
"We are bringing people from refugee camps to get a new start in the U.S. only to see them Dumpster-diving somewhere," said Tom Medina, who heads the state's office of Refugee and Immigrant Assistance.
As part of the federal government's commitment to helping displaced and persecuted people around the world, the U.S. will resettle about 80,000 refugees this year — about half the total number of those that get resettled across the globe.
Last year, some 2,600 — many of them Iraqis and ethnic minorities from Myanmar (also known as Burma) and Bhutan — came to Washington. The state is second only to Minnesota in drawing refugees who were first resettled in other parts of the U.S.
For many unable to find work, the housing shuffle begins when the government assistance they were receiving runs out, or their lease expires and the rent goes up, or the family dynamic changes in a way that they can no longer cover housing expenses.
In January, King County's most recent annual one-night homeless count found families of refugees and immigrants that together totaled 978 adults and children living in shelters or in transitional housing — up from 638 the previous year.
That doesn't account for the untold numbers who bed down in hotels, camp out in churches or squeeze into the already cramped apartments of friends or relatives.
Often, families that do have housing struggle to hang on to it.
That's been the case for An Na and three of her children, ethnic Karenni from Myanmar who resettled in Kent last year from a refugee camp on the Thai/Burmese border, where the children were born.
A seamstress and farmer in her homeland, the 56-year-old An Na speaks virtually no English and is illiterate even in her native language. She has been unable to find work, but with $922 in monthly public assistance could rent a one-bedroom apartment in Kent for $700 a month.
But when her older son's benefits ran out, their household income dropped by more than a third, leaving the family scrambling to pay rent and utilities.
Hoping to help make up the difference, that son moved to North Carolina to work in a chicken factory.
His younger brother soon dropped out of Kent-Meridian High School to follow him. Both have since moved to Chicago in hopes of getting jobs in another chicken factory there.
Now their sister, Oo Meh, a vibrant, outgoing 17-year-old, who in little more than a year has gained popularity at Kent-Meridian, has accepted a job with a local nonprofit and decided not to return to high school in the fall. She plans to attend community college later, using income from her job to pay much of the household expenses.
"There are a lot of us kids" in the same situation, she said. "We need to work for the family because our parents don't understand nothing. We need to support them."
Jobs dry up
As invisible as homeless families are in general, refugee and immigrant families are even less likely to show up on the streets.
Many are from cultures where people look out for one another, so it's not uncommon for one family to take in others still trying to get their footing in the U.S.
Some in their desperation have even chosen shelter over food — using their food stamps to buy groceries for others in exchange for money to pay the rent.
Circumstances became so dire for one family that they staked a spot outside the office of Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn before they were eventually given vouchers to stay in a hotel along Aurora Avenue North.
"It's hard to get a handle on how big the problem is because many of them have a roof over their heads," said Medina, of the state refugee-assistance office.
"They surf on to the next family willing to take them, but they can't stay that way forever. They are still homeless."
Many of them arrived in the U.S. within the past two years. Some lost what low-paying jobs they had when the economy went sour, while others never found work to begin with.
Many came here from other states after hearing that the Seattle area is welcoming and tolerant, that there are jobs and services, that public-assistance benefit levels are higher and the weather less severe.
But once here, they quickly find high rents and years-long waiting lists for public and subsidized housing. And for many, jobs don't materialize, either.
Among the 50 states, Washington has one of the worst job-placement records for refugees, despite $8.8 million spent last year in state and federal funds disbursed through a network of community-based organizations charged with helping refugees learn English and find work.
"They come and they're trying to assimilate into a culture that is entirely foreign and unfathomable for them," said Tamara Brown, housing director for Solid Ground, one of the region's largest service providers for homeless people.
Brown and other homeless-service providers say they sometimes feel ill-equipped to address the myriad challenges facing refugee families and believe more resources should be devoted to making sure refugees don't join the growing ranks of homeless.
"They have so many specialized areas of need — education and serious medical issues, PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder], they have large families, we need interpreters to talk to them — the cultural issues are huge."
Desperate circumstances
The Obama administration is conducting the first major review of the nation's 30-year-old resettlement program. But even before the findings are released, the administration is preparing to announce an increase in the number of refugees it will invite into the country next year.
State Department officials say refugees in camps overseas are told about the hard realities of the American economy, giving them the option to stay or go to another country.
But refugees themselves say that's a tough call — that after years in squalid refugee camps, it's hard to let go of their high hopes about life in America.
The tall, thin Somali mother of eight arrived in the Seattle area with her family after 13 years in a refugee camp in Kenya. She'd heard the warnings but didn't want to believe them. Now, embarrassed to be homeless, she asked that her name not be used.
"They told us there was a lack of jobs and it will not be like we think — but better than what we have now — and that there would be benefits if we have no job," said the woman, dressed in traditional Muslim wear and speaking through a translator.
In the camp, she said, there were no real options for them to work; their daily lives were virtually controlled by others.
"I knew it would be better here," she said. "It had to be."
For the last three months, the family of 10 was sheltered in a five-bedroom house in a former military-housing complex in Kent, run by the Multi-Service Center, which serves the homeless in South King County.
But after 90 days in the emergency shelter, the family's time was up, and they are on the move once again, depending on others to take them in.
Temporary help
Together with state and local governments, the federal government invests heavily in helping refugees settle in.
Across the country, the State Department contracts with 10 agencies known as "volags" — short for voluntary agencies — to support refugees, helping them find housing, enroll their children in school, apply for benefits and look for work.
Separately, the federal government last year gave $4.2 million to Washington state and the state kicked in $4.6 million more. Washington, in turn, awards contracts to a network of community-based service providers to help refugees learn English, and get job training and other services.
In terms of direct financial help, refugees are eligible for cash assistance and food stamps — $360 per month for up to eight months for single adults. Families with children under 18 are eligible for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, known as TANF.
A family of three is eligible for $562 — higher than in all but 10 states — with the amount increasing about $100 for each additional eligible person, up to a maximum of $1,320.
Additionally, the federal government provides upfront cash for each arriving refugee — $1,100 per person.
Officials with the volags say they often use that cash to pay as much of the family's household expenses as possible in advance before turning over the balance to the refugees themselves.
The volags are responsible for finding housing for families that's safe and — based on their TANF levels — also affordable.
But often the numbers don't pencil out.
A family of six gets $866 in monthly TANF benefits, for example, and a family of five gets $762. But rent alone averages $750 a month for a two-bedroom apartment in South King County — without utilities.
In the past, when the economy was strong and jobs — even low-wage positions — plentiful, families struggling to keep up with the rent could count on one or two people in the household finding work to help keep everyone afloat.
But without jobs, most families find themselves depending on the kindness of strangers to help them survive from month to month.
Reaching out
In Kent, An Na and her family have been on both the giving and receiving end of that support since arriving here last year.
Even when her household income dropped below the cost of her monthly rent, she reached out to help other Burmese families who were also staving off homelessness. At one point, a father and son were crashing on their living-room floor.
Recently, said An Na's daughter, Oo Meh, one of her teachers learned of their struggles and paid the family's $180 electric bill.
And the Coalition for Refugees from Burma, an all-volunteer organization of Burmese immigrants, has been scouring the philanthropic landscape trying to find them financial assistance.
"She needs a job; but realistically, she won't be able to find a job anytime soon," said Simon Khin, who quit his software-engineering job to help run that group with his wife and others.
State Department officials acknowledge the current job market is creating a problem for many refugees but say that, as bad as things are in this country, conditions in the camps are even worse.
The federal government is studying how it might resettle people in areas of the U.S. where there are more available jobs. For example, with the recession coming to Washington later than other parts of the country, this region might have been one of those places.
But even in good times the community-based groups that contract with the state to help refugees find work have a poor track record.
In 2007, for example, 48 percent of refugees in the state were placed in jobs at an average hourly rate of $9.25. Last year, only 28 percent found work.
Locally, groups that work with homeless refugees and immigrants say that while their needs are particularly pressing, they are receiving little attention in plans to change the way homeless families in general get help.
"The needs of refugees are seen as an afterthought," said Someireh Amirfaiz, executive director of the Refugee Women's Alliance in Seattle.
Debbi Knowles, a King County program manager who is writing a new plan to end family homelessness, wants it to reflect the challenges facing refugees.
But advocates, she said, have yet to provide any real concrete ideas about how that might be done.
Thursday, September 02, 2010 10:00:00 AM
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D-FW agencies slow to spend homeless-prevention funds (Star-Telegram, 09.01.2010)
A year after about $5 million in federal stimulus funding to prevent homelessness was awarded in Tarrant County, many social service providers still have plenty to spend.
Providers reported that through July they had spent less than 30 percent of the Homeless Prevention and Rapid Re-housing Program funds, which Tarrant County, Fort Worth and Arlington distributed in two-year grants to local agencies.
Officials said that it took agencies time to establish protocols for the programs and that they are not worried that money will go unspent. The rate of spending has accelerated rapidly in the last six months, they said.
"It is up and running," said Tammy McGhee, Tarrant County's supportive-housing program manager. "The program has grown in popularity, the agencies are experienced at it, and the kinks are being worked out. I expect us to spend it all."
The Tarrant County funding was part of $1.5 billion distributed nationally to provide people in danger of becoming homeless short-term help paying their rent and utilities. Tarrant County, Fort Worth and Arlington were given three years to spend the money, but they awarded it to agencies in two-year grants to encourage them to spend it sooner rather than later.
"We wanted to make sure agencies had the incentive to help more people in need," said Sheryl Kenny, grants manager for Arlington. "We didn't want them to hold it."
The stimulus money has helped 1,859 people, or 750 households, in Tarrant County, officials said. The spending rate among Tarrant agencies is in line with that of agencies elsewhere, said Brian Sullivan, a spokesman for the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department.
He acknowledged that the timetable for recipients to spend the funding is "fairly ambitious" but said agencies are also expected to spend prudently.
One of the big challenges for local agencies is to identify people who qualify. "You don't want to spend it just for the sake of spending it,"
Sullivan said. "This program is not a good fit for a chronically homeless person at the shelter. It is for that group of people at imminent risk of homelessness, and you have to target the resources to identify them."
The standards are strict. Applicants are eligible only if they would be homeless if not for the assistance. They must also show the potential to maintain housing after the financial help runs out, said Gerald Smith of Tarrant County Human Services. The money is not intended to pay someone's rent for three months, only for them to be evicted as soon as it ends.
"There has to be a definite plan for what is going to be different 30 days from now or when the assistance runs out," Smith said. "It is difficult to go from a point of crisis to a plan to pay all the bills a short time later."
To identify applicants, Smith said, caseworkers have distributed information to landlords and contacted justice of the peace courts, which handle eviction cases.
Because stimulus money is closely monitored, social service agencies must deal with time-consuming paperwork and red tape. A training session for agencies was held Wednesday at Tarrant County Public Health.
The topics included how to determine the reasonableness of an applicant's rent and whether stimulus money could be used to pay filing fees for people being evicted.
"It's a brand-new program," McGhee said. "Even HUD doesn't know the ins and outs of every little question."
Thursday, September 02, 2010 10:00:00 AM
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Milwaukee County evictions fell with stimulus, study shows (Journal Sentinel, 08.30.2010)
With a 2-year-old and a baby on the way, Jenny Furne said she started to worry that she and her growing family would be homeless.
She said she moved to Milwaukee last year from another state to escape from a domestic violence situation and found a job in sales. But after she lost her job and couldn't find another one, she fell a month behind in the rent on her north side apartment.
Although she signed up for W-2, the state's welfare-to-work program, she initially received a partial payment of $300, not enough to cover her rent of $510 a month.
"Two weeks before having my baby, I got an eviction notice," said Furne, 24. "I was freaking out because I didn't know if I would have a home to come back to with the baby."
She went to Community Advocates and explained her predicament. Using federal stimulus money designed to stem evictions and prevent homelessness, the agency paid the $510 rent owed, buying Furne the time she needed to get her W-2 check and get on track.
Furne isn't the only one who has been helped from the brink of homelessness.
According to a Harvard University study that looked at local eviction records, the influx of federal stimulus money to help stem homelessness coincided with 836 fewer evictions filed in Milwaukee County from August 2009 to March 2010, compared with the same period the previous year.
The month-to-month comparison showed an average decrease in evictions of 15% and, in some cases, in excess of 20%, said the study done by Matthew Desmond.
"Talk about a guardian angel coming through at the last minute," Furne said Monday. "Today my rent is up-to-date, my bills are getting paid and we have a place to sleep. Without that help I would have had to stay in a shelter or be homeless with a newborn and a 2-year old."
Desmond, now a junior fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard, undertook as a doctoral candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison what's considered the first of its kind study on evictions in Milwaukee.
The study found that one renter-occupied household in 20 is evicted each year in Milwaukee. In the city's poor black neighborhoods, that number is about one in l0, he said.
Joe Volk, executive director of Community Advocates, said the eviction numbers started trending downward after the stimulus money was received.
"I didn't trust those numbers, so we asked him (Desmond) to look," he said.
From August 2009, when the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act money began to be distributed, to March 2010, there was a drop, Desmond said after looking at the data.
"While we can't say for sure that the stimulus money was directly responsible for the drop in evictions, we can say that when the money arrived there was a sizable decline in evictions and there's no other convincing data to explain why evictions decreased, especially in light of the terrible recession," he said.
During that time period, Community Advocates distributed a total of $200,000 in eviction assistance to about 700 families, Volk said.
"For some people, one month's rent - often $300 or $400 - can be enough to bridge the gap for people between jobs or health emergencies," Volk said. "It's a lot cheaper to prevent homelessness than to shelter a family, which is far more costly and disruptive."
To qualify for the emergency assistance, clients must be facing an imminent threat of homelessness, exhausted all other financial resources and show a good reason for not paying rent, such as the loss of income or unemployment, he said.
"The criteria are very important because it's not a grant designed to be given over and over," he said. "We have to see the light at the end of the tunnel for the client."
Community Advocates received a total of $670,000 in stimulus money to help prevent homelessness over three years. It expects to assist 550 more families over the next two years with the remaining funds, Volk said.
Other agencies that work with the homeless, including Guest House Hope House and the Social Development Commission, also received similar funds. In all, local agencies received a total of $2.7 million over three years, Volk said.
Wednesday, September 01, 2010 2:15:00 PM
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Welfare Job Rules Hit Women With Disabilities (Women's eNews, 09.01.2010)
Welfare rolls in New York State fell by more than 60 percent from 1997 to 2008, according to the New York City-based Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies.
But those numbers do nothing to cheer up Kenneth Stevens Stephens, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society in Brooklyn, N.Y.
He says a burdensome process for securing and maintaining benefits has simply discouraged applicants, most of whom are single women with children. Anyone who can possibly get by without welfare, in other words, does.
After the heavy exodus, the bulk of people left on welfare, he said, are either able-bodied people who are ineligible for unemployment insurance benefits or those who face serious barriers of some sort--physical, psychiatric or language--to employment.
The disabled women who depend on TANF--Temporary Assistance for Needy Families--are a particular concern because of the problems they face in fulfilling the work requirements imposed in 1996 when the system was overhauled.
Petra Rodriquez knows all about that.
Rodriguez has for many years lived in the Bronx, the New York borough where the 2008 poverty rate of more than 27 percent was more than double the citywide average.
She was a full-time homemaker until 1995, when the father of her four children, who had been the sole source of income, left the family.
How would she support their children ages 4, 10, 12 and 14, with another on the way?
Where would she get the money for food, utilities and rent in her subsidized apartment?
"I was getting $250 in food stamps once a month, plus Medicaid. I was struggling," she said in a recent phone interview.
A supervisor with a local office of the Human Resources Administration helped the family get more assistance, but even the increase left some of her basic costs uncovered.
"I was surviving because they increased the food stamps to $325 a month with $42 dollars in cash for my electricity," she said. "My rent was behind."
An Unusual Injury
But somehow she kept the family going until 2003, when she suffered an unusual injury.
Her daughter, then 18, was taking care of a relative's disabled son who inadvertently kicked Rodriguez. The accident left her with bladder dysfunction and a pinched nerve in her back that made sitting painful and difficult.
Rodriguez had a job under TANF's job-training Work Experience Program, or WEP, filing paper work in a Human Resources Administration office not far from her home. But the injury made the desk job unbearable.
Rodriquez did not return to her work assignment and the next month she knew something was wrong when her benefits didn't arrive.
Her social worker told her that she was sanctioned for not showing up for work and recommended that Rodriquez apply for federal Social Security disability benefits. Rodriquez was denied.
As a result of the accident and not being able to work, welfare authorities suggested her daughter take over her job as a way of restoring the family's benefits. Her daughter declined. That was the end of the benefits.
Each month 15,000 U.S. families lose welfare benefits due to this type of so-called family sanctions, Legal Momentum, a New York-based advocacy group, found in its 2009 report, "The Bitter Fruit of Welfare Reform: A Sharp Drop in the Percentage of Eligible Women and Children Receiving Welfare."
Rodriguez was still eligible to receive food stamps because her youngest son was only 8 years old. She could still babysit and her older son worked odd jobs and helped her when he could. So she was still able to cope.
But fast forward to 2005, when her daughter at age 20 had a baby and applied for public assistance. The similarity of names and addresses caused a mix up between the two cases. Rodriguez's case was closed and her daughter's established. Benefits came to the household, but only enough for her daughter and a new granddaughter.
Rodriguez said worsening health hindered her ability to straighten things out. She had developed a heart condition by then and a few months later suffered a stroke.
She has been hospitalized nine times between last year and this report. Unable to keep the appointments for recertifying the food stamps and cash assistance for which she and her youngest son, now 15, were eligible, she lost both. Missed appointments mean closed cases.
Awaiting a Decision
Now she is waiting for a decision from a recent hearing with the New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, where she represented herself and handed in her hospital documents to be reviewed by an administrative law judge. Rodriquez is hoping to be seen as qualifying for Social Security income, as she has not been able to hold a job for more than a year.
"I've been through a lot," said Rodriguez. "I'm paranoid about going to the welfare office."
Stevens Stephens, the Legal Aid Society lawyer, said his group is pushing the state to be flexible in identifying participants as exempt or temporarily exempt from welfare work requirements so they may instead qualify for disability benefits under the Social Security Administration.
Stevens Stephens also said that people with disabilities such as Rodriguez face further hardships under a plan by the New York City Human Resources Administration to centralize job centers where applicants can meet with case workers.
Under the plan, only three of the 31 centers in New York City would service clients with disabilities; these centers are in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan. For disabled participants in other parts of the city, the plan would create new travel and scheduling hardships, which are being fought through pending litigation in New York State. In practical terms, that means a welfare applicant would need to spend up to two hours on public transportation and a minimum of $4.50 in fares to reach the center. In addition, many subways stations are not accessible to the physically handicapped, meaning many would have to rely on relatively slower and less frequent bus transport.
Lovely H. v. Eggleston, a federal class action lawsuit brought under the Americans with Disabilities Act, seeks to stop the city from discriminating against people with disabilities by transferring their cases to separate job center sites, without giving them an opportunity to decide to use those centers voluntarily. Presently, the Legal Aid Society is pushing the city to settle the case. The case has gone on for more than four years.
Wednesday, September 01, 2010 2:15:00 PM
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