- Record number in government anti-poverty program, By Richard Wolf, August 30, 2010, USA Today: “Government anti-poverty programs that have grown to meet the needs of recession victims now serve a record one in six Americans and are continuing to expand. More than 50 million Americans are on Medicaid, the federal-state program aimed principally at the poor, a survey of state data by USA TODAY shows. That’s up at least 17% since the recession began in December 2007. ‘Virtually every Medicaid director in the country would say that their current enrollment is the highest on record,’ says Vernon Smith of Health Management Associates, which surveys states for Kaiser Family Foundation. The program has grown even before the new health care law adds about 16 million people, beginning in 2014. That has strained doctors. ‘Private physicians are already indicating that they’re at their limit,’ says Dan Hawkins of the National Association of Community Health Centers. More than 40 million people get food stamps, an increase of nearly 50% during the economic downturn, according to government data through May. The program has grown steadily for three years. Caseloads have risen as more people become eligible. The economic stimulus law signed by President Obama last year also boosted benefits…”
- As unemployed lose benefits, more seek welfare benefits, By James Osborne, August 30, 2010, Philadelphia Inquirer: “One morning in July, Lisa Carstarphen climbed out of her husband’s car and walked into the beige brick building that houses the offices of Camden County’s social services, wondering how at age 46 she ended up there. Two years ago, she was laid off from her $35,000-a-year job at Comcast. Now, with her unemployment benefits exhausted, she was broke. She stepped through the building’s glass doors into a crowded, fluorescent-lit room to wait her turn to sign up for welfare. As a child, she had accompanied her mother to the welfare office and swore she would never end up the same way. But here she was, surrounded by dejected faces, just as in her youth. Memories of nondescript jars of peanut butter and big blocks of government cheese came rushing back, and Carstarphen struggled to keep it together. ‘It was like going back in time. But I had no choice. My refrigerator was bare,’ she said. ‘For someone who has worked their whole life, it’s awful to ask for a handout. When my husband picked me up later, I busted out in tears.’ For the first two years of the recession, welfare caseloads followed the same steady decline of the decade and a half after President Bill Clinton’s transformation of welfare from a social-assistance program into what is essentially a job-training program for low-income families. But over the last six months, caseloads have begun to creep up, the product, experts say, of the continued sluggishness of the job market. Unemployed workers who have run out of unemployment benefits, like Carstarphen, are being pushed into the system…”
Day: August 30, 2010
Family Homelessness – Washington
- The fastest-growing group among local homeless: families, By Lornet Turnbull, August 28, 2010, Seattle Times: “On this chilly May night in the parking lot of Southcenter mall, Cherie Moore is growing anxious. She and her 17-year-old son, Cody Barnes, sit almost unmoving in the cab of their old Ford Ranger, all their belongings crammed in the back – their 32-inch flat-screen television, a prized movie collection, Cody’s video games. Moore is down to her last $6. It’s nearing 10 o’clock and it’s been hours since the two have had a meal. Mall security has been circling. Moore knows they can’t spend the night parked here, but the 49-year-old single mother, born and raised in South King County, has no clue where to go. ‘I’m mentally exhausted,’ she says. While overall homelessness in King County has steadied, it appears to be rising among families, a trend playing out across the nation. Parents with children are the fastest-growing yet least-visible segment of the homeless population, far more likely to be doubled up in the homes of friends or living in their cars than to be at a busy intersection asking for help…”
- Refugees face homelessness all over again in U.S., By Lornet Turnbull, August 29, 2010, Seattle Times: “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…”
- Gates housing-first plan doesn’t come with housing money, By Lornet Turnbull, August 29, 2010, Seattle Times: “In the late 1990s, as out-of-work Ohio residents flocked to Columbus in search of jobs, many found themselves in a new predicament: They were homeless. The support system meant to help them, much like the one now in King County, was a network of agencies, each with different rules – a labyrinth with no clear way in and no easy way out. Families making repeated calls in search of help overwhelmed the system. And when putting them up in hotels became too costly, shelters started turning families away. In response, officials in Columbus created a more streamlined system – ‘one front door,’ they called it – a one-stop center that parents and children in need could enter day or night. The Columbus approach became a national model for helping families escape homelessness, and key parts of it are being incorporated in what ultimately could be a top-to-bottom overhaul of how homeless families in three Puget Sound counties are helped…”
Free Health Clinics – Wisconsin
At these clinics, income no object, By David Wahlberg, August 29, 2010, Wisconsin State Journal: “They assembled in a parking lot on a hot afternoon: diabetics, men with toothaches and chest pain, a woman with torn cartilage, workers whose low wages or job losses left them uninsured. Mary Lyons waited for the free clinic to open so she could refill her nine medications. A diabetic with heart disease and a persistent cough, she works nights cleaning meat processing machines, making enough to get by but not enough to buy insurance, she said. She relies on the clinic for medical care. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without it,’ said Lyons, 61. Free clinics have become a prominent safety net in rural Wisconsin, especially in the southwest part of the state, where clinics have opened in the past four years in Boscobel, Dodgeville and Richland Center. Another, in Prairie du Sac, has been around for more than a decade. Volunteer doctors at the clinics care for the uninsured without charge and offer drugs at deep discounts. The need for free care around the state and the country could drop once the new federal health care reform law fully kicks in by 2014, some say. But Robin Transo, who opened Boscobel’s free clinic in the walk-out basement of a hearing clinic run by her husband, isn’t so sure…”