4
street roots
March 18, 2011
Proposed budget cuts could drastically alter local services
BY AMANDA WALDROUPE
will fundamentally change how the safety net
operates and serves vulnerable populations.
omeless and low-income advocates,
The House’s budget passed on Feb. 19,
service providers, and policymakers
but failed to gain enough support in the
were put on notice when the
Senate. However, President Barack Obama’s
Republican-controlled — and Tea Party
proposed budget, supported by Democrats
infused - House of Representatives released and cutting $10 billion, hasn’t garnered
it’s budget last month/
enough support to pass m the Senate,
The House budget plan would cut $61
either. Meanwhile, stop-gap budgets passed
billion in discretionary spending (which does in the House continue to chip away at
not include defense spending or entitlement
funding. It could be months before a
programs, such as*Social Security). That
settlement is reached, and everyone with a
includes $5.5 billion from the Department of
dog in the fight is bracing for significant
Housing and Urban Development, or HUD,
cuts to safety-net programs.
and more than $1 billion, almost half the
“It will be devastating,” says Jean
budget, for maintaining aging public housing
DeMaster, the executive director of the
units. Funding to Planned Parenthood and
social service agency Human Solutions.
public broadcasting would be completely
“Huge numbers of peopje” will not be able
eliminated, and programs paying for
to have their basic needs of food, shelter,
substance-abuse treatment, mental-health
and safety met.
care, low-income housing programs,
“The problem is not going to show up
education programs for the'poor, and .senior
today,” DeMaster says. But consider a child
and disabled programs all are on the
in the first grade, who becomes homeless,
chopping block. The cuts being proposed
and may not be able to participate in an
are not snips and trims, but program-
after-school program that would help him or
altering gouges that service providers say
her keep their grades up. “They don’t
STAFF WRITER
H
graduate from high school, then they don’t
get jobs,” DeMaster says. “(The problem)
does show up eventually.”
The work Portland and Multnomah
County have done through the 10-year plan
to end homelessness and other efforts to
address homelessness and poverty has
focused on creating a social-service system
that does not duplicate services, is
collaborative, efficient, and streamlined.
“We’ve done a lot of work over the last
five years to try to align what we have in
terms of support services,” says Mary Li,
Multnomah County’s manager of community
services.
Think of Portland and Multnomah
County’s social services as a Jenga puzzle.
•Each Jenga block represent? a specific piece
of the safety net — alcohol and drug ,
treatment services, mental health
counseling, case management, the shelter
system, transitional housing, low-income
rental housing, etc. Pull out an essential
block, and the tower collapses. Advocates
and service providers say the tower that is
Portland and Multnomah County’s social
safety net will become dangerously close to
falling down if the federal governm ent'
makes drastic cuts to even one piece making
up the safety net.
“It creates this danger when one is
radically defunded or changed, it changes
the whole system,” Li says. “It’s the system
now being jeopardized, not ju st a funding
source.”
City Commissioner Nick Fish, who
oversees the Portland Housing Bureau, and.
Housing Bureau Director Margaret Van Vliet
sent a letter to the White House on Jan. 5
asking that funding
Community
h H
Development Block Grants be preserved..
(see below). “This funding is essential to
maintain the safety net,” they wrote.
Here are seven programs that would be
affected by the federal budget cuts, and in
one case (the Temporary Assistance for
Needy Families, or TANF), a program
effected by Oregon Governor John
Kitzhaber’s budget.
In some cases, the programs would be
See BUDGET, page 5
Proposed cuts to social services under the House plan
Community Development
Block Grants (CDBG)
Community Development Block Grants
are federal monies given directly to local
jurisdictions, such as the City of
Portland. The block grants pay for a
wide variety of services aiding low-
income and homeless people. In 2010,
the City of Portland and local
Jurisdictions received $10.8 million. $1.3
million is
*
and housing assistance programs, says
Sally Erickson, the manager of the
Portland Housing Bureau's ending
homelessness program.
Proposed federal budget cut: $2.5
billion ■
Oregon's share: $24.8 million
Impacts: The money helped fund rent
assistance and housing placement
services, the shelters Transitions
Projects, Inc/operates, Section 8
housing, and 2TI, Multnomah County’s
social services hotline. “Portland uses
most of its Community Development
money for housing,” says Margaret Van
Vliet, the director of the Portland
Housing Bureau. Cuts in Block Grant
money means there will also be less
rent assistance, less housing
rehabilitation, and development. 'There
will be more people experiencing
homelessness,” Erickson says.
Program: Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families
(TANF)
TANF provides cash assistance to low-
income families with dependent children.
•To qualify, families must have very few
assets and little or no income. 30,000
Oregonian families are currently receiving
TANF benefits. The current maximum
monthly benefit for a family of three is
■$506?The p ro g r a m T e ^ B irH * *
members of the family actively strive to
be self-sufficient, whether that means
they are seeking employment, obtaining
job skills, in a vocational program, etc.
The goal is to reduce the number of
families Jiving in poverty. Families can
receive TANF assistance for a total of 60
months (or five years).
State budget cut: $12 million by
shortening the time limit a person can be
on TANF to 18 months, effective October
2011.
Impacts: “That is a big change,” says
Gene Evans, the spokesperson for
Oregon’s Department of Human Services.
“It would hit 7,000 families. TANF is
available only to extremely low-income
families. For many people, TANF is their
only source of income. In some cases,
there’d be households of families with
dependent children whose income would
go to zero.” ;
HOME Investment
Partnership Funds
The Portland Housing Bureau uses
these federal funds to build and
rehabilitate affordable rental, housing
for low-income individuals and families,
provide short-term rent assistance to
prevent low-income families and
individuals from being evicted, home
owneishipprograms, tra n s itio n a l^ .^ ~ ,
housing, and emergency shelter
programs.
Proposed federal budget cut: $175
' milljon, or.9.6 percent.
* Oregon’s share: $2.1 million
Impacts: Van Vliet thinks that if federal
funding from the Housing Bureau’s
budget were cut as much as 20
percent, “we could absorb that.” But
beyond that, the Housing Bureau would
have to severely scale back the
number of future projects it undertakes,
whether those projects are rehabs or
existing buildings, or funding new rental
housing development. “What always
gets cut is rental housing
development,” Van Vliet says. “(But)
that’s what we need in the long run to
make long-term, sustainable headway
in the housing shortage.”
Program: Low Income Home
Energ^Assistance Program
LIHEAP is a federally funded program
providing low-income families the cash
assistance needed to pay utility bills—
• including heating, electricity, gas, and
sometimes cooling bills. Multnomah
County received a total of $4.8 million "
dollars this year to provide ptjjity
assistance to approximately 20,000
people. In many cases, preventing
utilities from being disconnected also
means preventing eviction, as an
increasing number of landlords are
putting clauses in their rental agreements
utilities have to be on in order to lease
the apartment.
Proposed federal budget cut: All
funding eliminated.
Impacts: If funding is completely
eliminated, of course, no one will be able
to receive utility assistance. If the budget
is cut in half as the president’s budget
proposes, approximately 7,000 to 8,000
people will receive assistance, says Mary
Li, Multnomah County’s manager of
community services. DeMaster says
people without utilities, if not evicted, tend
to light or heat their apartments with
candles, meaning there is more danger
of fires. “Having heat and electricity is a
health and safety issue,” DeMaster says.
“It makes kids subject to getting colds or
ear infection^.. It makes seniors more
likely like to get serious illnesses like
pneumonia. For kids in school, you can't
do homework if you don’t have light in
your apartment.”
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