PEPP invited dozens of area agencies and organizations to discuss what they will be doing to be a part of the solution when the July 1st time limit hits. The goal of this forum was to bring the community together to gear up for this impending crisis and to show public support to families who are struggling in our community.
22 people representing a dozen agencies attended the forum and the event was covered by local Television News and the Fargo Forum. Enclosed is a summary of the meeting. It is our intention to bring this group back together in the upcoming months to continue this community process. There is much information that can be shared that will benefit us all in dealing with the 5 year limit issue.
The forum: Connecting the Dots, a community response to the five-year
time limit, was held in the Moorhead City Hall Basement East on November
21st, 2001.
For 44 Clay County families up against the five-year limit on welfare benefits, the coming new year may not be cause for celebration. Some of them may be dropped from state welfare rolls as early as January. Under federal welfare reforms passed by Congress in 1996, welfare recipients were given 60 months to find work while receiving temporary forms of assistance.
Minnesota's five-year limit ends July 1, but about half of those 44 families came from states that started their five-year clock ticking sooner. They could lose benefits as early as January, according to Mary Luhman-Olsen, a financial assistance supervisor with Clay County Social Services.
She was one of about 20 people, representing a half-dozen agencies, that spoke Wednesday at a Moorhead welfare forum sponsored by the People Escaping Poverty Project. The legislature this year approved hardship extensions beyond the 60-month lifetime limit to participants who, among other things, are ill, injured, incapacitated, seriously mentally ill, have a learning disability, have IQs lower than 80, or who are deemed "unemployable," by a vocational specialist for the county, Luhman-Olsen said.
If they apply, most of those 44 families will likely qualify for an exception to the deadline, she added, but it can be difficult to reach them. Public and private agencies should brace for a run on their services when the Minnesota welfare deadline kicks in, warned Doreen Holding Eagle, good medicine director at Family HealthCare Center. She recently spent two weeks helping one client with multiple problems, she said.
Food shelters and homeless shelters will have to pick up the tab when benefits are terminated, predicted Harvey Stalwick, a Concordia College social work professor. "Government is washing its hands of the responsibility." he said. "Faith-based organizations are apparently supposed to pick up the slack."
Education is the key, both for the public and for those families bearing their welfare limit, said joe Pederson, executive director of the Clay Wilkin Opportunity Council. "I'm going to stress that we do constructive, positive advocacy," he said, criticizing PEPP on the welfare issue. PEPP uses all forms of advocacy and turns to aggressive methods only after careful consideration, said PEPP director Duke Schempp.
A clay county social worker has been attempting to meet with welfare
recipients who are up against the deadline, helping them overcome barriers
to employment and determining if they qualify for an exemption, Luhman-Olsen
said. "We don't know what will happen to families who don't qualify,"
she said.
As working people and farmers we use government subsidies only when we need them. Families in poverty do the same.
But on July 1st, 2002, the Minnesota government is preparing to cut as many as 5,000 poor families from public assistance. This means up to 15,000 children will lose money for housing and basic survival needs.
During the last legislative session, laws were passed that will possibly extend public assistance for half of the 5,000 families. this still leaves thousands of children and families who will have little or no means to survive.
This is a tragedy that affects us all. Many families are just one paycheck away from needing government assistance. We need livable wage jobs, affordable healthcare, affordable childcare and affordable housing. These are issues our elected officials should consider. We call on legislators to work to end poverty, instead of ending assistance to families in poverty.
Fact: Less than 1% of federal spending and less than 1% of state spending goes to cash assistance to poor families.
Fact: Families on public assistance receive cash grants that put their family more than 40% below the poverty level. A family with one child receives $437 a month; a family with two children receives $532 a month.
Fact: Two thirds of people who receive public assistance are children,
Fact: Many families are only one paycheck away from needing public assistance. Where as one income in the past was sufficient to raise a family, now two incomes barely make ends meet. The real problem is there are not enough livable wage jobs, affordable health care, affordable child care and affordable housing.
Fact: The Federal Government put a five year lifetime limit on public assistance for families in poverty. The state of Minnesota does not have a time limit, and can decide to protect families who are unable to get out of poverty.
Fact: As the economy improves, the number of families in poverty decreases. When the economy starts to go bad, massive layoffs occur and more families fall into poverty. During the past years of economic boom, many families were able to get beyond public assistance because of more jobs available, better wages and health care benefits.
With the layoffs for many people and reduction of jobs state wide, it
is our responsiblity to preserve and protect families. It is our
goal to educate people so they can be active and pressure our legislators
to maintain a safety net that will help families in their time of need.
Liberals Vow Fight Over Welfare Law
by Laura Meckler - Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, November 14, 2001; 5:51 AM
WASHINGTON-- A coalition of liberals is vowing to fight for changes in federal wlfare policy when the landmark overhaul is renewed next year. Kicking off their campaign, they argue that the popular changes aren't working as well as most Americans think.
The newly formed National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support, made up of some 1,000 groups, argues that the 1996 welfare law has left the nation with a tattered safety net that will be unable to support needy Americans if the economic slump deepens.
The 1996 law ended the six-decade federal guarantee of cash benefits to the poor, limited welfare to five years and imposed strict work requirements.
The results were dramatic: Caseloads fell by nearly 60 percent, as welfare recipients were lured into jobs by the strong economy or pushed off the rolls by tough new rolls.
At the same time, poverty rates have not fallen as far as welfare rolls, with many people leaving welfare for jobs that don't pay enough to reach the poverty line.
The new group, which is launching its campaign Wednesay, is looking for a host of changes. Among them: Allowing people on wlefare to satisfy work requirements by participating in education or training, stopping the clock on the five-year time limit if someone is working and restoring welfare, food stamps, health and disability benefits to legal immigrants.
Politically, it hopes to be more successful than liberals were in 1996, when President Clinton signed the GOP-drafted bill, said Deepak Bhargava, director of the campaign.
"There was a state of shock that these massive changes were being contemplated and disbelief that they could occur under a Democratic presidents's watch," he said. "Now people are cery clear about the stakes and have mobilized."
Conservatives have a much different agenda for next year's welfare debate. Most of them are happy with the work requirements, but many hope to put a stronger emphasis on marriage and reducing the number of children born to single parents.
The liberal group, with AFL-CIO President John Sweeney on hand, is launching its campaign by arguing that many workers who could lose their jobs in an economic downturn will not have access to unemployment insurance, which does not cover many part-time jobs or workers without long job histories.
It released research that suggested the number of people in poverty would increase by more thatn 3.3 million if the unemployment rate rises by two percentage points.
The group's research also found that more than 120.000 families have had their welfare benefits reduced or eliminated because of welfare time limits, a fiding similar to that of an Associated Press survey last summer.
And it found that more than 116,000 poor immigrant families have incomes
that are low enough to qualify for welfare or food stamps, but they do
not qualify because they came to the country after August 1996, when the
welfare law was signed.
We have started a list-serve discussion group on this issue.
If you would like to learn more about the 5Year_Limit group, please
visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/5_YearLimit
and subscribe to join our discussion.