Humanity House
If you know anyone who lives in poverty and uses TANF or SNAP to survive, you may understand their struggle. If you dont, you may not clearly understand what is happening while you watch them stay in a system that does not allow them a good quality of life. The best way to understand poverty is to know a poor person. Just in case that is not something available to you, give me the opportunity here to explain.
There is a thing in the world of poverty that every member of our government, the Department for Children and Families (DCF), and people living in poverty know as the cliff.
You should fear the cliff as much as a person who is poor fears it. It is designed to keep poor people poor. It is there to ensure that getting out of poverty and off of government programs is nearly impossible without great aid and assistance from nonprofit organizations, family members, or a core support group with resources they are willing to share.
If a person finds themselves in the position of receiving government assistance for whatever reason, they are given limited funds and a Vision card that helps feed their family. Most families dont plan on staying on these programs for long. They fully intend to get back to work as soon as possible and become self-sufficient once again.
Ill give an example. Mary is married and has two children. Joe, her husband, is abusive. He finally beat Mary badly enough that she needs hospitalization and to seek shelter. Her family keeps the children for her, but they have no funds or room to keep the family in their home for any great length of time. Mary and the children go into a shelter. While she is in the hospital, the husband cleans out all of the familys material possessions, takes the only car, and leaves.
Mary applies for assistance because she has been fired from her minimum wage job for missing work while she was in the hospital. She applies for low income housing. She seeks ways to find furnishings for her home, beds for the children, a table to eat at, something to sit on. She has no car. A shelter gives Mary and her children a place to stay. But Mary cannot leave the children there while she looks for work or seeks aid.
She applies for emergency housing and gets in. She moves the children in and gets her SNAP card for food. She is given $600 a month to feed her two small children and herself. She is eligible for TANF but must go after child support from her abusive ex to receive it. She is afraid because he has threatened her life and the lives of her children, so she refuses.
Mary is used to working and applies for jobs when she can find someone to watch her children. She finally gets another job, and it pays $8 an hour. Her employer will only give her between 18-29 hours a week so the company does not have to provide her health insurance. Her schedule is never the same, so childcare is hard to find. But she does what she has to do because Mary wants to work.
As soon as Mary gets her first check, she notifies DCF of her income. Immediately her food assistance is lowered, and her rent goes up. Before she worked, her rent was $50 in low income housing. If she has someone who helps her pay the bills that money is counted as income and her rent goes up. When she gets her check from her employer her rent goes up around $344 even though she is only grossing close to $240 per week. Then her food assistance is cut.
Mary is finding herself in the position of having to find a second job so she can pay rent, utilities, a babysitter, buy food, and pay for some kind of transportation. Mary finds a second job. Her rent goes up to $575 and her food assistance is completely cut. She pays out more for childcare and she never sees her children. Overworked, overtired, over-stressed and missing her children, Mary finds herself working but not able to provide food for her children. Mary quits her jobs.
This is the cliff. Is there a solution for the cliff ? Yes. We will look into that next week. Until then kindness matters!
