PAY CUTS TO POOR PEOPLE = MORE HOMELESSNESS
Young brother I know, he’s pretty low — a foster care graduate with no place to call home. He’s trying his best, on the jobtraining tip, volunteers here and there.
He’s now in a shelter, and doesn’t like it too much, but he’s hopeful, and he is saving up his dough. I talked to him about the city’s plan — to cut his cash assistance down to fifty bucks and no change. He’s got one of those real expressive faces and it went from shocked and surprised to crumpled and crushed. He asked me why? I tried to explain, and he could only say, “But I don’t do drugs! He shook his head in a struggle to exclaim “How will I eat?” and a little later “How will I move into a place of my own?” I didn’t know what to tell him, but ain’t it just like the welfare system to find another new way to kick a brother when he’s down?
County Adult Assistance Program, otherwise known as GA, is a cash assistance program of last resort for San Francisco’s residents.
To qualify you must be completely broke and qualify for no other form of cash assistance.
Folks who receive the assistance, then must work for it by cleaning streets and MUNI buses, unless you are disabled or participating in the job training program. The program is for single adults and women in their early pregnancy, and the poorest, most oppressed and disenfranchised members of our community are enrolled in the program. Program participants are primarily people of color; (65%), and 41% are disabled, 70% are over the age of 40, with 21% being over the age of 60. Under rather stinky legislation proposed by Supervisor Newsom, the livelihood of those who rely on this money is in jeopardy.
Because this legislation is targeting poor people, poor communities will be disproportionately hurt.
This proposal, floating around city hall like a balloon shouting out to be popped, would mean more homeless people on our streets.
Supervisor Newsom wants to cut cash assistance by 87%, leaving the poorest among us with only $50 a month to live on. That means hunger — not enough money for $1 sandwiches at the corner store in the Bayview, or 99 cent tacos in the Mission. That means untreated illness — the legislation will not allow people to purchase life-sustaining medicines or drug treatments such as methadone. That means millions of dollars in losses to already strapped low-income communities struggling to survive — living in the shadows of an affluent city.
The legislation targets the 2,700 homeless people who receive this form of assistance, and reads that the money will be “replaced” with “in kind” support in the form of shelter and food. Of course, there are no guarantees in the legislation that the money taken from the check will be spent by the city on homeless people let alone to house these same individuals.
While the funds will not be removed from people’s checks if no services exists, the legislation allows the City plenty of ways to take that cash — from food eaten at Glide to a cot on the floor of a church. We all know it takes years to get into housing programs. All of us with homeless friends or relatives know full well that contrary to what the media and politicians keep saying — our shelters are turning people away every day. This legislation will only result in more homeless people on the streets.
Our homeless community members will lose the flexibility to pay for housing if some cheap housing becomes available. If they do not have a receipt, they will lose 87% of their assistance.
They will no longer have the funds to pay for housing up front — you must have a receipt before you get the money. They will instead have to wait for the “voucher” housing to come available from Human Services. The Department of Human Services will have to contract with a specific building to accept the vouchers — most likely current residents of those buildings will be evicted to make room for the others moving in. The money for this housing will not become available until it is accumulated after a year or so of taking it out of people’s checks — even then it will come nowhere near being enough money to house 2,700 people.
Individuals in “casual” housing arrangements will no longer be able to pay for it — and may be forced to move out of their own supportive community to an SRO in the Tenderloin.
Folks in neighborhoods like the Mission and the Bayview will be especially hurt by this; crowded housing arrangements are a fact of life, as are landlords looking for any excuse to evict people from rent control apartments. Welfare recipients staying with people in the projects face the same dilemma — having extra people living in a unit can violate the lease and end up in an eviction.
The legislation requires proof of where you are living — the kind of proof that can uproot a person from the couch and onto the street.
Many cheap weekly hotel managers refuse to provide receipts, so individuals living in those places will become homeless, and sent to a shelter if they are lucky enough to have a bed become available. Homeless people looking for a couple a weeks respite from the streets in the Franciscan or the Mission Hotel will no longer have that option — they will not have the money for it.
For people in shelters, they will have $300- $350 taken out of their check for rent each month to cover the cot or mat on the floor. Of course, this shelter resident will be paying rent without getting tenant rights. The person lying next to them who works or gets disability, will still be able to save up money to move out into housing.
Many of the folks receiving this form of assistance are working for it — cleaning the streets in orange vests and washing MUNI buses. It is already bad enough that they do not get paychecks — but instead are given welfare checks without benefits, sick days or vacation.
Under this proposal, the presumption is that poor people do not handle their money, and suggests that everyone on welfare is a drug addict, and therefore unworthy of public assistance.
The government is not suggesting that they know better how to spend the money of middle or upper class individuals, but they feel eerily comfortable deciding how extremely poor people, primarily people of color, should spend their hard earned money.
To sum it up, this legislation does not create the housing, living wage jobs, or treatment that poor people need to exit homelessness. It does not create one additional housing unit. It will mean more homeless people on the streets, and a killing of the last bit of self-determination homeless people and homeless people of color are allowed under an already oppressive welfare system. We need to end poverty — not make it worse.
This legislation is going the Board of Supervisors Health and Human Services Committee on May 10th at 3:00. Call your Supervisor and let them know: poor communities will not stand for letting our neighbors, our cousins, our brothers and our sisters be hurt — we need solutions to homelessness not more homeless people.
Carl and Jennifer