March 9, 2007
BUDGET BOILING
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Get on the bus to Albany Tuesday – email long2@housingworks.org for a seat! |
Housing Works clients and staff will fill the halls of the State Capitol in Albany again this week to advocate for improvements in Governor Eliot Spitzer’s budget proposals – specifically on welfare and rent policies – and to speak out in favor of Medicaid reforms that will help low-income and disabled New Yorkers.
How about joining us in Albany next week?
We’ll be joining Medicaid Matters, the statewide Medicaid consumer advocacy organization, in an Albany advocacy day this coming Tuesday, March 13 – full details here. If you or your group wants to get on the bus to stick up for people on Medicaid against the special interests, shoot a quick email to Charles Long at long2@housingworks.org or call him at 518-449-4207.
State Senate and Assembly budgets are due to the printer tonight, and will be passed by each house next week. Then the real fight begins, as Governor Spitzer, Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and leading legislators try to negotiate a final budget deal by April 1.
Bruno and Silver spoke to rallying health care workers this week, promising moderation of some of Spitzer’s Medicaid and health care proposals. But with just $575 million in new revenues to add to Spitzer’s budget and $1.2 billion in institution-focused cuts at stake, big hospital, nursing home and union interests won’t get everything they want.
Protecting poor families with disabled kids
Housing Works fought hard this week to make sure low-income families struggling with both AIDS and disabled children wouldn’t get lost in the budget battle. The issue is Spitzer’s treatment of SSI disability benefits for kids – so-called “SSI invisibility.”
Proper welfare budgeting policy would not include a child’s SSI benefits in calculating welfare cash assistance for a household; the child should be “invisible” for budget calculation purposes and should receive no shelter allowance. Federal SSI benefits should then be used to address the disabled child’s needs, as intended.
These households:- include a person or persons living with AIDS
- receive welfare cash assistance
- receive the HIV emergency shelter allowance
- include a disabled child receiving SSI
Housing Works is fighting for action in the state budget to restore “SSI invisibility” for disabled children in low-income households that receive the HIV/AIDS emergency shelter allowance.
Pataki policy continued by Spitzer
Governor Pataki imposed a policy to take the additional federal benefits away from these families. A lawsuit (Melendez v. Wing) restored the benefits until last year, when Governor Pataki added a sentence to the Education, Labor and Family Assistance budget bill to take away the benefits once again.
Governor Spitzer’s budget proposal:
- includes funding to ensure SSI invisibility for families with disabled children who receive the regular welfare shelter allowance
- does not ensure SSI invisibility for families with disabled children who receive the HIV/AIDS emergency shelter allowance.
Clearly, all poor families with disabled children should receive the full benefit of federal disability payments. There is no humane or logical reason to single out families living with AIDS for more harmful treatment.
We’ve urged legislators and staff to make sure that their budget bills direct Governor Spitzer to remove the passage in bold below from the Education, Labor and Family Assistance budget bill (p. 261):
Notwithstanding any inconsistent provisions of law, funds appropriated herein shall be used by the office to reimburse 50 percent of the non-federal share of approved expenditures made by social services districts on or after April 1, 1996, after first deducting therefrom any federal funds received or to be received on account thereof, for emergency shelter, transportation, or nutrition payments which the district determines are necessary to establish or maintain independent living arrangements among persons who have been medically diagnosed as having acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) or HIV-related illness and who are homeless or are faced with homelessness and for whom no viable and less costly alternative housing is available; provided, however, that funds appropriated herein may only be used for such purposes if the cost of such allowances are not eligible for reimbursement under medical assistance or other programs. Each emergency shelter payment provided hereunder shall equal the difference between such person’s and his or her family’s net available income, including any public assistance and supplemental security income benefits and/or additional state payments, and such person’s and his or her family’s public assistance needs, but in no event exceeding the actual shelter payment.
Several hundred of the most vulnerable families in New York could be helped by action on this important issue.
Better AIDS rent policy – make it the law
We’re also fighting for action in the budget to protect tenants living with AIDS.
Update readers know Governor Pataki tried last fall to impose dramatic rent increases on over 2,200 tenants living with AIDS who:
- receive “income” such as SSI, SSD, or veterans benefits; and
- reside in federally-subsidized supportive housing (including HOPWA, McKinney-Vento, Section 8 or other federal housing subsidies).
Although Spitzer officials recently agreed to change the policy, state law protections are needed to ensure compliance with federal rent caps – appropriate language is included in the AIDS tenant protection bills introduced by Senator Tom Duane and Assembly Member Deborah Glick, S. 2890/A. 5473.