February 1, 2008
MOTHER KNOWS BEST
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Help for mother and child not mutually exclusive anymore |
When Darren, a 12-year-old Brooklyn boy, was diagnosed in 2006 with a learning disability, his mother Hattie didn't think it had anything to do with her own health problems. Hattie was diagnosed with AIDS in 1991 and lost her leg to illness in 1995, leaving her unable to work.
Then Hattie realized that money was being deducted from her son's SSI disability benefits every month because she receives rental assistance from the HIV/AIDS Services Administration (HASA). Last November, Hattie didn't have enough money to pay her $250 rent.
"It just didn't make sense," said Hattie, 39, who lives in Coney Island and asked that her last name not be used to protect her privacy. "What did one thing have to do with the other?"
Common sense will at last prevail for Hattie and some 1,100 families now that Governor Eliot Spitzer's 2008 budget has restored SSI "invisibility" for low-income households receiving the AIDS rent enhancement.
Housing Works won several lawsuits in state court—including a landmark Court of Appeals ruling last summer—that established the principle that fair and appropriate welfare budgeting should allow low-income families to keep the value of federal SSI disability benefits for their children, and to treat such benefits as "invisible" when calculating household budgets.
But former Governor George Pataki, in his last year in office, muscled language into state law that took the benefits back. Spitzer's move will restore over $573 per month to more than 1,100 families. The new provision will take effect after passage of the budget (around April 1 in recent years) and will cost about $7 million per year in state funds.
Hattie will spend Darren's SSI payments on tutoring so he can keep up with his schoolwork. "Darren has his off days, but he's been doing okay," she said. Darren is now in 7th grade, and Hattie hopes he will have more opportunities than she did. She wants him to finish high school and college and perhaps one day open his own business. "But right now he's with the basketball thing," she chuckled.
Hattie has goals for herself, as well, including going back to school to get her GED and getting college credits in peer education. "I want to reach out to other people and show them that there is life after HIV," she said. "I can give hope to other people like me."