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Our top donation needs for our two food pantries this month are canned fruits and vegetables. As it begins to get cold we need jackets and sweaters we can give away at our thrift store. We are so grateful for everyone who supports our efforts to help low income families in our community.  The theme of our new newsletter is "The Power of Showing Up". It features stories about that theme from interesting members of our staff and volunteers. We have paper copies that can be shared in the lobby of your congregation or community group. There is also a digital version of the newsletter. Please share it with anyone who might be interested in learning about what we do and finding a way to get involved.  Every year Crossroads Urban Center organizes a celebration to acknowledge all of our amazing volunteers and to recognize specific people who have made special contributions. This year we will be presenting these awards:
The Volunteer Celebration is free and open to everyone. It will begin at 6 PM on Thursday, September 25, 2025, at Poplar Grove Park in Salt Lake City. We hope to see you there!  In July President Trump signed legislation that creates new work requirements for Medicaid and increases the number of people required to complete work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. State officials have estimated that the Medicaid work requirements may lead 24,900 Utahns losing access to Medicaid and so it is important that we do our best to implement them in a way that is as fair and intelligible as possible. Here are four simple ideas for implementing the work requirements grounded in Crossroads Urban Center's almost 60 years of working with and serving low income Utahs. 1) Work programs should be oriented toward the goal of helping people move into higher paying jobs that provide health insurance and other benefits. State officials will probably be able to meet the expectations of federal officials if we implement these new work requirements in ways that just reduce the number of people participating in Medicaid and SNAP. Our state should attempt to exceed these expectations by having a program focused on helping people increase their incomes in ways that make them not need Medicaid or SNAP benefits. It is easy to create a punitive system that chases people from programs with busywork and unrealistic deadlines. A system designed like that would move people from poverty to deeper poverty. It takes more effort to design a system that nudges people to pursue the education and training they need to obtain a job than pays more money and offers more hours per week than the job they currently have. Utahns who feel trapped in low wage jobs respond enthusiastically to opportunities to increase their income. Our state should endeavor to implement these new work requirements in a way that the people impacted by them feel like they are being encouraged to pursue dreams rather than being punished for not following someone else's rules. 2) Work programs should have processes in place to identify when people have significant barriers to employment and connect people to appropriate services. The rules for new federal work requirements will Include some exemptions for people with disabilities. Utah's programs should have processes in place to identify when a person qualifies for an exemption. However, in the process of assessing people's job readiness the state will learn that specific people have barriers to employment that do not qualify for exemption but may indicate the presence of an underlying condition that has not been diagnosed. If the state learns that a person cannot read at third grade level they could just narrow the job search options for that person but it would be more helpful to learn why they have difficulty learning and connect them with appropriate services. This approach would lead to learning that some people have more severe disabling conditions but it could also lead to other people developing skills that make more valuable to employers. 3) Work programs need to encourage people to pursue education and training opportunities that are proven to increase income. Often the people who would benefit the most from adult education and job training programs do not think those programs will help them. Their past experiences with education were negative and so they believe educational programs are just a waste of time. However, participating in education and training opportunities can exempt people from new federal work requirements. That gives us an opportunity to reach out to people who are skeptioal about education and training programs and let them know what programs they are eligible for and how those programs have benefited people like themselves. A person who is working for an employer who caps their hours at 20 per week is going to be at a serious risk of losing Medicaid if they miss one day of work. Being enrolled in an educational or job training program would exempt them from the work requirement and thereby reduce their anxiety about losing access to healthcare and nutrition assistance. It also would put them on a track toward obtaining a better job. 4) We need to make it easy for people to complete the final hours of participation in months where they are slightly short of a program's required hours. The new federal rules include requirements for participation in paid work and/or volunteer work. Someone who averages 20 hours per week is going to periodically have a missed or cancelled shift and will need to volunteer somewhere or get a second job to meet their participation requirement for a specific month. The process of restoring eligibility after being cut from a program is much more complicated for the individual and the state than helping someone to meet program requirements and not be cut from the program. Having two and four hour volunteer opportunities available for people who need them will make this new system work better for everyone.  In July President Trump signed legislation that includes increased reporting requirements and new work requirements for Medicaid. Federal Medicaid administrators are expected to send guidelines for implementing these changes to state administrators in September. State administrators and state legislators will then have fifteen months to write regulations, pass bills and get a program up and running before the end of next year. These new rules will require the state to gather a lot more information about Medicaid participants. Some of that information can be obtained or verified by the state without any action by participants. An example of information that the state can verify without any action by a participant would be details about the healthcare services being provided to people who are already enrolled in Medicaid. In some cases this information can be more useful in determining if a person is exempt from work requirements than anything a participant could produce on their own. Verifying eligibility through information collected by governmental and other independent sources decreases the risk of people being cut from the program due to the fear or embarrassment involved in asking figures such as an employer or a landlord to repeatedly fill out a form on their behalf. If it can be avoided, people who rely on Medicaid should not be required to do things they worry endanger their employment to continue to have access to basic healthcare. Verifying Medicaid eligibility through independent sources also reduces the risk that people will be cut from Medicaid because they do not receive a notification or have difficulty navigating the computer system that is primarily used to request information from participants and to accept documents and other responses. This month Crossroads Urban Center conducted a survey of clients at our two emergency food pantries and learned that a significant pe struggle to apply for benefits on-line or to use the state website to make updates to their Medicaid or SNAP case.
When people do not use the computer system to submit verifications they instead go to an office and talk with state employees or call and talk to state employees. If new reporting requirements for participants are overly complicated then the share of participants needing in-person assistance will increase. Such an increase will lead to the need for more state employees and increase the cost of implementing these rules. The best way to avoid these cost increases is to verify information using independent sources as often as possible. As Utah explores options for complying with these new Medicaid reporting requirements it is worth noting that on August 21, 2025, President Trump signed an Executive Order titled "IMPROVING OUR NATION THROUGH BETTER DESIGN" with the purpose of improving the "sprawling ecosystem of digital services offered to Americans," This initiative is intended to begin showing initial results before the new Medicaid requirements go into effect. State officials should reach out to the entity created by this Executive Order, the America by Design initiative, to see if they are willing to help Utah come up with an application and eligibility system that is simpler to navigate and more accurate in determining eligibility. Can information about income that is already collected by state and federal tax agencies be used to verify employment status and income for Medicaid? Can information collected by a federally funded housing authority be used to verify place of residence for Medicaid?  |
EMERGENCY FOOD PANTRY
347 South 400 East Salt Lake City, UT 84111 801-364-7765 Monday – Friday 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM 
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CROSSROADS THRIFT STORE
1385 West Indiana Avenue Salt Lake City, UT 84104 801-359-8837 Tuesday-Saturday 10:00AM-6:00PM 
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CROSSROADS WESTSIDE FOOD PANTRY
1358 West Indiana Avenue Salt Lake City, UT 84104 801-935-4079 Monday-Friday 9:00AM - 5:00PM Food only (no emergency services) |
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