From the perspective of families at risk of becoming homeless due to the high cost of living, the current eligibility process for programs that alleviate poverty is broken. 16,418 Medicaid cases were closed in Utah during the month of July, 2023, due to paperwork problems. Almost 50,000 families with children who appear to be eligible for Medicaid and SNAP benefits are only enrolled in SNAP despite the fact that the average SNAP benefit for a family with children is $390 per month. Unfortunately, the phone number people can call to fix problems has an average wait time of 35 minutes. You can tell people are desperate to fix the problems with their cases because only 26 percent of the calls to this line end with the customer giving up and terminating the call. President Joe Biden has recognized that federally funded programs have overly cumbersome processes and so he has an initiative dedicated to "Reducing Time Taxes and Administrative Burdens". This initiative is looking at important things like how to share data collected for programs like Medicaid with agencies that determine eligibility for SSI/SSDI benefits and housing authorities that determine eligibility for housing assistance programs. Utah's Governor, Spencer Cox, has formed a task force to look at maximizing new technology to streamline and simplify customer experience. That task force is supposed to produce an action plan to the Governor by the end of this month. Since Governor Cox and President Biden both agree that it should not take an hour to complete an application if there is a way to get the same information in ten minutes, the Governor' task force should set big goals and work with the feds on them. Utah can cut the time it takes to apply for Medicaid and SNAP in half and the time it takes to recertify eligibility by even more than that. One big reason these changes are possible is that the Governor's Chief of Staff, Jon Pierpont, played a huge role in making even bigger changes 20 years ago. In 2002, the Department of Workforces services was five years old and the welfare reform bill of 1996 had led to a major decrease in the number of families receiving cash assistance. Unfortunately, participation in other programs, like SNAP (the called the "Food Stamp Program") and Medicaid also declined dramatically because of the paperwork burdens required to enroll in the program and the even bigger paper work challenges required to stay on the program. A group of food pantry clients that met at Crossroads Urban Center came up with four ideas for simplifying the process and presented those ideas to the Governor at that time, Mike Leavitt. To his credit, Leavitt's administration ultimately adopted all four of those recommendations. It is not an exaggeration to say that these changes reduced the time and paperwork burden for applying for Medicaid and SNAP in Utah by over 90 percent. Jon Pierpont played a leading role in implementing those changes and so the Governor should consider involving him in efforts to eliminate unnecessary procedural burdens that are placed on low income families now. In 2003 the paperwork was done with paper and keeping a family enrolled in programs that helped with food and healthcare required the death of acres of trees. Part of how the process was simplified at that time was moving toward digital records and reducing the need to submit the same documents. in person, every three months so they would be closer to the top of the pile in the file. Now, there are new opportunities to use technology to simplify processes. It is encouraging that both President Biden and Governor Cox are looking into how to maximize these new opportunities to make programs simpler to understand and navigate. Governor Cox and his team should aspire to make big changes that transform the system in customer friendly ways that same way Governor Leavitt did in 2003, | This is not the first time that low income Utahns have felt the process for determining and maintaining eligibility for government programs was broken. In 2002 a group representing food pantry clients challenged the Governor at that time, Mike Leavitt, to fix a system that was not working for clients, To his credit, Governor Leavitt ultimately made all four of the changes proposed by advocates. |
On Wednesday, September 6, 2023, the public is invited to come hear how candidates for Mayor in Salt Lake City will address the key issues of homelessness and housing affordability. Mayoral Candidates Rocky Anderson, Erin Mendenhall and Michael Valentine have all stated that they plan to attend. The Salt Lake Tribune's reporter who covers city housing issues, Tony Semerad, has agreed to serve as a moderator for the discussion.
The second part of the plan to produce units to reduce homelessness approved by the Homelessness Council yesterday was a proposal to grant $1.3 million in ongoing operational assistance to six new projects to help them obtain financing to get built. These projects would include 134 units of housing that would be affordable to extremely low income households. If you look at the details of the projects it is clear that many of them are clearly intended to move people out of homelessness.
We will be hearing more about these exciting new projects during a panel discussion at our Poverty Summit on August 26 about housing for chronically homeless people and disability rights that will include the Coordinator of Utah's Office of Homeless Services, Wayne Niederhauser. First United Methodist Church included in new winter overflow shelter plan for Salt Lake County8/11/2023
At yesterday's meeting of the Utah Homelessness Council it was announced that the state office office of homeless services had approved Salt Lake County's plan for getting unsheltered people indoors during winter months this year. Here are the core elements of that plan: A. Overflow Shelter Beds:
B. Additional beds at ongoing facilities that are hoped will come on-line in time to meet overflow needs this winter:
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