Romney's Supplemental Budget Cuts Programs for Homeless and At-Risk Families

On March 25, 2005, the Romney Administration filed a supplemental budget which includes several sections related to shelter and other programs for homeless and at-risk families that constitute a good news/bad news scenario.

With the decline in the number of families in state-funded emergency shelter over the past year, surplus monies have been accumulating in the Emergency Assistance Family Shelter Account. The good news is that the Romney Administration's supplemental budget redirects $11.3 million in surplus monies; providing an additional $3 million for FY'05 for DHCD's Residential Assistance to Families in Transition Program and transferring the remainder of the surplus into next year's (FY'06) Emergency Assistance Account. The bad news is that there is a surplus in the account to begin with, when families are being turned away from shelter, and that the Governor has amended his FY'06 budget request reducing the FY '06 appropriation by the same amount as the money which would be transferred.

The Mass. Coalition for the Homeless supports the use of $3 million of this surplus to allow the RAFT program to help additional families to save their housing or move into new housing in FY'05. This is a cost effective and humane way of helping families avoid homelessness and lengthy shelter stays. However, the Coalition urges the legislature to use the remaining surplus to help the desperate parents and children who are currently denied shelter by Department of Transitional Assistance (DTA) rules and regulations.

While the Romney Administration has proposed language to allow DTA the discretion to place higher income families in shelter, the proposal does NOT restore the income eligibility to 130% of the federal poverty line. The proposal also fails to address the myriad of other rules which deny families basic shelter – rules which have been administratively (not legislatively) imposed. According to DTA's own statistics, over 59% of the families that apply for emergency shelter are turned away at the front door. During the last quarter of calendar year 2004, only 4% of the families denied assistance by the Department were denied help because they were over income.  A much larger proportion (33%) of these families were denied help because they had difficulty providing all the verifications DTA was requiring to prove eligibility. Since DTA controls access to 95% of the shelter spaces in the Commonwealth, many of these families were left in precarious situations while parents tried to collect all the pieces of paper required by the department.

Given the surpluses in family shelter account, the Coalition is urging the legislature to increase the income limit to 130% of the federal poverty line for the remainder of FY'05. They also are urging the legislature to include language requiring DTA to place otherwise eligible families in shelter for up to 30 days pending verifications, so parents and their children can be provided with a safe haven while the parents collect the needed documents. Making these changes for the remainder of FY '05 will allow the legislature to gain needed information about the true impact of these changes on the budget while there is clearly money in the account to pay for them. This will provide the needed information with which to make realistic budget decisions for FY'06.

-Adapted from e-mail- Mass. Coalition for the Homeless - Analysis of Gov's Supp Budget from LeslieLMCH@aol.com, March 31, 2005.

04/2005