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MGH Community News |
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MGH Community News |
| October 2023 | Volume 27 • Issue 10 |
Highlights
Sections Social Service staff may direct resource questions to the Community Resource Center, Hannah Perry, 617-726-8182. Questions, comments about the newsletter? Contact Ellen Forman, 617-726-5807. |
Healey says Mass. Can No Longer Guarantee Room in Family Shelter System Frustrated by a lack of federal help in the face of an influx of migrant families, Governor Maura Healey has announced she will begin limiting how many families it will place in its emergency shelter system (Emergency Assistance, family shelter) as of November 1. It was also not immediately clear what would happen to families who cannot find room in the existing shelters. Massachusetts is the only state in the nation with a “right-to-shelter” law statewide, a 1983 law that obligates officials to immediately house eligible families. Healey also said the state will maintain a wait-list for emergency shelter housing, with plans for “triaging families.” For wait-listed families, however, it will be “as if the right doesn’t exist,” said Kelly Turley of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless. Lawyers for Civil Rights has filed a lawsuit seeking an emergency court hearing and a temporary restraining order to stop the state from “undermining” the right-to-shelter law, a release from the organization said. Unless the court restrains the order, as of November 1, once the state reaches a new “capacity” limit, families will be triaged and placed on a waiting list for shelter. New Application Process As of November 1st, the state is implementation a new “front door” for families and children to respond to the continued increase in children and their families seeking shelter in Massachusetts. To apply for EA family shelter, families will once again apply either by phone (866-584-0653) or at one of the the selected Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities (EOHLC- formerly known as DHCD) offices that accept EA applications. Please note limited hours at some sites. Update: The Quincy Family Welcome Center is also accepting in person applications, Monday through Friday only. Families must arrive by 4pm. The Boston family welcome center can help families with resources and supplies but is not currently facilitating EA applications. |
LIST OF EOHLC OFFICES and EOHLC Website: https://www.mass.gov/how-to/apply-for-ea-emergency-family-shelter New “Front Door” Locations
At these new “Front Door” locations, the state will also be implementing a new clinical and safety risk assessment/pre-screen and implementing a waiting list for EA shelter placement. The state reports they are actively working on “short-term” and/or “overflow” sites and will otherwise try to provide the families with “alternative resources,” including family welcome centers. New Role for Family Welcome Centers Update: The Quincy Family Welcome Center is continuing to accept and facilitate EA shelter referrals. The “Family Welcome Center” in Boston no longer provides this service, but has remained opent to provide families with services including benefits enrollment, basic needs screening, connection and coordination of donations and volunteers, resiliency and safety planning conversations, resource packages, connection to other resources throughout the state, assistance for families in collecting EA documentation, coordination of resource vans or fairs, and other assistance
Sources and for More Information
SNAP Benefits will Continue Uninterrupted in November and December if there is a November Government Shutdown If Congress can’t reach an agreement by November 17 there is again a threat of a government shutdown. On Oct 16 USDA sent notification to states that SNAP benefits will continue - without any interruptions - for November and December if there is a government shutdown. See the FNS Policy Memo. - From Update on Replacing Stolen SNAP benefits; Upcoming LIHEAP and SSI Trainings and More!, Pat Baker, MLRI, October 17, 2023.
DTA Now Issuing Replacement Payments with Federal Dollars when SNAP Benefits are Stolen but Signature Needed As of October 12th, DTA started issuing federal replacement SNAP benefits when SNAP was stolen through skimming, phishing, or other means. Under federal rules, households must give DTA a written or telephonic signature when reporting stolen SNAP. Here is what to know:
Here's how clients can get DTA their signature:
We know this process may be confusing, especially for families who were stolen from between October 1, 2022 and October 12, 2023. More information to come - but the core message for any family stolen from since October 1, 2022 is to get a signature to DTA ASAP! Advocates can contact Vicky Negus of MLRI at vnegus@mlri.org - about any families you have worked with or are working with who had SNAP stolen and need further assist. - From [FoodSNAPcoalition] Update on Replacing Stolen SNAP benefits; Upcoming LIHEAP and SSI Trainings and More! Pat Baker, MLRI, October 17, 2023.
Social Security Benefits Increase in 2024 More than 71 million Americans will see a 3.2% increase in their Social Security benefits and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments in 2024. On average, Social Security benefits will increase by more than $50 per month starting in January. Federal benefit rates increase when the cost-of-living rises, as measured by the Department of Labor’s Consumer Price Index (CPI-W). The CPI-W rises when inflation increases, leading to a higher cost-of-living. This change means prices for goods and services, on average, are higher. The cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) helps to offset these costs. We will mail COLA notices throughout the month of December to retirement, survivors, and disability beneficiaries, SSI recipients, and representative payees. But if you want to know your new benefit amount sooner, you can securely obtain your Social Security COLA notice online using the Message Center in your personal account. You can access this information in early December, prior to receiving the mailed notice. Benefit amounts will not be available before December. Since you will receive the COLA notice online or in the mail, you don’t need to contact us to get your new benefit amount. If you prefer to access your COLA notice online and not receive the mailed notice, you can log in to your personal my Social Security account to opt out by changing your preferences in the Message Center. You can update your preferences to opt out of the mailed COLA notice, and any other notices that are available online. Did you know you can receive a text or email alert when there is a new message waiting for you? That way, you always know when we have something important for you – like your COLA notice. If you don’t have an account yet, you must create one by November 14, 2023, to receive the 2024 COLA notice online. You can find more information about the 2024 COLA here. - See the full SSA blog post.
Mass. Updates Child Care Assistance Application to Allow Virtual Communication The state's application process for child care financial assistance is on track to join the 21st century, allowing families to make virtual appointments, upload documents digitally, and receive communication by text or email. "Families will be able to apply more easily, they'll be able to maintain their benefits, and it'll be much less disruptive for them in terms of their work," said Early Education and Care Commissioner Amy Kershaw. "And children will be able to access much more consistent early education and care." The goal is to reduce the logistical and bureaucratic burden on families who used to have to coordinate in-person meetings during the work day, bring physical paperwork with them and then watch the mail for communication that they've been approved for the program. The new application will significantly reduce the amount of paperwork that families have to fill out, according to department officials. Reducing paperwork for families also reduces the workload for child care providers who are charged with approving and verifying the documents. State leaders said they'll waive the fee for homeless families to apply for care, reduce the reporting requirements for families with disabilities and parents participating in treatment for substance abuse. The department has also simplified policy language, made it more inclusive for LGBTQ+ families and plans to translate it into 14 different languages. - See the full WBUR story.
Legislators Override Two Dozen Healey Vetoes Over the course of two weeks the Legislature overrode the majority of Gov. Maura Healey’s vetoes from her first budget, restoring about $80 million across 24 overrides targeting child care, early education, suicide prevention, and anti-poverty funding. Current revenue levels, plus the recently signed tax cut package, make the package of overrides fiscally sound, lawmakers said. The House voted in late September and the Senate voted early this month to restore $1.4 million for suicide prevention services, including the youth suicide prevention hotline “Hey Sam;” $1 million to the state civics education trust fund; $1 million for Head Start programs; $2.5 million for the Home and Healthy For Good program; and $2.5 million for a nonprofit security grant pilot program. Community action agencies will see $7.7 million of funding restored. The money offers the state’s 23 community action agencies flexibility to invest in antipoverty programs, and its loss would have prompted programming cuts and “disastrous” staff layoffs, an official at the Community Action Agency of Somerville said in August. Healey wrote that she vetoed the line item because its “original purpose was specifically tied to addressing the COVID-19 pandemic.” Other restored child care items include about $6 million in funding for family resource centers and $950,000 in funding for children’s advocacy centers. Both have been “priority” areas for the Senate, Ways and Means chair Michael Rodrigues said in explaining the overrides on the Senate floor. The resource centers offer “a crucial gateway to state and local services for families,” and the advocacy centers “provide critical services to victims of child abuse and law enforcement agencies agents investigating cases of abuse and trafficking,” Rodrigues said. Both chambers also rejected a move by the governor to delay implementation of the much-debated budget item allowing unlimited free phone calls for incarcerated individuals. Mothers and fathers, sons and daughters from my district have been waiting years, decades, and sometimes maybe even a whole generation for the opportunity to connect with their loved ones – untethered from their ability to actually pay,” Sen. Liz Miranda, of Roxbury, said as the body took up the override. “Incarceration for so many families has a destabilizing impact on financial security. We can’t as a state delay this any further.” - See the full Commonwealth Magazine article.
Issue Briefs- Reconnecting Formerly Incarcerated People to SSI SSDI and Medicare As the prison population ages and older adults leave incarceration, advocates can play a critical role in improving the way we support older adults reentering our communities by connecting them to housing, health care, and economic security benefits. Due to systemic racism and discrimination, older adults reentering our communities are disproportionately older adults of color, especially Black men. The unique and significant disadvantages caused by structural racism in the criminal justice system and throughout their lives follow them outside of the prison walls, so older adults leaving incarceration are at risk of being unable to see a doctor, find housing, and meet their basic needs. Justice in Aging is releasing a series of issue briefs to ensure advocates and service providers are aware of the unique challenges older adults reentering the community after incarceration face and to provide them with tools to connect their older adult clients to the safety net benefits they need. The first brief in the series, Medicare Special Enrollment Period for Formerly Incarcerated Individuals: What Advocates Need to Know, provides advocates with information to connect their older adult clients with Medicare benefits, including those who are dually-eligible for Medicaid. The second brief in the series, supported by AARP Public Policy Institute, describes Social Security policies on Connecting Formerly Incarcerated Individuals to Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Social Security Benefits. Later in the year, we’ll release a resource on connecting older adults reentering the community to housing. The series will conclude with a webinar. Justice in Aging launched its reentry program under its Strategic Initiative to Advance Equity in Aging. - See the original Justice in Aging post.
How Money Damages, Settlements and Lump-Sum Inheritances Affect Public Benefits Reference Guide, Updated for 2023 Mass Law Reform Institute staff with colleagues from additional legal aid offices has updated a reference table that summarizes how money damage awards and court settlements affect the most common types of cash, food, housing and health benefits. Betsy Gwin, MLRI confirmed for us that “in general, an inheritance of money that is received as a lump sum would be subject to these rules.” The table covers SSI, SSDI, SNAP, TAFDC, EAEDC, MassHealth, Medicare, Federal Public Housing, Section 8 tenant-based subsidies, state public or subsidized housing and MA Veteran’s benefits. Find it here. - From [Health-announce] Health Working Group Tomorrow & More, Vicky Pulos, MLRI, October 25, 2023 with additional correspondence from Betsy Gwin, MLRI, October 26, 2023.
Boston Medical Center Providing Electricity Credits Boston Medical Center has announced that it will use energy credits generated from a new solar array on its administrative building to help reduce patients’ electric bills. The program, called Clean Power Prescription, is in a similar vein to its long-operating food pantry, which gives patients access to healthy and locally-grown foods via a prescription. “Energy is such a basic need for people,” said Dr. Anna Goldman, a primary care physician at BMC. “People in Boston have a high energy burden. Our low income people often pay between 5 and 10 percent of their income for their energy costs. That’s a significant amount of a burden on patients who are already living very close to the margin.” The hospital initially expects to provide 80 households credits of $50 a month for a year. To start, the program will be available to Eversource electric customers treated in the hospital’s complex care management program, which focuses on patients who are high utilizers of the health system, have at least one chronic condition, and are in the health system’s Medicaid program. The recently passed Inflation Reduction Act provided new opportunities, by offering subsidies for more than half the cost of installation of new projects if at least half the power from it were donated to low-income people. BMC will retroactively apply for the Inflation Reduction Act subsidies to be applied to its 365 kilowatt solar project. The law also allows for other organizations to build renewable energy and receive the subsidy by allocating the credits to BMC’s patients. Officials hope that will expand upon the work BMC is beginning, including helping patients who are customers of other energy providers. “For many of these patients, I ended up referring them to psychotherapy to deal with the chronic stress of living in poverty,” Goldman said. “But that feels really incomplete. Like, let’s help you with these hard feelings you’re having from living in poverty. It feels so much more complete to be able to say and let’s help address the underlying causes of your poverty.” - See the full Boston Globe article.
Court Strikes Down HHS Rule Allowing Insurers to Exclude Co-Pay Assistance Towards Out-of-Pocket Maximums A federal judge has struck down a Trump administration rule that allowed health insurers to exclude drug manufacturer co-pay assistance towards a beneficiary's out-of-pocket costs. Under the Trump rule, these "copay accumulator" policies meant patients generally paid more out of pocket for their prescription drugs. Under these co-pay accumulator policies, patients are still able to use manufacturer discounts to pay for medications, but the value of this assistance is not credited toward patients' deductibles and annual cost-sharing maximums. The court ruling means co-pay accumulators are permissible only for branded drugs that have a generic equivalent, if allowed by state law. Insurers are now precluded by federal regulation from implementing co-pay accumulators for drugs that lack generic equivalents. The suit claimed insurers and PBMs have increasingly implemented co-pay accumulators that have greatly impacted patients who need high-cost prescription drugs, such as those with HIV, hepatitis, cancer, arthritis, diabetes and multiple sclerosis. In a recent survey of commercial plans, 83% of beneficiaries are enrolled in plans that employ copay accumulators. The court agreed that, based on the arguments the plaintiffs presented, co-pay assistance would be required to be included as part of cost-sharing, since the regulation states that cost-sharing is "any expenditure required by or on behalf of an enrollee." "While this victory will certainly help millions of patients, it is a shame that so many have been forced to pay thousands of dollars in extra costs each year for their prescription drugs, forcing us to take this legal action," said George Huntley, CEO of the Diabetes Leadership Council and the Diabetes Patient Advocacy Coalition. "It is imperative that the Biden administration now supports the American people by precluding big insurers and their PBMs from denying patients the benefit of all forms of support they receive in paying for their critical medicines." - See the full Healthcare Finance News article.
Handouts for New Arrivals- “Living in the US” Check out these multilingual (Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole) orientation materials to life in the US for newly arriving migrants, created by a group of immigrant service organizations in the DC area: https://sites.google.com/view/livingintheus?usp=sharing Information covered includes a number of immigration related topics, employment, cost of living, transportation, communication, access to public education for minors, law enforcement and emergency services, homelessness and domestic violence and sexual violence resources, and norms and customs. - Thanks to Fiona Danaher for sharing.
Handout for Immigrant Families- Your Child’s Education Rights Healthcare facilities that are dealing with an influx of migrants have a new tool from the Massachusetts Advocates for Children that explains the rights to education that the new arrivals are afforded. Available handouts in English, Haitian Creole, Spanish inform immigrants that, among other guarantees, their child has the right to go to public school for free, regardless of immigration status and without delay. If English is not the child’s first language, schools must provide language support and services. Learn more and download the handouts: massadvocates.org - From MHA's WEEKLY WRAP, October 6, 2023.
Think:Kids Parent Class – Learn Collaborative Problem Solving Think:Kids, in the Psychiatry Department of Mass General Hospital, invites parents, guardians, families, and caregivers to learn Collaborative Problem Solving® (CPS), the evidence-based and trauma-informed approach for helping children develop the skills they need to manage their behavior. This class teaches parents and caregivers how to reduce challenging behaviors by using the approach with their child. Think:Kids offers an 8-week online Parent/Caregiver class each month. Class materials, breakout sessions, and opportunities for questions and answers will be a part of this highly interactive and supportive class experience. Join Think:Kids to: Learn more and register for the next Parent/Caregiver class! - Thanks to Lindsay O'Connell for sharing this resource.
Roxbury Community College Opens a Food Pantry
The Rox Box is the latest Massachusetts college food pantry. Photo: Courtesy of Roxbury Community College Roxbury Community College's new food pantry opened this month for students and staff in an effort to address food insecurity. Why it matters: An estimated 37% of Massachusetts public college students lacked sufficient access to food in 2019, per a report from the Hope Center for College, Community and Justice at Temple University. What's happening: The Rox Box will open three days a week and stock both perishable and non-perishable items. RCC funded the pantry through $180,000 in federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars and other grants and donations. Stop & Shop donated $10,000 in gift cards to help the pantry restock. Be smart: Students and staff must register to confirm they are affiliated with the college before they can pick up items. The pantry has limited hours: 10am-2pm Tuesdays, 10am-2pm Wednesdays and 2pm-6pm Thursdays, per an RCC spokesperson. Zoom out: At least 42% of community college students nationwide and 33% of students at four-year colleges experienced food insecurity, according to a 2020 report from the Hope Center. - From Axios Boston
Concert Health, Mass General Brigham to Integrate Behavioral Health Services for All Insurance Types Concert Health, a tech-enabled behavioral health medical group, is teaming up with Mass General Brigham to expand behavioral health services through primary care. The program will be rolled out across the health system’s primary care, pediatric and OB-GYN practices in Massachusetts, giving more than 400 primary care providers and their patients access to behavioral health services. Every insurance type in the state will be accepted. Concert works to enable and scale collaborative care, which connects patients with symptoms to behavioral care managers who follow up with the patient regularly to provide counseling, manage medication or monitor symptoms. Its platform is meant to make it easy for large health systems and medical groups to seamlessly add its services to their offerings. Concert connects with a referred patient within 24 to 48 hours and gets them into care by phone or video. At select locations around the country, Concert also co-locates at brick-and-mortar clinics. Concert’s nearly 200 clinicians have direct access to patients’ medical records, which they update as needed. That makes the care more integrated for the primary care doc and offers a more holistic view of the patient. “It means busy doctors don’t have to look somewhere else,” Hutchins said. Among the populations the two plan to focus on are those that are traditionally less likely to go into primary care settings and more likely to be resistant to mental health treatment, like the elderly, immigrants and men, Hutchins said. Most plans have smaller copays for primary care, and collaborative care is considered a primary care benefit for patients. Patients also pay per month, as opposed to per session, making Concert overall more affordable than traditional behavioral health services, Hutchins said. The medical group has cared for more than 70,000 patients to date, more than half of whom are insured by Medicaid and Medicare. About 70% of patients referred to Concert end up going. They also end up sticking around, at an average of five to six months per patient, Hutchins said. It has worked with the likes of Mercy Health, Advent Health, Trinity and CommonSpirit. Last year, the state’s Medicaid agency MassHealth launched a value-based payment model requiring primary care providers participating in its accountable care organization program to meet standards for team-based, integrated care. The model enables providers to deliver and be reimbursed for flexible, team-based care, making it easier to prioritize services like behavioral health support. Concert and Mass General Brigham say their collaboration will help further expand the safety net for integrated care and make essential behavioral health services available to all insured patients, including those on Medicaid. - See the full Fierce Healthcare article.
2024 Medicare Parts A & B Premiums and Deductibles This month the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that in 2024 the standard Medicare Part B monthly premium will be $174.70, an increase of $9.80 from 2023. The annual Part B deductible will increase by $14 to $240 in 2024. The Medicare Part A inpatient hospital deductible will be $1,632 in 2024, a $32 increase. Additional information including Part A cost sharing amounts for extended hospital and skilled nursing facility stays, premiums for individuals who do not qualify for free Part A, Part B immunosuppressive drug coverage, and Part B and Part D income-related monthly adjustment amounts is available in this CMS fact sheet. With these increases, it is important to ensure low-income older adults are enrolled in programs to help with their Medicare costs. Learn more in these resources: - From From DC: New Social Security COLA, Medicare Premiums for 2024, and more, Justice in Aging, October 13, 2023.
MassHealth Covers 2 COVID Antigen Tests Per 28 Days without Prior Authorization MassHealth announced in Pharmacy Facts #177 its coverage of COVID-19 at-home antigen self-test kits: MassHealth covers 2 such tests in a 28 day period without prior authorization. Prior authorization (PA) is required for > 2 tests per 28 days, as described in Pharmacy Facts 206. MassHealth reminds pharmacy providers that the Massachusetts Department of Public Health has issued a statewide standing order that allows licensed pharmacists to dispense at-home antigen self-test kits to any individual, and to treat that standing order as a prescription for any such test kit. Accordingly, an individual prescription is not required for any such test kit. That standing order can be found here: https://www.mass.gov/doc/covid-19-otc-diagnostic-test-standing-order-pdf/download. - From Pharmacy Facts 212, October 3,2023
Seeking Solutions for Wheelchair Repairs that Can Drag Out for Months For the nation’s roughly 5.5 million wheelchair users, repairs that take weeks, months even, are the norm. In some cases, people can be trapped at home. Wheelchair users and advocates agree there’s no single reason why repairs take so long. Getting insurers to authorize repairs can take weeks, and fixing a chair may require multiple in-person visits that can be time-consuming and difficult to schedule. Nationwide, though, advocates and wheelchair owners are increasingly viewing the $59.7 billion durable medical equipment industry as a major cause of the problem. Companies’ repair teams are understaffed, overworked, and aren’t maintaining a readily available supply of parts, experts said. More than a dozen states have taken steps to reform the repair process. Some states have provided better access to loaner chairs, mandated longer warranties, or expanded the pool of businesses eligible to repair wheelchairs. Now, wheelchair users are looking to the Massachusetts Legislature to impose similar protections. “Where people who use wheelchairs have little to no bargaining or market power right now, we’re providing a really basic level of consumer protection,” said Senator John Cronin, a Democrat from Worcester, who is sponsoring a bill to address slow repairs. In Massachusetts, about 10 percent of the population have disabilities that impede mobility, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, though disability advocates say they aren’t sure how many are wheelchair users. The wheelchair supply industry is dominated by two companies, NSM and Numotion, which service MassHealth recipients. Both agree that repairs take too long, and cite the process of obtaining insurance authorization, supply chain problems, and labor shortages as factors. Diane Racicot, an NSM vice president, testified in May before a Massachusetts legislative committee that the company’s 28 technicians handled more than 10,000 repair requests in 2021, in part because the company is used to repair other suppliers’ chairs. Typically, manufacturers say, they lose money on repair work. Modern wheelchairs are expensive. Pineda-Lopez estimated his power chair retails for between $35,000 to $40,000, not unusual for a customized, complex power chair. Less complicated chairs typically cost thousands of dollars. The pursuit of profits, experts said, is leading big national companies to invest less in repairs. “They want to focus on selling the product, because that’s where they make money, and not on the customer service,” said Rick Glassman, director of advocacy at the Disability Law Center. The private equity firm AEA acquired Numotion in 2018 through an affiliate. NSM was sold to Cinven, a European private equity firm, in 2019. Both private equity firms declined to comment. Wheelchair users constantly live with the possibility of a serious failure. About 56 percent of users reported needing at least one repair on their chairs within a six-month period, a 2021 University of Pittsburgh survey found. Cronin’s bill would require two-year warranties on new chairs, a period during which chair owners could avoid the cumbersome insurance authorization process, advocates said. Companies would have to assess chairs in need of repairs within three days if a chair is unusable, and provide a temporary replacement chair, if needed, within four. A supplier would have to provide a new chair or a refund if repeated attempts at repairs don’t work. If the warranty isn’t honored, the attorney general could sue for damages on behalf of a chair owner. An identical bill passed the Senate last session, but the House never acted. Industry representatives oppose the legislation, saying that the bill’s deadlines are unrealistic, and that extending warranties wouldn’t address the backlog of work that repair teams face. Another bill under consideration would eliminate prior authorization for wheelchair repairs, but advocates for people with disabilities oppose it because it doesn’t include longer warranties or guarantee speedier repairs or other remedies for people whose chairs break down. MassHealth does not require prior authorization for repairs costing less than $1,000, which accounts for about 90 percent of all repairs, the state Medicaid administrator reported. Private insurers’ policies vary, according to the Massachusetts Association of Health Plans, with some requiring prior authorization. A spokesperson for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts said in a statement that the authorization process ensures that repairs “are necessary and appropriate.” State legislation cannot eliminate Medicare’s prior authorization requirements. During the May hearings for Cronin’s bill, one speaker, Pamela Daly, of Charlestown, described suffering a broken hip six years ago when a caster, the fork-like bracket that holds front wheels, fell off her wheelchair. She missed 10 weeks of work at the United Spinal Association and was stuck at home, she said, but not because of her injury. It just took that long to replace the small, four-pound part. “I don’t think that any able-bodied person today would stand for this kind of bungling and red tape,” Daly testified. - See the full Boston Globe article.
Advocates Call for Paid Family and Medical Leave Fixes Massachusetts' paid family and medical leave program has been underway for a little over two years and paid out more than $1.9 billion in benefits, according to the state. But lawmakers and advocates say some workers who are paying into the program may not be accessing the benefit. There have been 229,996 workers who have taken paid leave since the program began in 2021, according to the state. But there are about 3.3 million workers eligible for the benefits. The law makes employers responsible for notifying their workers about Paid Family and Medical Leave in writing, in the worker’s primary language. Currently, the law only requires an employer to provide information about paid leave when a new employee starts work. And it provides for financial penalties for employers who fail to do so. But almost three years after the law took effect, despite receiving hundreds of complaints about large and small employers, the Department of Family and Medical Leave has yet to issue a single penalty. Awareness has also been held back by a lack of funding for a public information and outreach campaign. Lewis has filed legislation that would require employers to give workers notice of their paid leave rights and an application when they need to take leave. Lewis said his bill would make the state's notification requirements the same as the federal Family and Medical Leave Act requirements. Awareness is not the only barrier to accessing the benefits. For a dishwasher or cook who doesn’t own a computer or printer, the need to find medical forms online, download and print them, bring them to their doctor, and then fax or mail them to the state can be prohibitive. Doctor’s offices can fax forms for patients, but required identification documents must be in color, meaning fax is not accepted. It doesn’t help that the state’s list of acceptable IDs is stricter than the Registry of Motor Vehicles, Massachusetts voting laws, and other states’ programs. As a result, the number one denial reason for three years in a row has been a lack of sufficient documentation. Most of these denials are fixed on appeal, but those who fail to navigate the appeals process successfully are often the most vulnerable: disabled, elderly, low-tech, low-wage, and immigrant workers. Fortunately, there are a number of solutions to these barriers. The Department of Public Health has partnered with Department of Family and Medical Leaave to provide funding for a public awareness campaign starting this fall. The agency is planning to start enforcement and collection of financial penalties for non-compliant employers. In-person assistance with document submission is being considered, following the example of the Department of Unemployment Assistance. These are crucial improvements to eliminate barriers to access. Finally, several bills have been introduced in the Legislature that would make the program more transparent and accessible. Another bill would return eligibility for paid family and medical leave benefits to some workers who are classified as independent contractors. The original bill, passed in 2018, granted eligibility to “covered contract workers” who receive a 1099-MISC tax form, if the business they worked at hired a majority of 1099-MISC workers. Unfortunately, in 2019, the IRS changed the name of its independent contractor tax form from 1099-MISC to 1099-NEC. The Department of Family and Medical Leave interpreted this change as ending eligibility for tens of thousands of covered contract workers. The new bill would remove the reference to specific IRS tax forms and restore eligibility to covered contract workers. - See the full WBUR story and Commonwealth Magazine article.
MA Affordable Homes Act Would Create New Real Estate Tax to Be Used for Affordable Housing and Also Seal Eviction Records A long-awaited housing bond bill from Gov. Maura Healey has finally arrived. In addition to new policies aimed at ramping up housing production in the face of the state’s housing crisis, the bill is expected to lead to the creation of more than 40,000 new homes in combination with a tax relief package signed into law earlier this month. The largest piece of spending by far comes in the form of $1.6 billion earmarked for the repair, rehabilitation and modernization of 43,000 public housing units across Massachusetts, three times the appropriation in the previous bond bill in 2018. This spending includes $150 million for decarbonization; $100 million for mixed-income housing demonstration, or the replacement of aging developments with newer ones, which frequently include some market-rate units to subsidize the affordable units; and $15 million for accessibility upgrades. Some of the other policy proposals included in the bill are steps housing advocates have been asking for, including establishing a local option for real estate transfer fees allowing individual communities to raise money for affordable housing. This proposal echoes a bill currently on Beacon Hill and would give cities and towns the option to, by majority vote, place a tax of 0.5 to 2% on the portion of real estate sales over $1 million, or the county median sale price. The policy includes exemptions for properties being used for affordable housing, transfers between family members and intergovernmental transfers, according to EOHLC. Another proposal would allow accessory dwelling units (ADUs) — sometimes called in-law apartments —less than 900 square feet to be built by right in single-family zoning districts everywhere in Massachusetts. Communities would not be able to place owner-occupancy requirements or parking minimums above one parking space on ADUs, and they would not be able to place any parking minimums at all within a half-mile of transit stations. Municipalities would still be able to place reasonable dimensional requirements on ADUs, according to EOHLC. Other policy proposals include establishing a process for the sealing of eviction records; establishing an Office of Fair Housing; allowing municipalities to pass inclusionary zoning regulations by simple majority, instead of a two-thirds majority. The bond bill includes two tax credit programs, including the newly established Homeowner Production Tax Credit, which would be available to developers to incentivize the production of homeownership units aimed at households making up to 120% of the area median income. MassBudget’s Statement on the Governor's Affordable Homes Act (Excerpts) In keeping with the all-hands-on-deck effort needed to solve our housing ills, the MA Affordable Homes Act (H.4138) recognizes that municipalities can play a major role by investing resources to address local housing needs. By empowering cities and towns to place real estate transfer fees on the most expensive homes, it provides a new tool that will generate resources for local affordable housing efforts. By placing fees on the sale of only the most expensive strata of housing, the policy would not require owners of affordable housing to contribute. Eviction Protections and Office of Fair Housing Additional resources: Sources
Editorial: The Boston Suburbs’ Cynical Ploy to Keep Poor Families Out - Use Seniors as a Shield Over the last century, many MA suburbs have all but banned apartment buildings, effectively preventing construction of the kind of places that might serve as today’s reasonably priced rentals. Those zoning codes, though typically justified in terms of protecting the environment or the rural character of communities, have often been thinly veiled efforts to keep out poor people. Exclusionary zoning, though, is not the only culprit. The suburbs have created another, less appreciated impediment targeted specifically at low income families with kids. In the civil rights era, the federal and state governments ratcheted up efforts to crack open wealthy communities — subsidizing, and in some cases forcing communities to accept, construction of units set aside for low-income people. But in a cynical move, many suburbs have steered those apartments away from poor parents with kids and toward a demographic they’ve deemed more acceptable: seniors on fixed incomes. Low-income elders need and deserve affordable housing, of course. Like every vulnerable population in the region, they don’t have nearly enough of it. And the suburbs have been quite explicit about their exclusionary aims. Just after Congress passed the Fair Housing Act in 1969, the town of Duxbury published a plan recommending that multifamily housing be allowed “only if it can be legally restricted to elder persons.” And 33 years later, Lynnfield’s master plan made a cold appeal to the bottom line, arguing that senior housing developments “have a positive fiscal impact because they do not produce any school-age children.” This preference for elders has been codified with age-restricted zoning in big swaths of suburbia. And at the public meetings that can make or break projects, residents have spoken in coded — and not-so-coded — language about what kind of low-income neighbors they’ll tolerate and what kind they won’t; the state’s senior population skews white, while poor families with kids are more likely to be Black and brown. Whatever the motivation, the effects are real. The National Low Income Housing Coalition analyzed census data for the Globe editorial board and found that 29 percent of low-income renters in a census region that covers a large swath of eastern Massachusetts and a portion of southern New Hampshire are seniors. But the share of income-restricted housing set aside for seniors appears to be higher — possibly much higher. That same data showed the suburbs offered up precious few of the income-restricted, three-bedroom-or-larger apartments that are most suitable to families. Other studies have come to similar conclusions. And the consequences of this lopsided geography of opportunity have never been clearer. Research by Harvard University economists Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren, plumbing millions of census and tax records, has demonstrated that low-income children who grow up in better-off places fare substantially better as they grow older than their peers in poor neighborhoods. They are less likely to have teenage births. They are more likely to go to college. And they earn significantly more money as adults. A move to a high-opportunity neighborhood may, in fact, be the most powerful tool for upward mobility in America. And yet, in a state that claims to care about inequality, policy makers have too often let municipalities stand in the way. What to doPolicy makers have long been aware of this imbalance. And they’ve made periodic efforts to address it. In the 1980s, Governor Michael Dukakis and his secretary of communities and development, Amy Anthony, made a notable push for suburban communities to build units for poor families alongside the senior apartments they preferred. And more recently, state lawmakers passed the MBTA Communities law, which presses cities and towns served by the T to zone for multifamily housing — and mandates that the new housing “be suitable for families with children.” The law is a laudable step toward increasing housing density in the suburbs. But there are no affordability requirements built into the measure. And the law’s compliance guidelines don’t stipulate that a certain number of three-bedroom units be built; they simply forbid municipalities from capping the number of bedrooms. That means developers, while free to build three- or four-bedroom units, could still cleave to the studios, one-bedrooms, and two-bedrooms they typically favor. There is, to be sure, some value in the law’s light touch; the state, in the throes of a housing shortage, can’t afford to burden developers with too much regulation. But as policy makers take a once-in-a-generation swing at opening up the suburbs to development, they should require at least a modicum of affordability for low-income families with kids. And while policy makers are strengthening the MBTA Communities law, they should also expand its scope — pressing for better zoning not just in T communities but in cities and towns served by transportation agencies in other parts of the state. Municipalities have an obligation to pare back building restrictions on their own, too. Right now, all sorts of height, setback, and parking restrictions curb the production of multifamily buildings in better-off communities. And there are plenty of requirements that lock out families with kids, in particular. Housing researcher Amy Dain surveyed 100 cities and towns in Greater Boston for a 2019 report on obstacles to multifamily housing and found that more than half of the municipalities had zoning for age-restricted housing (usually ages 55 and up) in certain places. More than a quarter capped the number of bedrooms that could be included in at least some multifamily housing — requiring, for instance, as one town does, that mixed-use developments only include studios, one-bedroom, and two-bedroom apartments. It’s about more than zoning, though. The state also has to change the way it finances affordable housing, starting with its allocation of tax credits, which are the lifeblood of subsidized housing development these days. Developers who apply for the credits are awarded a certain number of points for proposing family housing in better-off communities. It’s a useful incentive, but if the state really wants to move the needle, it should substantially increase the points allotted. And as the state ramps up the incentives for building income-restricted housing, it should make it easier to apply for that housing. At the moment, low-income people have to pull together a dizzying array of documents for every apartment they seek. A common pre-application, with some basic information relevant to any landlord, could make the process substantially easier. Another intriguing option is to provide low-income families with Section 8 housing vouchers they can use to rent not just income-restricted but also market-rate apartments in better-off places. - See the full Boston Globe editorial.
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