Eric Angel, Executive Director

Legal Aid is pleased to announce the DC Fiscal Policy Institute (DCFPI) as the 2011 recipient of Legal Aid’s Partnership Award. Legal Aid’s Partnership Award was created to recognize non-legal organizations or individuals whose work directly increases our ability to serve our clients. Ed Lazere, Executive Director of DCFPI, will accept the award on the organization’s behalf at Legal Aid’s Servant of Justice Awards Dinner, scheduled for Tuesday, April 28, 2011 at the JW Marriott Hotel. Brooksley E. Born, of Arnold & Porter, and The Honorable Thomas E. Perez, of the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice, will be honored at the same event.

The DC Fiscal Policy Institute is an extraordinary resource for anyone concerned about policy analysis in the District. DCFPI conducts research and public education on DC budget and tax, with a particular emphasis on issues that affect low- and moderate-income residents. By preparing timely analyses that are used by organizations such as Legal Aid – as well as policy makers, the media, and the public – DCFPI informs public debates on budget and tax issues and helps to ensure that the needs of lower-income residents are considered in those debates. DCFPI’s areas of work include: analyzing the impact of tax and other revenue policies on the District’s long-term fiscal health and on the equity of its tax system; working to ensure that programs serving low- and moderate-income residents are well designed, effective, and adequately funded; and conducting research on income and poverty trends in the District and on serious problems facing low-income residents, such as the growing shortage of affordable housing.

DCFPI’s extraordinary, sustained commitment to providing accurate, detailed, practical, and effective policy analysis on issues affecting Legal Aid’s client community have been invaluable to our efforts to serve our clients and better protect their rights. One of Legal Aid’s signature advocacy efforts—to preserve and enhance the workings of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program—is one of among many initiatives that has benefited from DCFPI’s work over the past several years. DCFPI’s research has dispelled damaging myths about District families who rely on TANF, educated policymakers and advocates about best approaches to the program, helped stave off some of the most punitive and ineffective approaches to moving families off TANF, and inspired a program redesign that should be more responsive to the needs of the most vulnerable District families.

 We are truly delighted to be able to present this award to DCFPI and hope that you will join us on April 28 for what promises to be a wonderful event!

Jennifer Mezey, Supervising Attorney

Interim Disability Assistance (“IDA”) provides essential temporary cash assistance to the City’s most vulnerable disabled residents while they wait – often months or even years – to be approved for Supplemental Security Income (SSI).  $270 per month from IDA (less than 30% of the federal poverty level) is often the only income individuals with disabilities can rely on to scrape by while waiting for the federal government to rule on their disability claim.

Over the last four years, the District’s budget for IDA has been slashed to the bone. The program has been cut by over 70% from FY 2008 to FY 2011. As a result of these cuts, there are currently over 600 people on a four-month waiting list for the program who are struggling to get by on virtually no income whatsoever.

So Others Might Eat (SOME) and the DC Fiscal Policy Institute (DCFPI) have released a two-minute video featuring three District residents who have benefited from the IDA program.  With the help of IDA, two of the featured former IDA recipients are now receiving SSI, and another was able to receive treatment that helped him overcome his disability.  Their stories put a human face on IDA and demonstrate the necessity of maintaining the program.  As Mayor Gray prepares to present his budget on April 1, it is critically important that the voices of those who stand to lose the most from an unbalanced approach to the budget be heard and heeded.

Watch the SOME/DCFPI video here, and make sure to share it with others.

Learn more about – and get involved with – the efforts of Legal Aid and other members of the “Invest in DC” Coalition, which advocates a balanced approach to the FY 2012 budget.

Defeat Poverty DC:
Putting Economic Opportunity on the 2010 Political Agenda

What:
Panel discussion, moderated by NBC News4 political reporter Tom Sherwood, and release of new report on growing poverty in DC during the recession.

When:
March 24, 2010, 9:00 –10:30 a.m.

Where:
The True Reformer Building,
Lankford Auditorium
1200 U Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20009

Defeat Poverty DC is a new coalition of organizations and residents in the District of Columbia working to bring greater focus during the 2010 election season and beyond to the damaging effects of poverty on our entire city. The District’s long-term economic vitality depends on helping families obtain good jobs, affordable housing, and quality health care and child care.

The 2010 mayoral and city council elections give us a chance to have a serious discussion about what our city must do to make work possible for low-skilled DC residents; make work pay enough to support a family; and make basic needs like housing and health care affordable for all.

The event will include a lively panel discussion among local officials and community leaders about the need for the city’s elected officials to formulate clear policies for defeating poverty in DC. We need leaders who will make defeating poverty in our city a priority!

Refreshments will be served.

Please RSVP by March 19 to Tamanna Mansury at Tamanna@thehatchergroup.com or 301-656-0348.

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Defeat Poverty DC is a non-partisan initiative that is bringing together advocacy groups, business, labor, faith organizations and residents throughout the city. It is led by a steering committee made up of organizations with a long history of advocating for those in need: the Children’s Law Center, the Coalition for Nonprofit Housing and Economic Development, DC Appleseed, DC Fiscal Policy Institute, DC Hunger Solutions, the Moriah Fund, the Washington Area Women’s Foundation, and Wider Opportunities for Women.

Supervising Attorney

During a time of budget uncertainty in which funding for programs that serve vulnerable individuals and families is jeopardized, the DC Fiscal Policy Institute (DCFPI) and So Others Might Eat (SOME) recently released a report entitled “Voices for Change: Perspectives on Strengthening Welfare-to-Work From DC TANF Recipients.”   The authors of this report, Katie Kerstetter of DCFPI and Joni Podschun of SOME, document the strengths and weaknesses of the District’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program through interviews and focus groups with TANF recipients and service providers throughout the City.   The authors conclude that “the progressive components of the District’s [TANF] program have not lived up to their promise because of inadequate implementation.” 

 Background on TANF

 The District’s TANF program provides benefits to impoverished families with children.  In order to qualify for benefits, recipients must work or participate in work activities and cooperate with the District’s efforts to establish and enforce child support enforcement orders.  The law recognizes and provides exemptions for individuals who, through no fault of their own, cannot cooperate with these requirements.

 Legal Aid’s work on TANF

Legal Aid represents TANF recipients who have been denied benefits or whose benefits have been terminated.  We also represent individuals who are challenging sanctions that have been wrongfully imposed on them.  We have several clients and former clients with proven disabilities who were sanctioned even though the TANF agency – or the third party contractors who provide employment and training services to recipients — had knowledge of their disabilities.    

In order to more effectively reach out to TANF recipients, Legal Aid, in partnership with the law firm of Akin, Gump, Hauer and Strauss, has set up a hotline for TANF recipients to call to get advice and representation to challenge their TANF sanctions.  That number is: (202) 887-4170.

The findings of the DCFPI/SOME report are consistent with the experiences of Legal Aid and our clients.

The DCFPI/SOME report provides convincing support for three major flaws of the District’s TANF program that Legal Aid has observed among our client population: (1) TANF recipients who could work or participate in work activities are ill-served by a “one-size fits all” approach that pushes people into the first job they can get regardless of its suitability and ability to enable the family to become self-sufficient; (2) TANF recipients with barriers to work – such as domestic violence or disabilities – are not receiving appropriate services; and (3) the TANF grant is too low to allow TANF families to meet their basic needs.  Importantly, these critiques are offered by the TANF recipients who the program is supposed to be serving and too often fails.

Kerstetter and Podschun offer concrete proposals to remedy these flaws.  In order to help those who can work become more employable and those who can’t work address their challenges, the District must take a more individualized approach.  The TANF agency should improve their assessment processes and refer applicants to better and more appropriate supportive services to address barriers to work.  Those who can work should be able to access better quality education and training opportunities.  And for all TANF recipients, the grant must increase because $428 a month is just not enough money for a family of three, even with other supports such as housing assistance (which only one-third of TANF recipients receive), Food Stamps and Medicaid.

Unfortunately, in its July proposal to fill gaps in the Fiscal Year 2010 budget, the Fenty Administration endorsed policies that would punish TANF recipients for the program’s flaws.  The Administration asked the City Council to give it the authority to impose full family sanctions for families who did not (or in some cases could not) comply with work requirements.  In other words, a family would lose all of its cash assistance if the parent did not work.  Studies have shown that such policies hurt those families who face the most serious barriers to work and harm children.  The City Council listened to TANF advocates, including Legal Aid, and many other concerned District residents and denied the Administration this authority. 

However, this victory could be short-lived.  As the District continues to face economic trouble, the Administration could again propose such draconian policies in the next budget season. 

Full family sanctions would harm the one in three children in DC who receive TANF benefits, increase the hardship of already struggling families and ignore the lessons that this report tries to teach us.  The 16,000 families who depend on TANF need individualized attention, comprehensive services and adequate financial support so that they can address or overcome their barriers and achieve better outcomes for themselves and their children.  That is surely a goal that we can all agree is worth pursuing.