Bread for the City

>From Kathryn Baer, friend of Bread, comes word of her new effort to muster support for the new Child Tax Credit. This new policy, as part of the new economic recovery act, makes many more low-income families eligible for a tax credit. Because the credit is partially refundable, filers can get a check from IRS — even though they owe no income tax.

But this tax credit will expire at the end of the year unless it’s extended. Since the tax credit broadly benefits the middle class, Congress is likely to extend it — but it’s possible that Congress could let the policy revert to the minimum income requirement established under the 2001 Bush tax cuts. Baer reports that the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says that 600,000 children would fall into poverty if this happens. Learn more here.

So we encourage you to sign petition to support a permanent extension of the current Child Tax Credit. Click to sign the petition here.

>Here at Bread for the City, health care isn’t just about treatment. It’s also about learning how to live healthier lifestyles. But it’s impossible to learn everything there is to know in the space of a doctor’s visit, so we work hard to help our clients learn how to educate themselves about health issues.

Fortunately, there is an incredible amount of information about health available today — if you know how to find it. Unfortunately, most of our clients don’t have access to the great source of this information: the internet. So we’ve begun to consider an additional step in the educational process: one of the most effective ways for our clients to become health literate is by becoming computer literate.

Dr. Randi Abramson, BFC’s Medical Clinic Director, has recently initiated a long-term goal of hers: a computer literacy program. “Having access to health information empowers clients to understand and take control of their own disease,” she says, “which is especially important when our clients feel so powerless in other areas of their life.”

Understanding diseases like diabetes or hypertension dispels myths about them and allows patients to take control of their condition through means like diet and exercise, rather than simply accepting their disease as unavoidable and untreatable. We’re pleased to announce that our new Computer & Health Education Class invites just such self-empowerment.

This new project has largely been made possible by George Washington University’s Health Information Partners program, directed by Karyn Pomerantz. GW has supplied Bread for the City with a grant to fund the project and training for the instructors.

The first of these courses covers how to turn the machine on, navigate the operating system — and even the basics like using a mouse. The next class teaches students how to log on to the internet and use web browsers. After that, students start investigating websites that can give them reliable information about various health topics. They explore user-friendly websites that don’t require high literacy, like Healthy Roads Media, which features short videos on topics like “Smoking”, which are viewable in many different languages. Students have also discussed the credibility of information on various sites, and gravitated towards dependable sites like Family Doctor.org.

This process opens a lot of doors for clients, not only empowering them to make educated life/health choices, but also to take advantage of the rest of what the internet provides: e-mail, news, jobs, entertainment, etc. Since many of our clients do not have internet access at home or work, this has been a very popular new program. Check back soon hear more about what clients are getting out of the class.

>Yesterday, we posted Stacy Braverman’s testimony before DC City Council’s oversight hearings of the Department of Human Services. The following is the testimony of Bread for the City attorney Allison Miles-Lee, who represents Bread for the City in the Language Access Coalition. Allison speaks to the challenge that non-English speakers face when trying to obtain public assistance — food stamps in particular.

Good morning/afternoon. My name is Allison Miles-Lee. I am a bilingual family law and public benefits staff attorney at Bread for the City.

Others have given testimony today and in the past about ways that DHS can improve its customers’ access to services. However, these improvements will be meaningless for a large portion of DC residents unless DHS also provides services in a language that its customers can understand.

Under federal and DC laws, including the 2004 DC Language Access Act, DHS is required to provide meaningful access to services for limited and non-English speaking customers. This includes oral interpretation and written translation of vital documents. But we have frequently seen and heard from non-English speaking customers who were turned away by security guards or front desk staff at service centers because they were not able to communicate in English. We have seen frontline staff at one service center attempting to communicate with a Spanish speaking customer by Googling phrases in Spanish, and IMA (Income Maintenance Administration) eligibility workers frequently rely on customers’ children, other family members or advocates to provide oral interpretation for customers. In more alarming cases, customers have reported being shouted at and belittled in English, castigated for not speaking the language.

In our experience, even if customers do receive language interpretation at IMA service centers during their initial interview, information about their language preference is somehow not captured by IMA’s computer system. This happens even though the capture of such information is required by the Language Access Act. As a result, we have seen that important follow-up notices are often sent to these limited or non-English speaking customers in English.

I recently helped two clients, Ms. C and Ms. D, with very similar problems. Both are Spanish-speaking single mothers, who had applied for food stamps for their children multiple times at the Taylor street service center. Both failed to receive adequate Spanish interpretation at the service center, and left believing they had been denied benefits each time. They finally sought the assistance of an attorney since they did not understand why their applications continued to be denied.

I quickly learned that in both cases, my clients had actually been approved for food stamps and food stamps cases had been opened more than eight months earlier. In both cases, an EBT card had been issued to each woman and benefits were loaded onto the card every month.

Luckily, the EBT cards were still available to be picked up, and the benefits on the cards had not yet expired. Ms. D’s card had over $2,700 of food stamps loaded onto it when she picked it up. Neither of these women was told in Spanish at the service center that their food stamps case had even been opened. In addition, because neither of these women ever received notices of approval for food stamps in Spanish, or notices explaining where to pick up their EBT cards in Spanish, they had no idea these cards were waiting for them. Our understanding, after speaking with senior DHS staff, is that if these cards had not been picked up, the money loaded onto the cards would not be refunded to DHS, even after it expired. The failure to send notices in a comprehensible language to these clients was almost a lose-lose situation, for the clients and for the agency.

In these cases, since the women also did not receive notice of the need to recertify for food stamps benefits in Spanish, their cases had been closed after 6 months for failure to recertify. Working with IMA appeals officers and other senior DHS staff, I was able to secure retroactive benefits for both women. Ms. D received over $2,500 in retroactive benefits. While she was happy to finally get the benefits that her three children were entitled to, much had happened during the months she believed she had been denied benefits. Unable to purchase food for her children and pay rent, Ms. D was forced to move out of the apartment she had rented and into the basement of a family friend with her children.

For both of these women, as well as other Bread for the City clients, senior IMA staff quickly remedied problems and restored or provided benefits once we brought a language access concern to their attention. However, we are concerned about the doubtless many other customers who have encountered language access barriers and do not seek the help of advocates like those at Bread for the City.

Unless IMA comes into compliance with DC and federal laws regarding language access, any of its other service improvements will still leave a large portion of its customers in the dark.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

>This is a guest post from Katie Vinopal at DC Hunger Solutions.

While food stamp participation has skyrocketed in D.C., there are still many people that are eligible for the program but not receiving it. One reason why they are missing out: They simply don’t know they are eligible.

The Food Stamp Benefit Estimator – a new tool created by D.C. Hunger Solutions, Bread for the City, and D.C. Legal Aid – can help advocates and providers determine whether someone is likely to be eligible for food stamps and what their possible food stamp monthly allotment may be. The benefit estimator provides an estimate of eligibility and benefits (not an official determination of eligibility or benefit). It comes as an Excel spread sheet and can be used in as little as five minutes.

On February 25th from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m., D.C. Hunger Solutions and Bread for the City are hosting a phone tutorial on the estimator. The phone tutorial will include essential information about the food stamp program and eligibility guidelines, a how-to on the estimator, and information on upcoming modifications to the estimator.

To RSVP, contact Katie Vinopal at kvinopal@dchunger.org by Tuesday, February 23rd.

>Last week, Bread for the City attorney Stacy Braverman testified before the D.C. Council at its oversight hearing on the Department of Human Services (DHS). DHS provides many services to the District’s homeless population and also oversees public benefits programs including food stamps, TANF, Interim Disability Assistance, and medical insurance. Stacy spoke about the need for better training of DHS frontline staff, and about the importance of finally expanding the amount of DC families who are eligible for food stamps.

Taped testimony of all the witnesses is available on the D.C. Council website. Abbreviated verbal remarks follow:

Good afternoon. My name is Stacy Braverman and I am a public benefits lawyer at Bread for the City. Today, I’d like to focus on the need for better training and organization at Income Maintenance Administration service centers in general, and the need for DHS to implement changes to the food stamp program as directed by the Food Stamp Expansion Act of 2009.

As Mr. Carter noted, there are more applicants and fewer IMA service center and staff. I visit the service centers often and rarely see the express lines or “all hands on deck” mentality he mentioned, but I look forward to those initiatives. Service centers need to be better organized and staff needs more training to cope, because right now files and paperwork are often lost and decisions are delayed beyond the requirements of DHS policy and federal law.

For example, my client Mr. F had trouble requesting benefits at the Taylor Street service center. I accompanied him on a return visit and we waited for six hours before he could apply. Mr. F forgot to bring his pay stubs to the service center, so he waited for several more hours the following week to drop them off. When over a month passed and Mr. F hadn’t heard from IMA, I called the service center. A supervisor said she could tell from the computer that he had brought in his pay stubs, but said that his income was not entered into the system and the documents had been lost. Her only suggestion was to have Mr. F return to the service center another time, missing work, and wait again.

Part of the reason crowds at service centers are so large is because it is nearly impossible to reach staff by phone. Phone numbers printed on notices sent to customers often direct to other employees, or to full voicemail boxes. The voicemail system at the Taylor Street Service Center was broken for approximately a month this winter, and I haven’t been able to reach anyone at the Ft. Davis Service Center for weeks. When you do leave a message, it is rarely returned in the promised 24 hours—or at all.

Even when customers do get to speak with an eligibility worker, they often receive incorrect information. For example, my client Ms. T went to the Ft. Davis service center and was told she couldn’t receive TANF because one of her children got SSI. Another client, Mr. Q, was denied medical assistance because he couldn’t get a termination letter from his former employer. And Ms. B was told that her young grandchildren were ineligible for food stamps because of their legal immigration status. Eligibility rules for IMA benefits can be complicated, and these customers all actually qualified for benefits and got them with the help of attorneys. However, countless low-income District residents leave service centers without crucial safety-net benefits, and may never learn they were wrongly deprived. IMA staff need more training in program rules, they should be encouraged to look to the policy manual or to supervisors when they have questions, and they need to promptly and willingly remedy problems when they occur.

Of course, many people who apply for benefits are given the correct information about their eligibility, and some of them are denied food stamps because they do not qualify under the current rules. However, more of them will be able to receive this crucial safety-net benefit once DHS implements the Food Stamp Expansion Act of 2009. This law expanded categorical eligibility for food stamps to households earning less than 200% of the federal poverty level, so they could receive benefits without having to pass certain income and asset tests. It also created a Heat and Eat initiative that leverages federal energy assistance funds to increase the food stamp benefits many households would receive. The Council passed this bill last summer, and we originally heard that DHS would modify its computer system and enact the changes on October 1, 2009. When that date passed, we heard the changes would come in January, then March 15th—and today Mr. Carter has promised “the end of March.”

I have spoken with many people who will be eligible for food stamps as soon as these changes are implemented, like Mr. Q, whose employer went bankrupt and laid off all its workers. Like Ms. N, who struggles to make ends meet with Social Security Disability Insurance as her only income. And Ms. C, who spends nearly half her unemployment benefits on COBRA so she can continue to get medical treatment for her Multiple Sclerosis; after that and her rent, she struggles to buy food.

Implementing the Council’s changes will bring more federal funds to the District, which supports local grocery stores and farmers’ markets. It would reduce the burden on food pantries and other service providers, who are facing increasing demands. It would simplify the food stamp application process, leading to greater efficiency at the service centers. And for the people who are most affected by DHS’ delay in implementing these changes—people who worked and then became unemployed or disabled; people working part-time or minimum wage jobs; and those with severe housing, utility, medical, or child care expenses—it could help avert catastrophe.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

>Amy Johnson is the Emerson Hunger Fellow at Bread for the City. This is cross-posted from the DC Food For All.

After the initial fun of our record-breaking storm (call it a snowpocalypse, a snowsplosion, a snowmageddon…) the reality of the aftermath is uncomfortable and even scary. With many streets un-plowed, power outages across the region, and public transportation running minimally, we at Bread for the City have been unable to open for much of this week.

This year, we’ve been closed to client services on Fridays — but with some luck we’ll make an exception tomorrow, and open with as much capacity as we can muster. Many of our clients really need the help.

Consider Michael Mack, a gentleman living in Anacostia. “We’re in a community where the stores aren’t nearby. We have the corner stores to get what you need, but oh you pay for that.” Michael came to us last week to stock up on groceries in advance of the storm — since he figured it would be easier to wait out the weather. But that was before the situation stretched into a week and beyond. I called Michael yesterday, and he expressed frustration: “I’m out of food. I went last Friday to get food, but now there’s none left and there’s now way out. There are buses running, but not near me and where I need to go.”

Wanda Ford, a mother of three who lives in Anacostia, told me “it’s really rough.”

“We can’t get out, and the street hasn’t been plowed. We have enough food for right now, but I’m worried about how long it will last. It’s very hard for me, with three children.” Wanda has three children (two adopted) — which brings up a serious point that many may not think about: for a family living on a fixed income, meals at school really help provide relief from food budgeting. But with several days of school canceled, Wanda’s family faces an even tougher food situation.

Not only are our clients finding this difficult, but Bread for the City found its own problems as well. On Tuesday, a gaggle of staff shoveled snow off of our roof, worried that the weight of a continued accumulation of snow could cause it to collapse on Wednesday. After two hours of back breaking shoveling and plenty of snow puns shared, the roof was cleared and ready to weather out the next storm. And the next one after that?

While Bread for the City prepares to open, other organizations are in need of volunteers! Contact Charnay Henderson at Food and Friends to help prepare and deliver meals to homebound people living with HIV/AIDS and other debilitating illnesses. Also consider reaching out to We Are Family to help seniors in need.

>[Cross-posted from DC Food For All]

Last week, Bread for the City‘s two centers were slammed with people coming to beat the snowstorm and pick up supplies of food. (We provide our clients with one package of three days worth of food per month.) As a result, this week is very quiet in our offices.

So we checked in with our fellow organizations to see what is happening. First and foremost, we are concerned about elderly and home-bound people – for whom this isn’t just an inconvenience, but a real crisis!

Some good news from Food & Friends — which delivers meals to people living withHIV/AIDS and other challenging illnessess. They have not missed delivering a single meal to our clients facing life-challenging illnesses such as HIV/AIDS and cancer, so far.

However, with more snow predicted, they need more help!

We seek delivery volunteers, especially those with 4-wheel-drive vehicles. Food & Friends needs 11 volunteers at 10 a.m. and 33 volunteers at 12 noon to deliver meals to our clients. Each route should take less than 3 hours, and we will provide detailed delivery directions to allow you to help us ensure that those in need are served in this challenging weather emergency. Sign-Up Via Email here.

Other good news from Miriam’s Kitchen, which is not only open but also just recently started serving dinner. (More on that development here on the DC Food For All soon….):

We are lucky to have a tremendous core of volunteers that allow us to open no matter the situation. In fact, in our 27 years of service, we have NEVER had to close. Today at breakfast we served 106 homeless men and women, and we expect about the same for dinner tonight.

And the DC Central Kitchen has been working overdrive to make the food that way-over-capacity shelters are serving.

During this week’s record snowstorm, the Kitchen not only produced its scheduled 4,000 meals per day, its dedicated staff, volunteers and trainees were able to produce an additional 2,500 meals per day, over the last five days, assuring that men and women who were trapped in local shelters were provided with healthy and hearty breakfast, lunch and dinners.

Jerald Thomas, the Kitchen’s Executive Chef: “Volunteers and local chefs have been walking in to help. Just today, chefs from Café Atlántico walked over to lend a hand. We also got a $2,000 cake donated when a wedding was canceled. The outpouring of time and talent is amazing.”

Of course, this was a difficult situation before the second wave of snow that is scheduled to arrive in just a few hours. We’re going to be on the look out for important stories and opportunities for people to help out – please share what you know in the comments.

In the meantime, for anyone who is searching for hot meals or other supplies in your area, check out the DC Food Finder to get a comprehensive list of places to start calling. Good luck and stay safe out there!

>Due to inclement weather, Bread for the City will be closed on Monday, February 8, 2010. Our plan is to open back up on the 9th, but please check back here for updates.

Thank you for understanding!

>I’ve been a case manager since September, and Mr. T is one of the clients with whom I get to work.

Some years ago, an old injury began acting up, making it difficult for Mr. T to stand for long periods of time or lift anything heavy. Mr. T came to Bread for the City in March of 2008, and we began helping him to apply for Social Security Disability Insurance. He was eventually approved, but this income is not enough for him to keep up with his bills. So Mr. T is dealing with the uncertainty of how long he can continue to live in his current apartment.

Mr. T and I have been working hard on applying for subsidized housing – that is a process that entails many different forms for several different waitlists. But even though Mr. T is disabled and a senior citizen, he could be waiting for housing for several years.

He’s not alone. Thousands of DC residents with similar plights will sit on waitlists for subsidized housing for as long as 10 years. This situation leaves many people feeling hopeless and helpless. I have seen how this experience affects my clients and the stress and worry they experience as a result.

Caught between a years-long wait and precarious housing, Mr. T feels constantly stressed. He reports being unable to sleep at night because of this worry. So Mr. T and I have had many conversations about the different ways that he might be able to relax.

Mr. T says that he gets pleasure out of cooking. The first time we talked, he told me over and over: “I can burn.” It took me a while to figure out that by this, he meant that he is a really good cook. Mr. T says that cooking takes his mind off of other things. Every time that I see him, we talk about different things that he has cooked recently- sometimes a big breakfast, sometimes a soup, sometimes a roast.

Another thing that Mr. T says helps him relax is Westerns. I asked him about why he likes Westerns above all other movies. He quickly replied, “I was raised on a farm. I was raised on Westerns.” Something about these movies allows Mr. T to get his mind off of his housing predicament. This is valuable time.

I have deeply enjoyed my time getting to know Mr. T in case management. He is a wise man, and I have a lot to learn from him. Mr. T and I have talked about strategies for stress management and he identifies that cooking and watching Westerns are successful methods for him. So I called some libraries to see if they had Westerns that Mr. T could rent. I found that they do, but only on DVDs — Mr. T only has a VHS player.

So, though we don’t often do things like this for our clients, it’s really important for me to ask: Do you have a DVD player that you could donate to help Mr. T deal with this stress? Might you even have a few Westerns that you would like to donate?

Mr. T and I both thank you in advance.

>

On Thursday, January 28th, DC United‘s Ben Olsen hosted The Ben Olsen & Friends Art Exhibition and Reception to benefit Bread for the City. The event was held at The Fridge and featured new art by local artists, Judy Cox, Ben Ferry, Peter Loge, Hannah Robinett, Michael Weber, and Stacy Zarin-Goldberg. Additional sponsors for this event include catering by Occasions Caterers, dessert from Farmers & Fishers, and drinks from Pearson’s Wine and Liquor as well as Premium Distributors.

This brand new venture was a huge success. Nearly 150 folks packed out The Fridge and well over $5,000 was raised — all to benefit Bread for the City. (That’s enough for us to feed 227 families of 4 this month) This event was also a fabulous precursor for our 20th Annual Art with a Heart gala coming up on March 18 at the Capital Hilton. Get your tickets today!

We’d like to thank Ben Olsen for coming to us with the vision for this event. And, of course, we especially thank each of the artists who donated their time and talent to the event. Without them this event would not be possible! Thank you for all who attended and we hope to see you at our 20th Art with a Heart in March!

Additional pictures of the event can be found here courtesy of www.brightestyoungthings.com. More photos courtesy of Jessica Del Vecchio Photography coming soon!