I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
What’s known to social policy wonks as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — perhaps better known as the food stamp program — has served as a national safety net for many years, providing assistance to low-income households that meet certain income and asset eligibility criteria to buy food.
These benefits are 100 percent federally funded and are one of the most effective economic stimulus measures available.
In fact, every five dollars of SNAP benefits spent generates nine dollars in economic activity. Those dollars spent at the grocery store, in turn, help to pay the salaries of the grocery clerks, truckers who haul the food and the farmers who grows the crops.
To be eligible for SNAP benefits in New Mexico, most households can have no more than $2,000 in countable assets, $3,000 for households with elderly or disabled members.
Countable assets can include things such as money in a savings account, severance packages, stocks and bonds, land and tools. These asset limits have remained unchanged for most households for over 20 years while prices have risen substantially.
The federal government has given states the flexibility to set their own asset test. This is the direction states are moving in nationally. Numerous states, including our neighbors Arizona and Texas have already increased or removed entirely the asset test.
But because New Mexico has not yet acted, a family in New Mexico with a laid off worker would have to deplete their savings before being able to access SNAP benefits while the same family in Arizona or Texas would not.
The Corporation for Enterprise Development has given New Mexico a D on financial prosperity based in part on extreme asset poverty. New Mexico ranks dead last nationally in asset poverty and change in asset poverty.
This means that New Mexico has the largest proportion of households without sufficient assets to subsist at the poverty level for three months in the face of a job loss or other absence of income. Policies such as the SNAP asset test make it difficult for New Mexicans to build assets. Moreover, the ability to retain and build assets is critical for economic self-sufficiency.
And a failure to maximize the SNAP program not only hurts families, it hurts our entire state economy.
A USDA study estimates that the number of eligible households would increase by about 22 percent if the asset test were eliminated. Therefore, removing the asset test has the potential to generate up to $100 million dollars of additional economic activity yearly in New Mexico.
Until New Mexico addresses the SNAP asset test, we will continue to leave federal money — and food — on the table.
Patricia Anders is a staff attorney with the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty.
“I pray to God you never have to be in this position,” Sarah said recently. When the New Mexico woman’s general assistance benefits were cut off, her family was forced into homelessness.
General assistance is a state-funded program that provides cash assistance to extremely poor, vulnerable New Mexicans. Beginning in February this year, the New Mexico Human Services Department (HSD) began cutting these benefits through a series of administrative actions, resulting in drastic numbers of families losing their benefits.
HSD has recently announced that it is considering shutting the program to new applicants, cutting benefits to those receiving assistance by 40 percent, and suspending general assistance payments entirely.
Sarah, meanwhile, lives in the East Mountains with her two teenage daughters, Samantha and Sally, and her infant granddaughter Tiffany. Sarah is disabled and cannot work. She has applied for social security disability benefits but until she begins receiving benefits, her family relies on general assistance to help pay the rent.
In February, when Sarah received a notice from the HSD’s Income Support Division (ISD) informing her that she had to reapply for general assistance, she did everything she was supposed to do. She sent in a new application and took the long bus ride to the ISD office in Albuquerque for an interview and provided copies of all the documents she was asked to provide.
Sarah thought everything was fine. But when she tried to pay her rent, she found out everything was not fine. Sarah’s small general assistance stipend — $539 per month for the entire family — had unexpectedly been stopped. When she called the ISD office, she was told that her children’s school had not faxed back a form confirming their attendance. Sarah contacted the school herself and brought the completed forms to ISD. She was assured then that ISD had all the information they needed and that she would receive her stipend within two weeks.
Sarah begged her landlord to give her another two weeks to pay her rent — expecting that ISD would be good to their word and process her case so she could get her benefits by then.
Sarah’s landlord agreed but two weeks came and went without her stipend arriving. Sarah asked for a hearing to determine whether ISD was handling her case properly and she started calling the ISD office every day. Every day she was told the same thing — there is a big stack of cases — and the office will get to her case as time allowed.
Almost three weeks into the month, Sarah had still not received her general assistance stipend and she, along with her two daughters and her infant granddaughter were evicted. The family became homeless — staying in shelters some nights and doubling up with friends and family on others. Meanwhile, Samantha and Sally began missing school.
ISD told her that her file had been lost and that she needed to bring all her documents in again. She was also told that she had a scheduled appointment that morning which was news to her — she had received no letter or phone call about this meeting. Sarah arranged to come in at 3 p.m. since she had to arrange transportation. She gathered all her paperwork to prepare for the long bus ride to the office. Sarah arrived early and was told to wait until she was called.
By the time it was 4 p.m., she became nervous as her family needed to be at the shelter by 5 p.m. to secure a bed for the night. Finally, Sarah was called. She quickly gave the worker all the paperwork she had been asked to bring. The worker no longer needed it — Sarah’s file had been found. Then she was told for the first time her benefits would not be continued until she provided additional medical records. Sarah left in tears and without her general assistance benefits.
Sarah had done everything she could think to do and decided to call Law Access New Mexico for help. The next week her general assistance was restored. No one from ISD called Sarah to tell her they had finally fixed her benefits. No letter was sent to her with the good news. By chance, Sarah’s daughter Sally checked their account and discovered that the benefits had been posted.
Sarah has her benefits back — for now — but there are questions about whether this program will still be in place come summer.
The recently announced cuts by HSD have been proposed because the program currently faces a budget shortfall due, in part, to years of financial mismanagement. The program has already suffered a 40 percent reduction in participants since last November and very few of those applying for help now are getting it — just 11 percent of the 1,042 people who applied in January and February were able to receive it.
For so many vulnerable families, homelessness lurks around every corner when basic benefits are cut — and the economy is making matters worse. For example, Albuquerque Public Schools has seen a 115 percent increase in the number of students who are homeless since last August. As such, programs like general assistance are more important than ever.
New Mexico should fund it adequately and run it well. New Mexicans like Sarah and her family deserve no less.
Editor’s note: Patricia Anders is a staff attorney with the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty. The names in this article have been changed to protect the family’s privacy.
As deep recession settles in on the American economy, more and more people are relying on the public benefits safety net to help them put food on their table or meet health care needs.
A record 31.8 million Americans received food stamps in one recent month, and Medicaid enrollment around the country is surging by record numbers in many states.
In New Mexico, our unemployment is rising — up to 5.1 percent in January from 3.7 percent a year earlier — and we are seeing some of the worst job growth statistics since 1982-83.
Indeed, 8,600 jobs were lost in New Mexico between January 2008 and January 2009. Low-income working families have been particularly hard hit, as job losses have been concentrated in blue collar industries — 5,500 jobs lost in the construction industry, 1,800 in manufacturing, 3,300 in retail trade, and 1,100 in leisure and hospitality.
Against this background of lost job opportunities, New Mexico retains the third highest rate of poverty in the nation and the second highest rate of food insecurity.
Yet, in the face of worsening economic conditions and precisely when safety net programs should be providing support to more low-income families, participation in some of these programs has begun to stagnate and even decline.
According to the most recent data from the New Mexico Human Services Department (HSD), there was a surprising drop at the beginning of this year of the number of New Mexicans receiving help from two of our state’s primary safety net programs — General Assistance and Medicaid.
Perhaps most shocking was the decline in enrollment in the General Assistance program (pdf). General Assistance provides small amounts of cash assistance to people who are seriously disabled and very poor. In some cases, it helps children in difficult circumstances. The number of New Mexicans receiving help from this program fell by 40 percent since November — the steepest decline in ten years — as new HSD procedures caused application approvals to decline precipitously.
Only 11 percent of the 1,042 New Mexicans seeking help in January and February were able to receive it — the highest denial rate in recent history. Furthermore, the department cut benefits to people already enrolled in the program.
Other key parts of our state’s safety net are also faltering.
Medicaid, the program that helps more low-income New Mexicans than any other by providing critical access to health care, fell by 4,448 people between September and November, according to the latest data. This is the first time since May 2007 that a significant decrease in Medicaid has occurred.
This decline in the number of New Mexicans served by the safety net programs of Medicaid and General Assistance during the worst economic downturn in at least 25 years is of grave concern.
The number of people helped by these programs should be growing right now, not decreasing.
One program that did see an increase was the food stamp program, which is funded entirely by the federal government and provides $1 per meal per day to help New Mexicans avoid hunger and the health consequences of poor nutrition. Nearly 7,000 more New Mexicans began receiving food stamps in February, underscoring the deep need that is evident in our state.
New Mexico is at a crossroads: We must make some critical choices about whether we will help the people most in need or let our public assistance programs founder.
Safety net programs not only provide relief to families facing serious hard times, they also provide some of the most effective economic stimulus measures to protect local economies.
Those on limited budgets are likely to spend every additional dollar of assistance on basic necessities, helping themselves and local businesses. For example, $5 of food stamp benefits, which are federally funded, generates $9 in local economic activity. Those dollars spent at the grocery store, in turn, help to pay the salaries of the grocery clerks, truckers who haul the food, and the farmer who grows the crops. A failure to maximize the use of these programs not only hurts families, it hurts our entire state economy.
Indeed, the federal government recently passed a “stimulus” bill to explicitly serve these dual purposes: to help states meet the needs of Americans falling into the safety net and to provide local economies with powerful economic stimulus.
More than $700 million federal dollars are now available in New Mexico through the public benefits programs. New Mexico has an enormous opportunity to draw federal dollars directly into our economy through Medicaid, the food stamp program and New Mexico Works, a program that provides small amounts of cash assistance to very poor New Mexicans for a limited amount of time.
These are unusually difficult times. Yet such moments often provide unusual opportunities to improve our lives.
New Mexicans are known for their fundamental resilience and optimism in the face of adversity. Think of how the New Deal programs of the Great Depression years provided New Mexicans with jobs, education, and the legacy of public buildings and art we cherish today.
A similar opportunity now confronts us. New Mexico should rise to the occasion by making full use of the federal stimulus bills and having our public safety net programs provide the jobs and assistance they were designed to provide.
What will it be, New Mexico?
Patricia Anders is a staff attorney with the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty.
