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food stamps Archives - ChangingMedia

Who Do You Think You Are?

By | Homelessness, The Race to End Homelessness | No Comments

My driver’s license expires in the middle of July. I’d been eyeing the date for some time now, dreading what was coming. Even though I’ve been in Maryland these past few months, I’m from Rhode Island, and my trip back to RI won’t be until after the card expires. I was putting off the phone call to the Department of Motor Vehicles to explain why there was no way I could make it to a Rhode Island DMV even though I still lived in state. I was pleasantly surprised to find that things have gotten easier since the last time I needed ID, and I was able to renew everything online.

I’ll still be stuck with the same dorky picture of me from when I was 18, but all I had to do was check a box that said yes, I still wear glasses, and send Rhode Island $40 and I’ll be legal to drive and drink and go to the bank uninterrupted. For others, it is not so easy. Individuals experiencing homelessness frequently find themselves unable to prove who they are, and this leaves them cut off from the services that are supposed to help.

When I ask people who have needed to obtain identification while experiencing homelessness, I hear the same paradox repeatedly: “You need ID to get ID.” It’s true, because a license application usually requires a birth certificate, a social security application usually requires a license, etc. Unfortunately, you also need identification to get food stamps, apply for housing, and even to get into some shelters or drop in centers. These are often the ticket to homeless services, but are so expensive — in both time and money — that they can delay someone from receiving services indefinitely. Furthermore, because they are so difficult to obtain, identification is a commonly stolen item inside shelters and on the street.

There are some programs in place to help with this conundrum. Some shelters, transitional houses, and day centers encourage clients to have their mail delivered to the facility and use the shelter address as their own when applying for a new identification care. While this is perfectly legal, it can sometimes lead to confusion or a delay in getting mail, because individuals are at the mercy of the staff to sort and hand out mail deliveries. This also ties the individual to one particular shelter or program, and could mean starting the process over again once he or she is housed.

In Myrtle Beach, all individuals experiencing homelessness are being issued a basic information card to help track the food, housing, and clothing they receive. This will help with access to emergency services, but the card isn’t the same as a federally issued driver’s license or ID card. Florida residents can now obtain a license or general ID without having to pay the state’s $25 fee, but still need to pay $6.25 for a birth certificate before they can get said license or general ID. In most states, individual organizations can provide some assistance in paying for ID cards, but funds are limited and cannot always meet the need.

In a culture that is so driven by identification cards, many people are unable to prove who they are. Instead of being recognized as a person with a name and a birthday who is an organ donor, these individuals are labeled only as homeless. Until the process of obtaining identification can be made more accessible, these people are trapped in homelessness, challenged to receive services and housing.

I’m incredibly glad that I didn’t have to explain to the Rhode Island Department of Motor Vehicles why I needed a new license from five states away. Still, I wonder why something as important as identification is no problem for people who live in two places, and a trial for those don’t have anywhere to call home.

Let Them Eat Subway

By | Social Enterprise, The Thagomizer | 2 Comments

I was walking down the street this weekend when two homeless men stopped me to ask for a couple of dollars to buy a sandwich. I told them I didn’t have cash on me but one of the men suggested that I could just go to Subway and buy them the sandwich on my credit card. I agreed and while we were waiting for the sub, he says to me “It’s a shame you didn’t have cash, we would have been able to get cheaper food.” Now my first thought was something akin to “You ungrateful SOB,” but then I realized he was right and in fact being a good steward of my charity. If I had given him the seven dollars I spent at Subway he might have been able to go to the corner store where he could have gotten a decent meal for $4 and still had $3 to put toward his next meal. If I wanted more bang for my buck in terms of impact on his empty stomach I should have just given him cash.

This is a problem with our welfare system as well. There are programs to pay for heating, food, medical expenses, etc. but they are all in separate pots and restricted for a limited purpose. Not only does that mean people are forced to go to dozens of different places with different application processes to meet their needs, they are also not able to budget in a way that works for them. This has led to a black market where people sell or trade their food stamps  to pay for rent, shoes, heat, diapers and other necessities. While some people are appalled by the business of buying and selling welfare benefits, the practice allows people to make ends meet.

So why don’t we just give out money? One argument you hear frequently is that by giving a sandwich I at least know my money is spent on food. If I just gave the man $7 he could have used it to fuel the addiction which caused him to be on streets in the first place or for some other nefarious action which would have left him off worse than before and still hungry. The giving of sandwiches is intended to ensure that the money doesn’t go toward actions that would hurt the recipient but it also prevents them from doing anything with the money that might help them, so that, possibly, they would not need me to give them a sandwich. You can’t build financial stability by saving food stamps in a bank account and then using them to pay your heating bill in the winter. In that way it undermines the financial health of the recipient. The system of earmarking donations assumes that the recipient has become poor because they don’t know how to manage their money. So we take control of their financial future.

Malcolm Gladwell points out that any cost that helps a person out of homelessness is far more cost-effective then just meeting their presumed needs in this fascinating piece. He gives the example of a program in Denver that gives chronic homeless people free apartments because the cost of providing an apartment and a case worker is far cheaper than the housing, medical, and other expenses that come as a result of having them out on the streets. Fellow ChangeEngine author Jasmine Arnold offers another example in her blog about asking versus assuming the needs of homeless people. She cites an article from The Economist profiling a charity called Broadway, which moved 84 percent of their clients off the streets simply by asking individuals what they needed to improve their lives. To quote The Economist piece: “The most efficient way to spend money on the homeless might be to give it to them.”

I’d like to challenge the assumption that the way the givers of welfare earmark funds does a better job in lifting people out of poverty than the way the recipients would spend it. As economist  Uwe E. Reinhardt argues, it is in ineffective. If we are looking to maximize the impact on the recipient per dollar we give then we should give money not benefits. Why? We aren’t experts in other people’s needs. What we think people need might be different than their reality but the walls we’ve built around their benefits prevents them from accessing those funds for anything beyond our understanding of what should lift them up from poverty.

Let’s stop defining people’s needs for them. If we’re going to maximize our impact on someone per dollar spent, we’ve got to stop assuming we have the answer and start asking some questions. Let’s stop giving sandwiches and start helping people get the reigns back on their financial futures.

 

IMAGE CREDIT. Courtesy of cobalt