4 ms·

I don’t understand how this is possible. We have a lot of programs to help people - food assistance, housing and health care assistance, disability... Are these

I don’t understand how this is possible. We have a lot of programs to help people - food assistance, housing and health care assistance, disability... Are these benefits being counted when we say they live on $4/day?

jschwartzi 9y ago
These benefits are inaccessible without a long trip through some really Byzantine application processes where nobody is actually incentivized to help you. These processes ostensibly exist to block freeloaders but they also serve to prevent the needy from accessing the resource too.
- WalterSear 9y ago
  It also exists to give indolent, illiterate, innumerate people 'do-good' jobs to get entrenched in, and suck up all the resources, with no accountability. It's one of the things that has befallen SF, where an industry funded by the city to the tune of a quarter of a billion dollars a year, fails to keep a few thousand people off the street. http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/06/27/despite-241-million-budget-sf-still-struggles-with-homelessness/ http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/06/27/despite-241-mill... http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/City-audit-finds-poor-accounting-at-SF-nonprofit-12114309.php http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/City-audit-finds-... http://www.sfchronicle.com/aboutsfgate/article/Despite-money-and-work-homelessness-in-SF-as-bad-11242946.php http://www.sfchronicle.com/aboutsfgate/article/Despite-money...
- guihvvv 9y ago
  I readily critize our grotesque engorged bureaucracy, but getting food stamps isn't difficult, as exibited by the 40+ million people who take advantage of them, and by personal anecdotal evidence.
  - dbingham 9y ago
    I think it depends on where you are and how used to using bureaucracy you are. I know people who really struggled to wend their way through the bureaucracy that protects food stamps in order to get them.
    - dictum 9y ago
      It's also self-selecting: if you're good at navigating bureaucracy, you most likely won't be homeless.
e40 9y ago
I'm in the East Bay (near SF). I befriended a guy living on the street more than a year ago. He was a machinist in the midwest and was laid off. Because the winters are too brutal there, he came to CA. He didn't have valid ID and without an address it was difficult for him to get ID, without which the places he could possibly live were inaccessible. Last fall he finally found a group home, but it was temporary, and he's back on the street again. The system, as it's designed, is complex and requires mental resources that people living on the street just don't have.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  Couldn't you give him an address by allowing him to register at yours to obtain the ID?
  - e40 9y ago
    Turns out, I did some research and found he could use the local Post Office as his mailing address for the ID. He went into the PO and the people there didn't want to deal with him. The basically threw him out (this PO has a guard, which is a little odd to me). I offered to go with him to the PO and sort it out, but he was unwilling, even after I made the offer multiple times. But, the good news is that he ended up walking to the DMV (3+ miles from where I would see him) and he did get his ID. That's why he was able to get into that temporary home last year. It was a huge hurdle for him to get that ID. I can only imagine that anything that requires a lot more effort than that would be beyond his abilities. I will say, too, that what drew me to him was that he seemed to never ask for money from anyone, but he was often present on the same block when I would walk to/from work. I started up a conversation with him and over time we became friendly, and I would buy him food when he said he needed it. It was clear there were other people helping him (much more than I was), so he often didn't have immediate needs for food. Shelter, though, that's the big issue and when I did Google searches for local shelters it was really hard to find anything I could take to him.
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      Cool, thank you for looking out for others.
dbingham 9y ago
Those benefits are all pretty severely restricted. They are difficult to apply for (it takes knowledge, time, and work), often they are time limited, or require some sort of proof of your situation that would be difficult to produce. In many states they are now making it so that you have to prove you either have or are actively seeking work of some kind. Work is difficult to find or even to seek if you're homeless. It's a bit of a catch-22.
lambda 9y ago
Most of these programs require you to be able to clear the bureaucratic hurdles to be eligible for them; welfare reform in the '90s made many welfare programs temporary or added work requirements to them (like TANF, which is "temporary assistance for needy families). This continues today, with the Trump administration allowing states to add a work requirement for Medicaid, which in many cases would then make people ineligible for Medicaid as they would earn too much to qualify, but too little to get Obamacare subsidies for private insurance. If you don't have a permanent address, up to date ID, and a bank account, and a job, many of these programs may not be available to you. But I believe these counts do not include welfare programs other than those that give you cash (like Social Security benefits including disability). Other programs offer services or restricted forms of payment, which cannot be used for saving, for purchasing other things you might need like gas or transportation, and so on.
- DrScump 9y ago
  but too little to get Obamacare subsidies That makes no sense; you can't make "too little" to be subsidized. People making just over the MediCal threshold pay as little as $5/mo in CA, with the other $350-580 being subsidized (they aren't even limited to Bronze policies!).
  - lambda 9y ago
    That's in CA, which has expanded Medicaid to cover the gap. In states which haven't, you can make too much to qualify for Medicaid, but too little to qualify for Obamacare subsidies: http://money.cnn.com/2014/04/21/news/economy/obamacare-medicaid-coverage-gap-texas/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2014/04/21/news/economy/obamacare-medic... This happened because the Supreme Court ruled that states couldn't be compelled to expand Medicaid to cover the gap, which the original legislation had depended on to make the plan work. So states which did not expand Medicaid have an income range in which you can't get Medicaid or Obamacare subsidies.
natoliniak 9y ago
There are time limits on how long certain benefits can be taken advantage of (and work requirements in certain cases). Housing assistance has long wait lists and federal health care assistance (medicaid/medicare) has a ton of age/health restrictions.
somecontext 9y ago
The short answer is probably "no". Another comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16231191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16231191 tried to even find the source of the number, more or less unsuccessfully. The purported origin of the statistic is the Current Population Survey, which has the following comments on "Income": "Data on consumer income collected in the CPS by the Census Bureau cover money income received (exclusive of certain money receipts such as capital gains) before payments for personal income taxes, Social Security, union dues, Medicare deductions, etc. Also, money income does not reflect the fact that some households receive part of their income in the form of non-money transfers such as food stamps, health benefits, subsidized housing, and energy assistance; that many farm households receive non-money income in the form of rent free housing and goods produced and consumed on the farm; or that non-money income is received by some nonfarm residents that often takes the form of the use of business transportation and facilities, or full or partial contributions for retirement programs, medical and educational expenses, etc. These elements should be considered when com-paring income levels. Moreover, readers should be aware that for many different reasons there is a tendency in household surveys for respondents to under report their income. From an analysis of independently derived income estimates, it has been determined that wages and salaries tend to be much better reported than such income types as public assistance, Social Security, and net income from interest, dividends, rents, etc." The Census Bureau excludes capital gains/losses, noncash benefits, and tax credits in its usual measures of poverty: https://www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/poverty/guidance/poverty-measures.html https://www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/poverty/guidanc... If we had a Universal Basic Income in the United States delivered through the IRS, the Census Bureau and its poverty rate might not notice.

jschwartzi 9y ago

These benefits are inaccessible without a long trip through some really Byzantine application processes where nobody is actually incentivized to help you. These processes ostensibly exist to block freeloaders but they also serve to prevent the needy from accessing the resource too.

WalterSear 9y ago
It also exists to give indolent, illiterate, innumerate people 'do-good' jobs to get entrenched in, and suck up all the resources, with no accountability. It's one of the things that has befallen SF, where an industry funded by the city to the tune of a quarter of a billion dollars a year, fails to keep a few thousand people off the street. http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/06/27/despite-241-million-budget-sf-still-struggles-with-homelessness/ http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/06/27/despite-241-mill... http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/City-audit-finds-poor-accounting-at-SF-nonprofit-12114309.php http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/City-audit-finds-... http://www.sfchronicle.com/aboutsfgate/article/Despite-money-and-work-homelessness-in-SF-as-bad-11242946.php http://www.sfchronicle.com/aboutsfgate/article/Despite-money...
guihvvv 9y ago
I readily critize our grotesque engorged bureaucracy, but getting food stamps isn't difficult, as exibited by the 40+ million people who take advantage of them, and by personal anecdotal evidence.
- dbingham 9y ago
  I think it depends on where you are and how used to using bureaucracy you are. I know people who really struggled to wend their way through the bureaucracy that protects food stamps in order to get them.
  - dictum 9y ago
    It's also self-selecting: if you're good at navigating bureaucracy, you most likely won't be homeless.

e40 9y ago

I'm in the East Bay (near SF). I befriended a guy living on the street more than a year ago. He was a machinist in the midwest and was laid off. Because the winters are too brutal there, he came to CA. He didn't have valid ID and without an address it was difficult for him to get ID, without which the places he could possibly live were inaccessible. Last fall he finally found a group home, but it was temporary, and he's back on the street again. The system, as it's designed, is complex and requires mental resources that people living on the street just don't have.

jacquesm 9y ago
Couldn't you give him an address by allowing him to register at yours to obtain the ID?
- e40 9y ago
  Turns out, I did some research and found he could use the local Post Office as his mailing address for the ID. He went into the PO and the people there didn't want to deal with him. The basically threw him out (this PO has a guard, which is a little odd to me). I offered to go with him to the PO and sort it out, but he was unwilling, even after I made the offer multiple times. But, the good news is that he ended up walking to the DMV (3+ miles from where I would see him) and he did get his ID. That's why he was able to get into that temporary home last year. It was a huge hurdle for him to get that ID. I can only imagine that anything that requires a lot more effort than that would be beyond his abilities. I will say, too, that what drew me to him was that he seemed to never ask for money from anyone, but he was often present on the same block when I would walk to/from work. I started up a conversation with him and over time we became friendly, and I would buy him food when he said he needed it. It was clear there were other people helping him (much more than I was), so he often didn't have immediate needs for food. Shelter, though, that's the big issue and when I did Google searches for local shelters it was really hard to find anything I could take to him.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    Cool, thank you for looking out for others.

dbingham 9y ago

Those benefits are all pretty severely restricted. They are difficult to apply for (it takes knowledge, time, and work), often they are time limited, or require some sort of proof of your situation that would be difficult to produce. In many states they are now making it so that you have to prove you either have or are actively seeking work of some kind. Work is difficult to find or even to seek if you're homeless. It's a bit of a catch-22.

lambda 9y ago

Most of these programs require you to be able to clear the bureaucratic hurdles to be eligible for them; welfare reform in the '90s made many welfare programs temporary or added work requirements to them (like TANF, which is "temporary assistance for needy families). This continues today, with the Trump administration allowing states to add a work requirement for Medicaid, which in many cases would then make people ineligible for Medicaid as they would earn too much to qualify, but too little to get Obamacare subsidies for private insurance. If you don't have a permanent address, up to date ID, and a bank account, and a job, many of these programs may not be available to you. But I believe these counts do not include welfare programs other than those that give you cash (like Social Security benefits including disability). Other programs offer services or restricted forms of payment, which cannot be used for saving, for purchasing other things you might need like gas or transportation, and so on.

DrScump 9y ago
but too little to get Obamacare subsidies That makes no sense; you can't make "too little" to be subsidized. People making just over the MediCal threshold pay as little as $5/mo in CA, with the other $350-580 being subsidized (they aren't even limited to Bronze policies!).
- lambda 9y ago
  That's in CA, which has expanded Medicaid to cover the gap. In states which haven't, you can make too much to qualify for Medicaid, but too little to qualify for Obamacare subsidies: http://money.cnn.com/2014/04/21/news/economy/obamacare-medicaid-coverage-gap-texas/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2014/04/21/news/economy/obamacare-medic... This happened because the Supreme Court ruled that states couldn't be compelled to expand Medicaid to cover the gap, which the original legislation had depended on to make the plan work. So states which did not expand Medicaid have an income range in which you can't get Medicaid or Obamacare subsidies.

natoliniak 9y ago

There are time limits on how long certain benefits can be taken advantage of (and work requirements in certain cases). Housing assistance has long wait lists and federal health care assistance (medicaid/medicare) has a ton of age/health restrictions.

somecontext 9y ago

The short answer is probably "no". Another comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16231191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16231191 tried to even find the source of the number, more or less unsuccessfully. The purported origin of the statistic is the Current Population Survey, which has the following comments on "Income": "Data on consumer income collected in the CPS by the Census Bureau cover money income received (exclusive of certain money receipts such as capital gains) before payments for personal income taxes, Social Security, union dues, Medicare deductions, etc. Also, money income does not reflect the fact that some households receive part of their income in the form of non-money transfers such as food stamps, health benefits, subsidized housing, and energy assistance; that many farm households receive non-money income in the form of rent free housing and goods produced and consumed on the farm; or that non-money income is received by some nonfarm residents that often takes the form of the use of business transportation and facilities, or full or partial contributions for retirement programs, medical and educational expenses, etc. These elements should be considered when com-paring income levels. Moreover, readers should be aware that for many different reasons there is a tendency in household surveys for respondents to under report their income. From an analysis of independently derived income estimates, it has been determined that wages and salaries tend to be much better reported than such income types as public assistance, Social Security, and net income from interest, dividends, rents, etc." The Census Bureau excludes capital gains/losses, noncash benefits, and tax credits in its usual measures of poverty: https://www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/poverty/guidance/poverty-measures.html https://www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/poverty/guidanc... If we had a Universal Basic Income in the United States delivered through the IRS, the Census Bureau and its poverty rate might not notice.