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MAIN
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A Joint Project of the Maine
Association of Interdependent Neighborhoods |
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Volume 10 No. 1 |
March 2006 |
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MAIN
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A Joint Project of the Maine
Association of Interdependent Neighborhoods |
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Volume 10 No. 1 |
March 2006 |
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Maine’s Alternative Aid Program
Getting behind in the rent, automobile break-downs, and child-care crises are all too familiar problems for low-income working families. But, in Maine there’s help when crises like these threaten a family’s ability to get or keep a job. And it looks like that help will soon improve.
Maine’s Alternative Aid Program gives low-income families with children just over the TANF eligibility limits the short-term help they need to get or keep a job. It helps with things like car repairs, child care, uniforms and even housing-related emergencies.
For example, a family of three with income under 133% of the poverty level ($1,840 a month for this family) may qualify for help to fix the crisis in the form of a voucher equaling up to $1,455.
But, there’s a hitch—right now families can only get this help once in a lifetime. We all know that there’s no such limit on the emergencies that these families face.
For many years MAIN has been advocating to make this program more available to the families who need it. Late last summer representatives of MAIN, the Maine Women’s Lobby and the TANF Advisory Council met with the Commissioner and staff from the Department of Health and Human Services. We argued that the Alternative Aid Program should be available to families at least once a year and the Commissioner agreed.
This January the Department submitted LD 1854, sponsored by Representative David Webster (D. Freeport) and Senator Richard Rosen (R. Hancock). LD 1854 eliminates the lifetime limit on Alternative Aid and replaces it with the more reasonable limit of once every 12 months. After a public hearing with favorable testimony from both advocates and the Department, the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee gave its unanimous support to the bill, making final enactment all but certain.
Shannon’s story helped the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee understand the need to make this change. Shannon works hard and long hours as a waitress. When she had to take two weeks off from her job due to illness, she didn’t get paid. After her sickness, she fell behind in her bills. Soon, her family faced being evicted from their apartment and Shannon feared that the family would end up living in her car. With the help of her family advocate at the Head Start program in Gardiner, Shannon applied for Alternative Aid. She got a $1400 voucher that prevented her family from being evicted and kept her electricity on. The voucher also paid for a couple months of rent, allowing Shannon to get more caught up on all of her bills.
But recently Shannon had to stay home from work again, this time to care for her ill children. At the same time, her car, which she needs to get to her job, broke down and needed $1200 worth of repairs. Once again she has fallen behind and her family faces eviction. But this time, unfortunately, Shannon could not turn to the Alternative Aid Program for help because she had already received her once-in-a-lifetime assistance through the program.
Low-income families, like Shannon’s, making less than 133% of the poverty level are living on the edge, struggling to make ends meet. It is unfair and unrealistic to expect crises to occur only once in their lifetimes. Shannon’s story helped to persuade lawmakers about the need to make this program more responsive to the needs of low-income families—to help them keep their lives more stable, to help them get a job, or prevent them from losing the one they have.
If the full legislature agrees with the Health and Human Services Committee’s favorable report on this bill, this new law will go into effect sometime this summer.
MAIN will keep MAIN Update readers posted on the progress of this important piece of legislation.
