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A Joint Project of the Maine
Association of Interdependent Neighborhoods |
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Volume 9 No. 1 |
February 2005 |
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MAIN
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A Joint Project of the Maine
Association of Interdependent Neighborhoods |
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Volume 9 No. 1 |
February 2005 |
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General Assistance Legislation: LD 367
Proposes New Method to Decide EligibilityMAIN thanks Senator Michael Brennan from Portland for introducing legislation, LD 1952, to ensure that benefits will not be reduced in the General Assistance (GA) program. General Assistance is Maine's most basic safety net program that prevents very low income people from becoming homeless or going without heat or food.
Since 1992, eligibility and the maximum benefit levels for General Assistance have been set at 110% of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Fair Market Rent for a given county or region. In 2004, the HUD Fair Market Rents actually went down in a number of regions in Maine even though rents throughout the state continued to rise. This would mean that GA benefits would also be reduced.
Fortunately, the state Department of Health and Human Services agreed to maintain eligibility limits at the current levels and not to reduce them in those regions where the HUD Fair Market Rent had declined. We were pleased that the Department was willing to take this step as a temporary measure, but we need a permanent solution to this problem. It is expected that there will continue to be on-going fluctuations in the HUD Fair Market Rent causing future problems for GA as well.LD 367 would set a new method
for determining eligibility in the GA programUnder LD 367, GA eligibility limits will increase along with the federal poverty levels (FPL), which increase each year. In recent years, the annual increase has been about 2%. The FPL is based on the consumer price index. The FPL is a fairly good method of showing the increases in the cost of living over time.
However, eligibility would be based on the percentage increase in the HUD Fair Market Rent in those municipalities where the percentage change in the HUD Fair Market Rent is greater than the change in the Federal Poverty Level. This will protect people who live in areas of the state that experience a significant increase in rental costs that is only captured in the HUD Fair Market Rent calculations.
While this legislation does not address the much larger problem--the need to increase the General Assistance eligibility limits to better reflect the real needs of low-income people--it does allow the GA maximums to increase at a rate that at least reflects changes in the cost of living. This is an important first step!
