City officials and advocates for the poor have spent recent days mulling Mayor Vincent Gray’s proposed $384 million human services budget for the coming fiscal year.
The spending plan includes $107.9 million for homeless services, an increase of $6.3 million over the approved budget for the current year. The additional funding would restore lost federal dollars as well as bolster homelessness prevention and support programs such as emergency rental assistance, rapid re-housing for homeless families and care for homeless and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer youth.
The mayor also proposes $180.9 million in spending for the city’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, up roughly $20 million from the current year. Roughly 17,600 city families receive benefits from the program, which has undergone a recent redesign that emphasizes case management geared toward helping to move parents from welfare to work. The additional funding is intended to help pay for costs associated with the expanded services and would delay a scheduled benefit reduction, giving long-term beneficiaries more time to get assessed and receive assistance with moving off welfare. In 2011, the District of Columbia placed a 60-month lifetime limit on welfare benefits and that year, more than 6,000 families on the rolls for more than five years saw their monthly stipends cut by 20 percent. For effected households, the average monthly payment for a family of four went from $523 to $418.
Since then, the council has voted twice to forestall further benefit reductions while clients are assessed for job skills and goals as well as disabilities and other barriers to work. Deborah Carroll of the city Department of Human Services said that 9,200 beneficiaries have been assessed so far and that about 1,400 are working part time.
“These families need help getting off TANF,” said Carroll. “They have an upward battle. Our job is to help them.”
The mayor has also proposed spending $100 million on affordable housing programs, with the bulk of the money going to the city’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund.
Individual city council committees are now holding hearings to consider the entire $12.1 billion city spending plan. At one recent hearings, Councilmember Jim Graham, who chairs the council’s human services committee, offered guarded praise for the proposed human services budget but said he continued to worry about unmet needs among homeless and poor families, as well as the shortage of beds and services for homeless and runaway youth. “We failed to serve these young people,” Graham said.
The first of two council votes on the mayor’s budget are scheduled for May 22.
