PUBLIC BENEFITS JUSTICE UPDATE
October 2024
[[link removed]]

Featured Publications

What is Meaningful Community Engagement? [link removed]
In 2021, our team began a community engagement effort called Community-Driven Policies and Practices (CDPP). We partnered with community members across the country to facilitate a series of power-building sessions in Baltimore, Las Vegas, and Tribal Nations in the Pacific Northwest. Our goal was to create a safe, inspiring space for people experiencing poverty to dream up policies with the potential to deliver economic justice, and then strategize how to advance them. Using CDPP as a case study, this report explores best practices for engaging people with lived experience of poverty in nonprofit advocacy. Place-based projects led by a national organization can expand the tools available to local groups to make large-scale policy change. The value that national organizations can provide community members, however, can be stunted by long-standing norms within nonprofits and philanthropy. The entire system underpinning nonprofit advocacy needs reform to sustain efforts to create valuable experiences for community members that inspire them to continue fighting for important policy changes.

Hidden Hunger: Food Insecurity and Challenges to Access in the Asian American and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Communities
[link removed]
The Asian American (AA) and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) communities make up the most ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse groups in the United States. As a result, the AA and NHPI populations often face distinctive challenges that require thoughtfully tailored services, such as addressing food insecurity.

Anticipated High Child Poverty Can Be Addressed in Upcoming Tax Package
[link removed]
The United States Census Bureau releases poverty data annually, and in prior years, the child poverty rate declined dramatically due to the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC). In an upcoming tax package, lawmakers can expand the CTC again and make other policy decisions to benefit children and families.

In the News

September 12, 2024| NBC News
Most SNAP ‘skimming’ victims will no longer get stolen benefits back if Congress doesn’t act by Sept. 30
[link removed]

September 10, 2024| Chalkbeat
A bigger child tax credit could help students a lot. Will Harris or Trump make it happen?
[link removed]

September 10, 2024 | Main & Wall, Scripps News
Main & Wall – Child Tax Credit
[link removed]

August 27, 2024 | The Lens
Pencils, Laptops, and Guaranteed Income
[link removed]

August 16, 2024| NPR
What you need to know about the child tax credit as both campaigns embrace it
[link removed]

National, State, and Local Spotlights

Community Partnership Groups Speaks to Administrators Nationwide about Amplifying Voices with Lived Experience
The Community Partnership Group (CPG) recently presented at the 2024 Economic Mobility & Well-Being Conference, an annual conference organized by the American Public Human Services Association for professionals dedicated to enhancing human services programs. During their session, the CPG effectively engaged with federal, state, and local government agencies overseeing the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, highlighting the critical importance of involving individuals with lived experience in policymaking. Their presentation emphasized best practices for co-creating policies, focusing on building authentic relationships, adopting anti-racist approaches, and fostering trust to ensure inclusive and community-driven decision-making.

Federal Court Finds Major Issues with TennCare’s Deloitte-Operated Automated Eligibility System
[link removed]
At the end of August, a federal court handed down a major victory for Medicaid enrollees in Tennessee, including people with disabilities, in the case A.M.C. v. Smith. The detailed decision describes pervasive flaws in Tennessee’s Medicaid program that harm access to health care for state residents with low incomes. These flaws included significant issues with the state’s Deloitte-operated automated eligibility system and the notices it generates, as well as barriers to legally required hearings for people whose coverage was wrongfully terminated. You can read more about one mother’s experience with these issues in this article.

Kalamazoo, MI Launching Prescription Cash Program for Expectant Mothers and Birthing People in 2025
[link removed]
In 2025, Rx Kids, a cash prescription program for expectant mothers and newborns, will expand to Kalamazoo, Michigan. Started in Flint, Michigan in January 2024 and funded with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) state revenue dollars and philanthropic funding, the program provides unconditional cash to help parents with costs during their child’s first year of life.

Key Publications and Blogs

September 24, 2024| Eddie Martin Jr.
Reflections on President Johnson’s War on Poverty in Light of the Recent Census Bureau Report
[link removed]
A major shortcoming of the War on Poverty was its inability to fully address the intersection of racial injustice and economic inequity. Johnson’s Great Society agenda laid the groundwork for progress through landmark legislation like the Civil Rights Acts of 1964, which linked racial justice to economic opportunity. However, the failure to bold solutions such as guaranteed incomes or large-scale systemic reforms in housing, law enforcement, education, and civil rights enforcement has meant that poverty, particularly for communities of color, persists.

August 23, 2024| Jesse Fairbanks
Too Many People Can’t Rent with Housing Choice Vouchers. Will Switching From Vouchers to Cash Help?
[link removed]
The Department of Housing and Urban Development plans to replace vouchers with cash in some places. While this change signals trust in benefit recipients, it won’t right the imbalance of systemic power between landlords and tenants that make housing choice vouchers so unreliable. To be truly transformative, the pilots need to be combined with strengthened protections for tenants nationwide.

August 23, 2024 | Suzanne Wikle
2023 Health Insurance Rates Likely to Fall After Recent Record Highs
[link removed]
This year’s census release of health insurance data was more difficult than usual to predict. Health insurance rates in 2023 held essentially steady, except for children; that population saw an increase in uninsurance. Important policy choices, including enhanced premium tax credits for Marketplace coverage and a continuous open enrollment period for people earning less than 150 percent of the poverty level, made health insurance through the Marketplace more affordable and accessible.

August 22, 2024| Fiona Lu and Ashley Burnside
New TANF Pilot Allows States to Help Families Achieve Their Goals in Place of Outdated Work Measure
[link removed]
The Fiscal Responsibility Act authorized new pilots in the TANF program for up to five states to have their success measured not by the process-focused work participation rate, but by the outcomes tied to earnings and family stability and well-being.

PBJ Update

Isha Weerasinghe, associate director of mental health and well-being, joins the Public Benefits Justice team this month. She’s really looking forward to collaborating more closely with “the incredible, knowledgeable members on the team” (her words, not ours 😉)! Her latest publication, jointly written with Suma Setty, senior policy analyst on the Immigration and Immigrant Families team, is entitled Policy Framework for Immigrant Mental Health. Informed by partners working in immigrant mental health across the country, the framework intends to provide a unifying set of goals across actors and movements to improve immigrant mental health and well-being in the United States. It serves as an advocacy roadmap for immigration and mental health advocates who work at the local, state, and federal levels, as well as direct service organizations interested in pursuing policy advocacy. You can read it here: [link removed].

Rricha deCant, CLASP’s director of legislative affairs, is currently serving as the Interim Director for the Public Benefits Justice team. She will manage the team over the next few months and help strategize on our goals and priorities as we head into 2025. Rricha brings experience from her time on Capitol Hill, where she worked on legislation related to social welfare programs, immigration, and labor policy. Rricha also worked in children’s advocacy at First Focus, where she primarily worked on child welfare and immigration policy. Rricha is originally from California and enjoys baking and crafts when she is not working or chasing after her --2-year-old.

What We’re Reading

CNBC| ‘Starter home’ tax breaks, aid for first-time buyers: What to know about Harris’ affordable housing proposals
[link removed]

National Women’s Law Center | Disabled Women Deserve Equal Pay and More
[link removed]

American Civil Liberties Union | ACLU Applauds Federal Agencies for Enhancing Access to Voter Registration
[link removed]

ProPublica | "I Don’t Want to Die” Needing Mental Health Care, He Got Trapped in His Insurer’s Ghost Network
[link removed]


CLASP.ORG [[link removed]] | MAKE A DONATION [[link removed]] | UNSUBSCRIBE [[link removed]] [link removed] [[link removed]] [link removed] [[link removed]] [link removed] [[link removed]]
CLASP • 1310 L St. NW, Suite 900 • Washington, D.C. xxxxxx • (202) 906-8000ish to no longer receive email from us, please unsubscribe: [link removed] .