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INCOME & WORK SUPPORTS UPDATE
MARCH 2022

SNAP “Program Integrity”: How Racialized Fraud Provisions Criminalize Hunger
People seeking help to meet their basic needs is a statement of human dignity and justice. However, coded language, dog-whistling, and racist stereotypes have reinforced the lie that people who receive public benefits are exaggerating their income level and likely committing fraud. This new report and blog explore how the excessive deployment of Intentional Program Violations (IPVs) over-police and criminalize people experiencing poverty, particularly people of color, in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) through the guise of “program integrity”. An accompanying fact sheet provides advice to individuals accused of IPVs.
Read More [[link removed]]

Cities Experiment with Restitutive Housing Programs. Do They Advance Reparations?
For the first time in U.S. history, lawmakers are not mocking grassroots demands for reparations. Instead, local governments are thinking critically about their contribution to racist inequities in homeownership and wealth and experimenting with ways to compensate the descendants of people who were harmed by anti-Black housing and land use policies. But the people who design these programs and the administrators who run them cannot claim to deliver reparations without clear, unwavering affirmation from Black people in the community.
Read More [[link removed]]

Advocacy Steps to Minimize Medicaid Coverage Losses when the Public Health Emergency Ends
Lifting the Public Health Emergency (PHE) will end Medicaid’s continuous coverage provision, meaning people will have to complete the renewal process – something they may not have had to do in two or more years - to keep their health coverage. Advocates have a crucial role to ensure that as many eligible people as possible keep their Medicaid coverage as states “unwind” from the continuous coverage provisions and begin disenrolling people.
Read More [[link removed]]

In the News
February 20, 2022 | Deseret News
Can you get a child tax credit if you’re behind on your student loan? [[link removed]]

February 17, 2022 | NJ Advance Media
The IRS can seize your child tax credit refund for overdue debts. Consumer groups ask for protection. [[link removed]]

February 10 | USA Today
A new USDA commission asks how to end discrimination in farming, but Black farmers are skeptical [[link removed]]

January 31, 2022 | PolitiFact
Fact-checking claim about immigrants, eligibility for assistance programs [[link removed]]

IWS Update
Black History Month is a time to celebrate Black life, learn and educate others about Black history, and honor Black elders and activists by contributing to the fight for racial justice. The IWS team has compiled some of the resources that we sat with this month.
• Structural Racism In Historical And Modern US Health Care Policy [[link removed]] This article examines how policy decisions made between 1875 and 1968 allowed local governments and private employers to provide racially inequitable access to health care and health insurance; the authors then discuss structural racism’s modern-day impact in the areas of health care coverage, finance, and quality.
• Anti-Racism Daily Emails [[link removed]]. These daily emails provide education and actions to dismantle white supremacy. During the month of February, they had a daily “28 Days of Black History” newsletter that focused on individuals and pieces of culture central to Black history and the fight for racial justice.
• Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation’s Capital [[link removed]]. This book provides a comprehensive history of race and democracy in Washington D.C. over multiple centuries, up to the present-day impacts of gentrification in the District.
• Movement for Black Lives’ Reparations Now Toolkit [[link removed]]. In addition to stating a clear vision for reparations and detailing the movement’s history in the U.S. and abroad, this toolkit features engaging activities that we can all use to teach our friends, families, and communities about reparations and Black liberation.

Congratulations to Elizabeth Lower-Basch for her nomination to the United States Agriculture Department’s (USDA) Equity Commission! This 15-member independent commission will evaluate USDA programs and services, as well as identify how the agency can reduce barriers to access for people who have historically been excluded. The USDA will use the Equity Commission’s findings to make needed programmatic and institutional changes that reflect the values of equity and inclusion. The work of the Equity Commission will empower the USDA to objectively confront the hard reality of past discrimination and its lingering harm, advising the agency as it builds back better and hopes to serve its customers more fairly and equitably.

Say hello to Amira Iwuala, the IWS team’s 2022 Bill Emerson National Hunger Fellow! Amira is a native of Roxbury, Massachusetts, where her lived experience shaped her passion for dismantling systems that perpetuate white supremacy and impact economic liberty and justice for communities of color with low incomes. She attended Northeastern University where she received her bachelor’s degree in health sciences with a minor in global health and a master’s degree in public health. Amira will support our team in the Community-Driven Policy and Practice (CDPP) work, where CLASP’s IWS and youth teams are partnering with the Community Partnership Group (CPG) and youth activists to define “economic justice” from the perspective of those with lived experiences of poverty and exploring the policies that must be advanced to achieve it. She will also assist with documenting the process and lessons learned to develop training and technical assistance modules for peer organizations.

Key Blog Posts and Publications
February 28, 2022 | Cameron Johnson
Valuing and Championing African American Workers Is Long Overdue [[link removed]]

February 24, 2022 | Hannah Liu
Lessons from Black Immigrant Women Advancing Community Success [[link removed]]

February 23, 2022 | Olivia Golden
Proposed “Public Charge” Rule Will Bring Relief to Immigrants [[link removed]]

February 22, 2022 | Tiffany Ferrette and Whitney Bunts
Mitigating the Criminalization of Black Children through Federal Relief [[link removed]]

READ MORE [[link removed]]

What We're Reading
National Bureau of Economic Research
Children and the US Social Safety Net: Balancing Disincentives for Adults and Benefits for Children [[link removed]]

The New York Times
This is the Difference Between a Family Surviving and a Family Sinking [[link removed]?]

Urban Institute
An Evaluation of THRIVE East of the River [[link removed]]

Don Moynihan
The matching-to-categories problem [[link removed]]

Neighbors Together
An Illusion of Choice: How Source of Income Discrimination and Voucher Policies Perpetuate Housing Inequality [[link removed]]


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