Thanks to Alex Hummel for this great story on the County-provided safety net.
Here is the whole story (the link is here):
Safety net weakening
Nonprofits are forced to do more
By Alex Hummel of The Northwestern
One of the bitterest ironies for people fighting poverty is at time when services are needed the most, resources to help are stretched the thinnest.
State and federal support for social programs is declining as private groups have struggled to pick up the slack from Madison and Washington and dealt with unparalleled natural disasters.
The "safety net" is strained. Everywhere.
Cash-strapped local governments have scaled back low-income programs as the demand for them rises. And it's raising a serious question: Can nonprofit and faith-based groups pick up the slack if strained tax support for low-income services continues to wane and lower-income client numbers continue to surge?
"I really don't think so," said Oshkosh Area United Way Executive Director Sue Panek, whose agency helps raise money for more than 50 community programs, many of them catering to low-income people. "We have a number of agencies whose budgets are tied to either state or federal county contracts, so if those (tax) dollars get cut, then that's going to reduce their ability to provide the same level of services, not take on more."
During the 1990s, government got largely out of the "welfare" business on the state and federal level. One of the hallmarks of the Bush Administration is for faith-based programs to step in and provide aid instead of government.
That put an enormous strain on local groups when the economy faltered in 2001. Consider the case of the Living Healthy Clinic in Oshkosh.
After 10 years in a basement office at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, a new north-side location at 510 Doctors Court gave the nonprofit clinic more space and visibility and created better access for the folks who needed the care but couldn't afford it.
Nice way to celebrate 10 years of crucial community service.
Then, the doors opened earlier this year. In came an overwhelming flood of new clients.
"I knew our numbers were going to go up, but we had no idea they were going to go up like they did," said Living Healthy Director Leona Whitman. "We were just spinning."
In one year, the number of new patients seeking everything from diabetes medicine to basic check-ups increased 25 percent, Whitman said. The totals look to surpass 600 individuals served in 2005. The clinic's total annual visits this year topped 2004 total in October.
Despite the overwhelming need, it looked for a time as if local government could no longer shoulder its share.
Whitman wound up before the Winnebago County Board of Supervisors on Halloween, lobbying at the start of its 2006 budget deliberations to preserve the $130,000 the county injects into Living Healthy – about one-third of the clinic's total budget.
Cuts were avoided, but the funding is always on shaky ground for the clinic and other services that serve the poor, which are caught in a vice of revenue cuts, spending freezes and program cuts.
In Winnebago County over the last five years, the number of people in poverty has risen from just more than 9,000 in 2000 to more than 11,400 in 2004, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates.
County governments in Wisconsin have felt the squeeze particularly hard since they directly provide the services and feel the friction between declining dollars and increased needs. As part of the new state budget hammered out last summer, Gov. Jim Doyle approved a cap on property tax increases on local governments.
"One of the ironies is, especially when you're taking about economic assistance, the demand for that obviously goes up when the economy is not doing well, which, at the same time, is when government doesn't have the money," said Craig Thompson, legislative director for the Wisconsin Counties Association. "It's a bad correlation."
The WCA is paying close attention to the strain on county human services departments and even led the charge behind a statewide, county-by-county referendum movement last spring. It asked voters whether state revenue sources – not local county property taxes – should reclaim all responsibility for human ser vices funding, including safety net programs.
The response was overwhelming: Voters in 67 of 72 counties, including Winnebago, passed the referendum.
But, even after the property tax freeze, there's been little to no statewide debate on the issue since the vote.
In 2000, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh Professor James Simmons co-wrote a book on poverty called "What Government Can Do: Dealing with Poverty and Inequality."
The book makes the case that government programs combating poverty and inequality are actually often efficient and effective. Yet the prevailing political rhetoric portrayed social programs as bloated and habit forming.
Simmons said one of the problems today is the working poor struggling to make ends meet are also the unheard constituents. Despite their demands for help, the very programs to do the job get targeted.
"It tends to be people who don't participate in the system who are least able to defend themselves," Simmons said. "When times are tough people most affected are going to be hurt the hardest."
"Look at everything that's going up faster than inflation: The cost of health care, higher education," Simmons said. "We're simply pricing people with lower in comes out of the market for a number of things. It is happening in Wisconsin, especially, because we're moving to a post-industrial, post-modern economy with a heavy emphasis on service jobs. Some of the service jobs are highly paid. Many are not."
And many more offer little to no health insurance. Enter Living Healthy, armed with $180,000 a year from the region's three large health care providers, about $50,000 a year in a grant from the Oshkosh Area Community Foundation and $130,000 from Winnebago County.
Whitman said when she joined the program in 2000 as director, 95 to 100 patient visits a month was typical. Now, it's more like 250 to 300 visits a month.
"And the only difference is we have one more RN," she said.
Winnebago County Housing Authority officials froze the federally-funded Section 8 voucher program's waiting list due to lack of cash and higher demand. Section 8 is intended to deliver an emergency infusion of money helping low-in come people pay up to 90 percent of the cost of rent and utilities for temporary housing to help them land on their feet. The waiting list ballooned to about 900 in 2004, prompting the freeze – no new applicants allowed.
"We're going to re-open it, but it's going to be very limited as far as availability," said Winnebago and Oshkosh Housing Authority Director Brad Masterson. "The programs are essentially a couple percentage points from full."
The county's $1.33 million housing program doesn't look to fare much better in 2006.
Masterson said Congress adopted the U.S. House of Representatives version of the new federal housing bill. It bases its Section 8 allocations on a three-month period in 2004 – the period when Winnebago County chose to cut down its waiting list, Masterson said.
The Senate version of the bill would have based the allocation on a full-calendar year.
The House version will cost Winnebago County about $100,000 annually, Masterson said. He doubts whether nonprofit and for-profit housing providers with already-limited options for low-income families will pick up any slack as demand for housing assistance rises.
"Can they provide enough for survival and bare sustenance? Probably," he said. "Can they provide what most people expect for enough comfort to know that people can sleep soundly or comfort at night? I don't know … For families, I would say there isn't a whole lot of other housing. We're the big fish for families."
Brian Jacobson, a community programs coordinator at ADVOCAP Inc., a community action agency serving low-income people, said his organization's housing options are limited. ADVOCAP is one of the supposedly-in dependent peripheral agencies that is, like most in the region, still dependent on a blend of funding, much of it from federal, state and local tax revenue.
"We have more needs than ever, and every day we have less resources to deal with more needs," Jacobson said. "There isn't a day that goes by probably in every nonprofit that a funding source isn't saying, 'Find some body else to cover that.' The problem is every funding sources is saying that, and they are all saying it simultaneously."
The Winnebago County Human Services Department's "Community Options Program" waiting list has, like Section 8, had weathered a freeze. County administrators will be careful how or if they dole out more "COP" money to reduce a current list of roughly 450 people.
The money supports in-home care giving for elderly and disabled residents – cutting costs for unnecessary nursing home stays and curb higher-cost medical care.
COP is just one of Winnebago and other state counties' human services quandaries:
Funding the county gets for "income maintenance," funding for an array of programs from food stamps to Badger Care to funeral and cemetery benefits, has decreased from about $1.14 mil lion in 2002 to little more than $1 million for 2006, a 10.8 percent slide, according to county data.
That has left the cash-strapped, tax-frozen Winnebago County property taxpayer to pick up a greater share of the cost.
Local taxpayers' share, along with federal matching money, has increased from just under $200,000 in 2002 to $513,000 in 2006, a 57.8 percent increase, ac cording to county data.
Reliance on basic programs like food stamps and Medical Assistance continues to surge. More groups have been allowed to access MA benefits in recent years, one explanation for the growing numbers. But the sour economy and higher costs of living are also believed to driven the trend.
In the past five years, Winnebago County's family-related MA recipients have increased from 5,702 in April 2001 to 12,091 in April 2005, a 112 percent explosion. Total recipients grew 93 per cent, from 7,342 in April 2001 to 14,143 in April 2005.
"So many people now are so close to the edge, that when any thing occurs, it can push them over the edge," said Tim Gessler, a Winnebago County human services economic support supervisor.
Alex Hummel: (920) 426-6669 or ahummel@thenorthwestern.com.
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