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Statistics that Justify the
Anti-Poverty
Human Rights Platform:
Between
4,000-6,167 households will lose their eligibility for cash assistance on
October 1, 2000 with as many as 3,000-4,000 additional by January 2001.
Cuyahoga County can exempt 20% of the total caseload from 1999, which is
around 4,000 families. There is no debate that families in Cuyahoga County will lose
cash benefits and have no income after 10/1/00.
Parenting
is a Full Time Occupation.
According to a 1999 study by the Annie E. Casey Foundation
on the state of children in the United States found Cleveland to be in the
bottom third of every category with regard to the health and welfare of
children. The juvenile justice
system in Cuyahoga County has grown dramatically over the last five years.
In 1994, there were 9,003 official delinquency and unruly cases filed in
Cuyahoga County while in 1998 there were 14,024 cases filed (a 64% increase over
1994 levels).
County-Wide
Family-Friendly Wage.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development released a
study, Out of Reach 1999, the Gap Between
Housing Costs and Income of Poor People, which showed that a family had to
work 78 hours per week at a minimum wage to afford a two bedroom apartment in
Ohio. They found a family needed
$10.10 per hour to afford an apartment up from $9.90 in 1998 and $9.53 in 1997.
The letters given to those families sanctioned from cash benefits still do not indicate that the family remains eligible for Medicaid and Food Stamps. The Center on Urban Poverty and Social Change at Mandel Center at CWRU reported in late 1999 only 48-56% of the families leaving cash assistance continues to receive Food Stamps and Medicaid after leaving cash assistance.
The current case load for Cuyahoga County Human Service
workers is between 80 to 100 clients.
Among families headed by African American women, the
poverty rate declines from 51 percent to 21 percent with at least one year of
post secondary education according to the U.S. Census department.
For white women, the figure drops from 22 percent to 13 percent with one
year of higher education.
Money spent by Cuyahoga County on the Food Stamps program
is down 54.75% from March 1994-September 1999.
A nationwide study by the Institute for Poverty and Children and Houses
for the Homeless found in 1999 that 19% of the children who were homeless
throughout the country were hungry while almost all of those children were
eligible for Food Stamps.
Loss of Assistance should not cause homelessness.
Houses for the Homeless surveyed homeless families in 24 cities and released a report called Homeless in America: A Children’s Story. They found that 20% of the families surveyed reported that the changes in the welfare system caused homelessness between 1997 and 1998.
The number of foster care and adoption cases has grown by 200% in Cuyahoga County in the last four years. According to CEOGC, there were 1,700 cases of children in foster care or the adoption system in 1994 with 5,110 in 1999.
National statistics show that if the parent is not covered by the Medicaid system then it is more likely that the child will not receive health care coverage offered by Medicaid. Again, the Center on Urban Poverty and Social Change found that only 36% of the families who had left welfare in late 1998 or early 1999 had health insurance on the job that they had found.
The Mandel Center on Urban Poverty study reported that after six months of leaving cash assistance 55 percent of the families had incomes below the poverty threshold with 14% of that population living on an income between $0 and $6,567 a year for a family of three. A CEOGC study released in January 2000 found that over two-thirds of Ohio’s poor children on welfare no longer receive any cash assistance. In Cuyahoga County, only 49% of the poor children (age 0-17) receive cash assistance in 1999. According to tax returns, the mean income of taxpayers has decreased in the cities of Cleveland, East Cleveland and Warrensville Hts. between 1990-1997 in the face of overwhelming increases (some substantial) in the rest of the County and throughout the nation.
By all indicators showing the health and welfare of
children, poverty levels, educational levels, contact with the justice system,
and incomes, the poor who live in Cuyahoga County are not receiving the benefits
of the strongest economy in the history of the United States.
For more information call the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless
Or the Empowerment
Center of Greater Cleveland
Dr. Goldie Roberts at
216/432-4770