To protect those who are poor and vulnerable from atrocious budget cuts contained in H.R 1, which passed in the House on February 19, we must be aware of how these cuts translate into a loss of safety net programs and services.  These proposed cuts undermine individuals’ very safety and security, and we must let Congress know that draconian cuts to vital social service programs will not be tolerated. See the information below, made available by the Coalition on Human Needs, and contact your senators today!

• 218,000 young children will not be able to receive Head Start services.
• 11 million patients will lose healthcare they would have received at Community Health Centers over the next year. Almost immediately 127 health center sites would have to close and 7,434 jobs would be lost.
• 20 million low‐income people, including 5 million children, 2.3 million seniors, and 1.7 million people with disabilities, will have access to anti‐poverty services disrupted because federal funding for community action agencies will be virtually halted in the last seven months of the year.
• 9.4 million low‐income college students who receive Pell Grants will lose some or all of this college aid as a result of the House reduction in the maximum Pell Grant amount from $5,550 to $4,705 per year.
• More than 8 million adults and youth would lose access to job training and other employment services. Job training under the Workforce Investment Act would essentially be shut down until July 2012.
• Cuts in the Commodity Supplemental Food Program will mean 81,000 people, mostly low‐income elders, will no longer receive the food baskets. The program now serves 467,000 low‐income people in 32 states, the District of Columbia, and two Native American reservations. Elderly poor in Connecticut, Hawaii, Idaho, Maryland, Massachusetts and Rhode Island will not get the food packages because there will be no funding to expand the Commodity Supplemental Food Program in their states.
• 1.2 million poor households in public housing (two‐thirds of whom are elderly or have a disability) will see maintenance and repairs on their apartments deteriorate because the Public Housing Capital Fund is cut by more than $1 billion (over 40 percent).
• Fewer low‐income households needing help to pay for heat during this harsh winter will get assistance because the House slashed nearly $400 million out of a $590 million fund allowing for more aid to be released to states. $125 million from this fund has already been spent, leaving only $65 million for the rest of the year. 8.3 million households received an average of $456 in heating or cooling assistance last year; only about one in four of eligible households were able to get help.
• 10,000 low‐income veterans will not receive housing vouchers to prevent homelessness. This would cut in half the number of veterans who would have received such housing assistance this year, despite HUD estimates that 135,000 veterans are homeless.
• 10,000 people with significant long‐term disabilities would lose the rental assistance they now receive through the Section 811 voucher program (now, 14,000 people with disabilities receive vouchers); most of these would lose their homes.

Source: Coalition on Human Needs

Today, the United States Census Bureau announced the poverty statistics for 2009. The numbers are pretty shocking for me: 43.56 million people were living in poverty in 2009. It’s the largest number that they’ve measured since this data has been collected (they started measuring this in 1959), and it’s a 1.1% increase over 2008’s numbers. Living in poverty is defined as a family of four who makes less than $21,729 a year.  At NETWORK, we knew this bad news was coming. For a couple of weeks now, we’ve been bracing ourselves for the worst. But it’s important to remember that these numbers are telling us about history. There are thousands of non-profits out there that have been witnessing the personal tragedies of these numbers every day since the start of this recession.

The recession hit these programs with a double whammy: dried up funding (from governments and private donors) and increased need. I witnessed this personally at the end of 2009 and most of 2010. I was working for a gang intervention program in Los Angeles called Homeboy Industries. It’s an amazing organization, run by Greg Boyle, S.J., that offers many services completely free of charge including tattoo removal (the most popular service), counseling, twelve step meetings and even a charter high school. And most importantly – especially during this recession – they employ hundreds of men and women with barriers to employment and help train them to do various types of jobs. This is an especially important part of Homeboy’s service because not only does it offer a sense of purpose to many people looking for a reason to hope, but it is a place to go every day, a shelter from the streets. Like their t-shirts say, “Nothing stops a bullet like a job.”

Well, during this recession, gang members are a group of people that have been disproportionally affected by the unemployment rates. Whereas University of California graduates are underemployed, California Department of Corrections graduates tend to be unemployed. This year, Homeboy Industries found itself drowning in the demand for employment. Funding just couldn’t keep up with the need, and as a result, Homeboy laid off most of its employees in May (about 300 people, including Fr. Greg). They raised some money right away and hired back about 100 employees, but the program is operating as a shadow of its former self. And that is a tragedy for the city of Los Angeles.

This is why the social safety net is so needed right now. Homeboy Industries keeps people out of jail. It is a community, a source of hope for thousands of people in Los Angeles. While programs like Food Stamps, the TANF emergency fund and Section 8 housing (to name a few) don’t solve the problem, they can provide support for programs like Homeboy which are on the front lines battling against the disillusionment that accompanies poverty and marginalization.

When I hear that 29.9% of single mothers are living in poverty, I picture the line cook in the Homegirl Café who won’t be able to move her daughter out of an unhealthy home environment until Los Angeles is able to work through their Section 8 waiting list and start accepting new applications again. And when I see that there were 1.4 million more children living in poverty in 2009, I think of the teenager who was working his way out of the cycle of poverty when he was shot and killed Thursday morning. I think that’s important-that when we look at these numbers and we read the news reports detailing how bad this makes the Democrats or Republicans look, we try to remember who these numbers are actually affecting.