We need to ensure that struggling individuals have access to those kinds of high-quality opportunities. The welfare law contained a number of incentives for states not to serve families who need cash assistance—and states have responded by serving fewer and fewer. In , for every families with children living in poverty, 68 received cash assistance. By , TANF reached just 23 of poor families. Texas is one of a dozen states that provide income assistance to less than one in ten poor families with children.
Moreover, the value of TANF funding has fallen by more than one-third since because it was never adjusted for inflation. We must therefore provide more, and change the incentives so that states are encouraged to assist more families—those who are able to transition to work, and those who need assistance because they are unable to work. TANF was enacted 20 years ago on a bipartisan basis. Unfortunately, congressional Republicans continue to reject any genuine change, content to talk about reform but offering only kinder talk with less help.
Indeed, Speaker Ryan would double-down on this broken system to make other types of assistance—such as housing and nutrition—even harder for struggling families to obtain. We need to heed the lessons of the past two decades and create a new approach—one that will truly put good jobs within reach, while strengthening the safety net to keep families from falling into poverty when they are experiencing hard times. For the past 50 years the question of how to regulate coal ash, a byproduct of coal-fired power plants, has been left to the states.
In North Carolina, that meant utility companies were allowed to store hundreds of millions of tons of ash full of toxic metals in unlined pits, without any barriers to prevent them from leaking into the groundwater that feeds nearby rivers and wells.
For two generations, our state governments have allowed ash to be warehoused in communities with little political influence—that is, low-income communities and communities of color. These community members do not have the resources to get a meeting with their governor. On June 1, the governor and his staff, including his top environmental official, met privately with Duke Energy leadership—despite the fact that the state is in litigation with the company over coal ash contamination.
In mid-June, the North Carolina state legislature passed a bill requiring coal ash sites to be excavated, and safe water be permanently provided to residents. Governor Pat McCrory vetoed it. The new legislation was met with objections from neighbors around coal ash pits. The disparate impact on minority and low-income communities has caught the attention of the U. Commission on Civil Rights, which has been holding hearings in North Carolina and across the country to examine the impact of coal ash.
Eventually, this effort could lead to recommendations to the EPA that would protect coal ash neighbors from lax state enforcement against powerful utilities. But in the meantime, residents have few options. Compared to Duke Energy, we are all poor. Its territory stretches from Florida to Ohio, and regulators in many of these states are currently deciding how to handle coal ash. The house next door to mine had just gone up for sale.
I had played with the children who lived next door for years, so my father asked me what the inside of the house was like. He was confused—the house was in perfect condition on the outside, a cute little colonial-style two-story. Yes, it was built in , but it had an immaculately kept lawn and a big tree with a swing in the backyard.
But the inside of the house looked nothing like the outside. The owners had started renovating the house years before, but stopped midway through when money got tight. There were no walls in the kitchen and dining room, and no flooring. Old nob-and-tube wiring hung, exposed, from the studs. One planned bathroom had barely been started, it was just exposed pipes in the wall.
The basement had a dirt floor that got muddy when it rained, and the washing machine was propped on plywood in the corner. An exposed stud in the kitchen was a sad testimony to the history of the house. By the time the family moved, they were in their twenties—proof that the house had been unfinished for decades. My family thought I was lying until they saw for themselves. The house next door is a symptom of and a metaphor for the larger phenomenon of suburban poverty. Americans have ready-made stereotypes for poverty in urban and rural areas, of crime-filled streets and crumbling housing projects or broken-down farmhouses and beat-up pick-up trucks.
But suburban poverty, thanks to its stereotype-defying nature, is often more difficult to understand. The sale notice in the local paper caused a scandal in my suburban community—housing prices in the region are low, but not that low. As my family worked to renovate the house, we realized that we had much more in common with the family next door than we thought. My father, a cabinet maker, had always gotten along well with the machinist patriarch of the house next door. States were entitled to unlimited federal funds for reimbursement of benefit payments, at "matching" rates that were inversely related to state per capita income.
States were required to provide aid to all persons who were in classes eligible under federal law and whose income and resources were within state-set limits.
During the s, the federal government increasingly used its authority under section of the Social Security Act to waive portions of the federal requirements under AFDC. This allowed states to test such changes as expanded earned income disregards, increased work requirements and stronger sanctions for failure to comply with them, time limits on benefits, and expanded access to transitional benefits such as child care and medical assistance.
If a family member works and pays for child care, the actual verified cost of child care can be deducted. Use the table below to find the maximum monthly gross income allowed for your household size. This income limit includes requirements for food, clothing, personal incidentals, electricity, water, household supplies, fuel, and shelter.
Card holders can use the debit card at merchant and bank locations worldwide. Benefits used or misused by a Protective Payee will not be replaced. Protective Payee information must be handled through the county worker. Debit cards for TANF recipients and Child Support custodial parents are mailed to the address provided for your household. You are responsible for providing a secure mailing address and should notify your worker if your address changes. TANF benefits or child support payments used from the debit card sent to the address you provide will not be replaced.
The PIN is very important and should be memorized or kept in a safe place. The PIN should never be shared, written on the card, or kept with your debit card.
The debit card has a 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, toll-free Customer Service. The number is You can call the automated response unit ARU to find out how many benefits are left in your account or to inquire about child support payments. You can also report lost, stolen or damaged cards, get your transaction history, pin or re-pin your card or discuss any problems you are having with your debit card.
You are allowed five 5 free calls to Customer Service each month to ask about your balance or to hear your transaction history. Do not call this number to discuss your TANF eligibility or child support case.
Call your worker at the county office to discuss questions about your case. You should always know your PIN before you go to the store. If your debit card is lost, stolen or damaged, call Customer Service to report it. It will be deactivated and a new card requested. No one will be able to use your card once you report it is missing. A new card will be mailed to you and should arrive in days. It is necessary to select a new PIN for your replacement card.
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