Cash assistance for poorest Michiganders is harder than ever to get

The number of families receiving cash assistance from the state has dropped tremendously in the past 13 years, from more than 80,000 monthly recipients to fewer than 12,000. That's not because poverty has decreased that much, policy experts say, but rather is the result of restrictive policies that make getting help too hard.

“This year especially, it was noticed in a lot of different states, not just Michigan, that cash assistance really isn't making its way to the people who need it due to state policy choices,” said Anne Kuhnen, the Michigan League for Public Policy’s Kids Count policy director. “I think that you can very clearly see how policy and not poverty reduction is what really drives cash assistance in Michigan.”

The number of recipients has rebounded slightly from a record low in fall 2021, when fewer than 11,000 families in the state were receiving cash through Michigan’s Family Independence Program. The Michigan League for Public Policy says families who do get benefits receive too little.

And while federal and state pandemic-era assistance programs were successful in lifting millions of children out of poverty, those programs have expired and largely have not been reinstated, leaving thousands of Michigan families vulnerable to an economic backslide.

Income eligibility hasn’t changed in 15 years

In Michigan, a family can make only $814 a month to initially qualify for the Family Independence Program, which is funded through the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families block grant. (Income can rise to $1,184 a month, so as not to disincentivize work while receiving assistance.) That income ceiling has remained unchanged since 2008.

“When did we see big declines in cash assistance?” said Kuhnen. “It wasn’t when poverty suddenly fell, it wasn’t when we had a sudden economic boom, it was at times when there were policy decisions that made it harder for families to qualify for things.”

Similarly, the payment standard, which sets the amount of cash a family receives, has only meaningfully increased one time in the last 30 years. Accounting for inflation since 1993, the Michigan League for Public Policy says that represents a 45% drop in purchasing power.

A family of three would need to receive $882 per month to match the level of assistance they’d have gotten when the program launched. Instead, they’re stuck at $492.

To qualify for cash assistance in 1993, a Michigan family had to be making no more than 80% of the federal poverty level, which is $30,000 a year for a family of four. Today, families whose income is above 39% of the federal poverty level won’t qualify, meaning only those living in destitution make the cut.

Michigan’s requirements are stricter than required

The changes enacted under federal welfare reform included adding stricter work requirements and limiting the amount of time an adult can receive cash assistance to 60 months in a lifetime.

“The ultimate goal of welfare reform was to reduce caseload,” said Parker Gilkesson, senior policy analyst with the Center for Law and Social Policy, “but it was not necessarily to reduce poverty.”

While poverty has decreased over time, she says the number of families receiving assistance has dropped disproportionately.

Michigan had been one of just three states to not enforce the 60-month time limit. But in 2011, it reversed course and made the limits tighter than federal guidelines required. The so-called clock-stoppers policy of not counting months when the work requirement was met toward the overall TANF limit ended. Now families may receive TANF-funded cash assistance for a total of only 48 months.

“I think that's a good example of one of the unnecessary barriers that we've created,” Kuhnen said.

Michigan also created stricter work requirements than it was required to, mandating that nearly all families work 40 hours per week in order to receive assistance. If an adult doesn’t meet the work requirements, the sanctions increase in severity and can become permanent.

“They apply to the whole family, not just the one adult who’s not meeting work requirements, which is especially harmful to children who don’t have a lot of say in what the work requirements are or whether their parents are able to find work,” Kuhnen said.

Ineligibility for drug-related felonies works the same way, she said, penalizing children who never offended.

Some TANF money isn’t used for the poorest families

Federal funding for TANF has not kept up with the times. More than a quarter of a century after the federal government set Michigan’s rates for the block grant, the state’s federal allocation hasn’t changed.

But other things have. Federal reforms in 2011 allowed states to use their TANF block grant money for purposes other than direct cash assistance to families.

According to the Michigan League for Public Policy, these purposes were so broadly defined that Michigan was able to reduce cash assistance cases to free up TANF dollars for use in other programs typically sustained by the general fund.

Michigan has since used its TANF dollars on administration and systems, child welfare and work supports, and, according to the public policy league, a category called “services for children and youth” that, for budget year 2023, included $125.2 million spent on college financial aid that included support for primarily middle-class students.

Michigan spends around 13% of its TANF money on basic assistance — 6% if you take out relative care payments and adoption and guardianship subsidies. Administration costs chew up the largest share of the funding.

Kuhnen says that money could be better directed toward families who are living in poverty but don’t currently qualify for FIP.

“It's possible that the money could be there if we weren't spending TANF dollars on other programs that aren't necessarily targeted to the lowest income families,” Kuhnen said. “We would like to see that money being better targeted just to those populations with very low incomes, who are the most economically vulnerable.”

While aid is hard to get, it's much easier to apply for

Getting cash assistance in Michigan has become a lot easier for those who qualify. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, which administers the Family Independence Program, has worked hard to make the program more accessible and easier to apply for.

It stands in contrast to the process just a few years ago, when Gilkesson said eligibility was not the determinant for being able to get benefits — it was whether families had the time, wherewithal and resources to make it through the application and verification process.

Gilkesson says applying for TANF-funded programs has been historically arduous.

“In a lot of our programs, especially cash assistance, some states make it much much much much harder to get benefits and some states make it easier,” said H. Luke Shaefer, director of Poverty Solutions and a professor of social justice and social policy at University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy.

He said Michigan has worked very hard to ensure the process of applying for public assistance is not as laborious as it was. The application, which used to be around 45 pages and took residents 45 minutes to an hour to fill out, is now 18 pages and demands around 20 minutes.

“The application process wasn't helpful for residents to the point that it needed to be,” said Lewis Roubal, chief deputy director for opportunity with MDHHS. “It also wasn't helpful for us administratively. … We were spending a lot more time than we should have been on that. And it really didn't have any sense of dignity for residents when they were completing it.”

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DHHS changed the application, the process and the communications it sent out, including how residents interacted with the MI Bridges website, which Roubal says is the most-visited state government website.

“We're looking outward to make sure that we try to remove as many barriers as we possibly can to really work for that self-sufficiency,” Dwayne Haywood, senior deputy director of MDHHS’s economic stability administration, said in an interview last November. “If we are bogged down or our customers are bogged down in paperwork, that simply defeats the purpose.”

Enrolling in the Family Independence Program also required a 21-day waiting period, during which adults were required to participate in orientation and work activities before their applications would be processed. That meant families were waiting around 45 days to receive the money they needed for rent, diapers or heat.

Shaefer was part of a state effort to get the waiting period down to 10 days. There are also MI Bridges navigators available to help applicants. Still, he says, families end up jumping through quite a few hoops to get cash assistance at a time when they are at their most vulnerable.

Michigan also continues to levy an asset test, and though residents are rarely disqualified from aid for this reason, it creates extra work for DHHS employees.

“The business of figuring out who is above some sort of threshold or below it — I believe that as a nation, we've vastly underestimated how much work that is,” Shaefer said.

Pandemic relief revealed other options

As the COVID-19 pandemic threatened the economic stability of millions of families, the federal and state government came to the rescue. The child tax credit, Dependent Care Tax Credit and other relief programs caused child poverty to drop more in 2021 than in any year preceding it.

The rate of children living in poverty in Michigan has decreased by 15% since 2016, according to Kids Count data.

“In a short amount of time, the federal government was able to get benefits to 60 plus million kids, which is just really remarkable,” Shaefer said. “Every social indicator that we have been able to look at really suggests families and kids were made better off as a result of that. And it wasn't perfect, but it does suggest a different model is possible and it can have significant results.”

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Michigan introduced young child supplements during the pandemic, which allotted a one-time $600 payment to families with little kids that were already receiving TANF money. The 2023-24 budget retained and added to this supplement.

But while 39% of Michigan families struggle to make ends meet and 23% receive food assistance, just 1.1% of Michigan's children are enrolled in the Family Independence Program.

“We did see the positive effects of a lot of these anti-poverty measures on children this year, and we should continue looking for ways and the dependents program is certainly one of them, where we can continue to make big strides in making sure that kids have economic security,” Kuhnen said.

The Michigan League for Public Policy advocates for policy changes that would make FIP accessible to a greater number of families.

Its experts support revising the payment standard so families’ income-based eligibility is pegged to the fluctuating federal poverty guidelines. They also recommend reinstating the time limit clock-stoppers in place before the 2011 reforms, and removing the drug felony ban on receiving cash assistance and the asset test.

Finally, they call for TANF dollars to be spent on directly assisting low-income or economically vulnerable Michiganders.

Jennifer Brookland covers child welfare for the Detroit Free Press in partnership with Report for America. Reach her at jbrookland@freepress.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Poor families in Michigan find it hard to qualify for cash assistance