Lynne Pagel, a single mother on public assistance, could use a hand from the state legislature with a boost in her $356 monthly stipend.
But if history is any sign, there’ll be no relief for Pagel this session – the legislature hasn’t raised the stipend for Colorado’s poorest families in 17 years.
“It just goes to the overall welfare policy being flawed,” said John Parvensky, president of Colorado Coalition for the Homeless.
“It doesn’t change here because there’s simply no money,” Parvensky said. “The state’s fiscal policy has trumped it so no one bothers to try.”
As a result, Colorado contributes less than 1 percent of the $167 million in Colorado Works aid given out each year.
The federal government accounts for 85 percent of the dollars, and counties make up most of remainder.
“The goal of welfare reform was to help people become self-sufficient,” said state Sen. Paula Sandoval, a Denver Democrat. “Knowing what things cost, how does a family sustain itself?”
Legislators, using a formula set 40 years ago, gave poor families a raise in 1988, upping the monthly welfare assistance – called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families by the federal government and Colorado Works by the state – to $356 from $339.
Since then it has stayed the same. Adjusted for inflation, the stipend today would have to be $559 just to give the same buying power it had in 1988.
A very poor family also can receive assistance from sources such as food stamps, Medicaid, low-cost housing and child care.
It all adds up to just about $1,000 a month in assistance.
A little more than 38,000Coloradans – 27,635 of them children – received temporary assistance in 2004, the most recent year for which the state Department of Human Services has figures.
Only a third received some form of housing assistance, and 60 percent got food stamps.
In 2004, there were 498,000 Coloradans living at or below poverty level – $16,090 annually, or $1,341 a month, for a family of three – the Census Bureau reports. That is about 11 percent of the state’s population.
“You’re constantly on survival mode and it’s hard to get ahead,” said Pagel, a 44-year-old single mother who cares for two of her children. A third child lives with Pagel’s mother.
Pagel has for years been homeless, unemployed or on public assistance.
“With all the bills, the cost of something like toothpaste can be hard on you,” she said. “Sometimes just having enough toilet paper is a struggle.”
Since 1995, federal figures show 27 other states, like Colorado, have not raised monthly benefits.
Those benefits range from $164 a month in Alabama to $923 in Alaska, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
That so many states haven’t raised the basic level of assistance is a reflection of both fiscal issues and the unpopularity of raising welfare benefits, according to policy experts.
“Fundamentally, it’s dollars and politics,” said Sharon Parrott, director of welfare policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, D.C. “There typically are significant political problems when states try to address it.”
Pagel receives housing assistance, food stamp benefits and Medicaid health care, but she still has trouble making ends meet.
“When the 20th (of the month) rolls around, the money’s usually all gone,” she said.
To make it on her own without public or private assistance – the aim of welfare reform from the 1990s – a single mom like Pagel would need a $19.72- an-hour job, according to the Colorado Fiscal Policy Institute.
That’s $41,000 a year.
“I’d like someone to tell me where I can get that job and I’ll take it,” Pagel said.
Staff writer David Migoya can be reached at 303-820-1506 or dmigoya@denverpost.com.
