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By Ashley Burnside

This statement is submitted by staff from the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP). CLASP staff are experts on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) policy and are committed to targeting TANF funds toward cash assistance for families with very low incomes. As summarized below, there is strong and growing evidence that monthly cash assistance improves children’s health and educational outcomes. While Mississippi’s abuse of TANF funds to provide favors to politically connected individuals is the most dramatic and egregious example of how states have used TANF funds for other purposes, it is unfortunately far from the only example of states allocating TANF dollars towards areas that are not aligned with the program goals or toward improving child outcomes. Congress should support policies to target TANF spending toward monthly cash assistance for families with very low incomes, and toward work supports and services that best meet the needs of parents facing financial emergencies, both by supporting the administrative actions taken by the Administration for Children and Families and by passing additional legislative guardrails.

CLASP is a national, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization whose mission is advocating for policies that advance economic and racial justice. Founded more than fifty years ago, CLASP works to develop and implement federal, state, and local policies that reduce poverty, improve the lives of people with low incomes, tear down barriers arising from systemic racism, and create pathways to economic security.

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By Eddie Martin, Jr.

This is the fifth in a series of commentaries from CLASP experts that explore dimensions of poverty as part of the U.S. Census Bureau’s annual release of poverty, income, and health insurance coverage statistics from the previous year. On September 10, we provided a snapshot of the economic hardship that children, youth and young adults, and families experienced in 2023. Ahead of the release, CLASP experts offered key insights on the impending 2025 tax debate, the child care crisis, Medicaid unwinding, and raising labor standards and enacting new regulations to protect workers. The complete series is available here. 

As we reflect on the U.S. Census Bureau’s recent poverty and income report—showing that more than 1 in 10 people in America live in poverty and documenting stubbornly higher poverty rates for Black, Hispanic and Native American people—it is crucial to revisit President Lyndon B. Johnson’s declaration 60 years ago of an “unconditional” War on Poverty. Johnson sought not only to address the symptoms of poverty but to “cure it and, above all, to prevent it.” He poignantly remarked that “many Americans live on the outskirts of hope—some because of their poverty, some because of their color, and all too many because of both.” Johnson understood that these issues were not the result of individual failures but were rooted in systemic inequities like limited access to education, health care, housing, and opportunities for upward mobility. He recognized poverty as a moral and societal challenge tied to short-sighted public policies that left too many Americans behind.

The War on Poverty led to significant programs like Head Start, Medicaid, and Medicare. At the time, the national poverty rate stood at 19 percent and was nearly double that for Black Americans. These programs reduced poverty and provided a safety net for millions. But the latest Census report shows that the 2023 poverty rate was 11.1 percent, revealing only marginal progress after six decades. Johnson’s vision has been hindered by political compromises and reforms that failed to tackle economic inequality and racial disparities.

A major shortcoming of the War on Poverty was its inability to fully address the intersection of racial injustice and economic inequity. Johnson’s Great Society agenda laid the groundwork for progress through landmark legislation like the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which linked racial justice to economic opportunity. However, the failure to implement more “radical” solutions—such as guaranteed incomes or large-scale systemic reforms in housing, law enforcement, education, and civil rights enforcement—has meant that poverty, particularly for communities of color, persists.

Today, these shortcomings are glaringly apparent. The lack of affordable child care and early education continues to create economic instability for families. Black and Hispanic workers remain overrepresented in jobs without adequate benefits or wages, perpetuating the cycle of the “working poor.” The housing crisis, driven by rising costs and stagnant wages, has pushed many who were once part of the middle class to the brink of homelessness. Elected officials have failed to prioritize justice, and equity and progress has been painfully incremental, leaving children and families across the U.S. to suffer.

These interconnected challenges create a vicious cycle that deepens inequality and undermines democracy. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. emphasized, “the evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism are all tied together.” Poverty erodes both economic participation and political engagement. When individuals and communities are trapped in poverty, they are less able to participate in the democratic process, less likely to trust public institutions, and often deprived of basic human rights. Both Johnson and King understood that poverty is not just an economic issue—it is a fundamental threat to democracy itself.

To truly revive the War on Poverty and achieve Johnson’s vision, we must enact bold policies that create a strong safety net for workers and families. These measures should go beyond merely lifting people above the poverty line. Rather, we must ensure that economic progress is met with sustained access to benefits and opportunities. This means investing in an equitable, high-quality child care and early education system; enacting comprehensive minimum wage reform; strengthening labor laws; permanently expanding the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit; and ensuring universal health coverage that includes publicly funded care for immigrant populations, including the undocumented. As Olivia Golden, CLASP’s interim executive director, has stated, such bold approaches, grounded in both an economic strategy and the necessary investments in core programs, are vital to eliminating poverty. Without comprehensive support, poverty will remain episodic, trapping families in cycles of hardship across generations.

In 1967, King called for a “radical revolution of values,” urging society to shift from a “thing-oriented” to a “person-oriented” approach. He argued that poverty demands not just charity, but systemic change, stating “true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It is seeing that an edifice that produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.” King’s message remains as relevant today as it was in the 1960s. He recognized that to achieve true democracy, our country needed a complete reimagining of our economic and political systems rooted in a redistribution of power and wealth.

If we are ever to truly defeat systemic poverty, we must have a national awakening—a profound shift in values, driven by moral and political courage. We must ensure that all people, not just the fortunate few, have access to the resources and opportunities they need not only to survive but to thrive. This means dismantling the structural inequities that perpetuate racial and economic disparities while building a more just, compassionate, and equitable society for all. Only then can we realize the vision Johnson and King had of an America free from poverty, where opportunity and democracy are truly accessible to everyone.

Washington, D.C. September 10, 2024 – Today’s release of the U.S. Census Bureau’s report on poverty and income shows that a strong economy matters for workers and families – yet far more is needed to reduce poverty. Income rose at all levels, including for the lowest-paid workers, and median household incomes increased 4 percent from 2022, the most significant increase in household income since 2019. These improvements contributed to a small decrease in the official poverty rate from 11.5 percent in 2022 to 11.1 percent in 2023.

Yet poverty overall, and particularly for children, continues to be stuck at far too high a level. According to the 2023 Supplemental Poverty Measure, many U.S. children continue to live in poverty: the rate climbed slightly from 2022 to a level of 13.7 percent, twice as high as in 2021 when the fully refundable child tax credit and other public programs cut child poverty to a historic low of 5.2 percent.

“This year’s U.S. Census Bureau report serves as a reminder for our nation to make the critical policy choices needed to address poverty, especially child poverty. We know what’s effective: policies to make the economy work for low-wage workers and policies to invest in crucial public supports such as the refundable child tax credit, health care, and nutrition supports – a strong safety net,” said Olivia Golden, interim executive director of CLASP. “These policies are also crucial to addressing the persistent and damaging effects of racism on children and families. The strong policies in the COVID response legislation were designed to reach Black families, Latino families, and families with the fewest resources – and, after initial gaps, children in immigrant families who make up a very large share of U.S. children. As a result, these policies cut child poverty in half across the board.”

Today’s report showed that the overall poverty rate in 2023 of 12.9 percent was roughly the same as in 2022 when poverty stood at 12.4 percent. In addition to the increase in overall child poverty rates, racial and ethnic disparities in child poverty also increased, with 20.3 percent of Black children and 22 percent of Hispanic children experiencing poverty compared to just 7.2 percent of white children. These figures reflect the Supplemental Poverty Measure, which looks at the resources that people have available after taking into account taxes, transfers, and work expenses, and uses an annually adjusted threshold based on the cost of a package of necessities.

The slight decrease in overall poverty reflected in the Official Poverty Measure, which considers only cash income, was driven by the strong economy. This was also seen in the overall increases in cash income for all workers, even those with very low incomes. This reflects tight labor markets that are good for workers who are paid low wages. Inflation has gone down significantly from 7.7 percent in 2022 to 3.9 percent in 2023, creating a path for real income growth in 2023. However, persistent racial and ethnic disparities remain in real median household income, driven by historical and current structural racism in education, housing, and hiring resulting in unequal access to good jobs.

The Census report also found that the share of people lacking health insurance throughout 2023 held steady at 8 percent. Policy matters to this result as well. Two different policies created during the pandemic contributed to a reduction in people lacking health insurance over the past several years. We are likely not yet seeing the full effects of the ending of protections for Medicaid members and other health care expansions provided during the COVID pandemic that served as a safety net for people who lost jobs or faced other economic and coverage disruptions. During the pandemic, states were not allowed to disenroll people from Medicaid. Since this protection ended, more than 12 million people have lost Medicaid coverage. In addition, those purchasing insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s Marketplace have had significantly more affordable options due to increased tax credits provided during the pandemic. But those tax credits are set to expire at the end of 2025 unless Congress acts.

 

By Fiona Lu

Asian American (AA) and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) communities have historically been overgeneralized into one racial category. This has minimized the individual struggles of each ethnic group, including disparities in poverty levels and health outcomes across multiple populations. For instance, data from KFF shows that 63 percent of Marshallese live at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty line, while as little as 12 percent of Indian Americans do. As the most ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse group in the United States, the AA and NHPI populations often face distinctive challenges that require thoughtfully tailored services, such as addressing food insecurity.

The Model Minority Myth and Data Aggregation

The model minority myth is at the root of many forms of racial discrimination and invisibility AA communities face. The term was first used in the 1960s to label Japanese Americans as quiet, hardworking, and economically successful, despite Japanese American internment during World War II. The model minority label intended to frame Japanese Americans and, later, all AAs, as the antithesis of Black Americans, who were on the forefront of demanding justice during the Civil Rights Movement. The model minority myth masks the struggles of certain Asian ethnic groups or individual families that grapple with poverty, war trauma, and other challenges. NHPI communities, which are often conflated with AA communities, have their own histories of militarization and colonialism and face displacement from their indigenous lands. These socio-political histories manifest as challenges in attaining education, accessing quality jobs, combating health disparities, and increasing incarceration rates.

To counter the cultural overgeneralization that AAs and NHPIs face, there have been demands to disaggregate data about various AA and NHPI groups. Although the U.S. Census has considered NHPIs as a separate racial category since 1997, many other forms of data collection do not. Disaggregating data can highlight specific disparities the NHPI community faces, such as that in 2020, the average median household income was $91,989 for AAs and $66,406 for NHPIs.

How Food Insecurity Affects AA and NHPI Populations

Just as AA and NHPI populations have the greatest wealth gap, food insecurity is also stratified among various ethnic groups. The 2014 National Health Interview Survey and Data revealed that as many as 1 in 5 (20.5 percent) NHPI adults had experienced food insecurity. Data also analyzed from the California Health Interview Survey about six AA subgroups (Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Filipino, Korean, and South Asian) found that Japanese Californians experienced the lowest levels of food insecurity at 2.28 percent, while Vietnamese Californians experienced the highest levels of food insecurity at 16.42 percent.

Some factors that are particularly correlated with higher levels of food insecurity for AAs and NHPIs include whether individuals are foreign-born, undocumented, older, or have limited English proficiency. These findings highlight the urgent need for more services tailored toward serving vulnerable AAs and NHPIs, who often face language barriers, cultural stigmas, and limited access to resources when seeking help.

The Challenges in Tackling AA and NHPI Food Insecurity

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the most widespread and effective tool for fighting hunger. However, AA and NHPI communities encounter significant barriers to utilizing SNAP, and their participation rates are significantly lower than the U.S. average. Although 25.1 percent of Malaysian Americans experience poverty compared to 15.5 percent of all Americans, only 3.2 percent are enrolled in SNAP, compared to 13.7 percent of the U.S. population. In a qualitative study focusing on Chinese, Filipino, Tongan, and Vietnamese populations in the Greater Los Angeles region, researchers found both structural and cultural barriers to enrolling in California’s SNAP program, including long applications, a lack of translation services, the social stigma of poverty, and a strong cultural emphasis on both family reliance and self-reliance.

How to Support Healthy Food Access for AA and NHPI Communities

Ensuring food security for AA and NHPI communities will require a holistic approach that engages policymakers, community organizations, agencies, and philanthropy, among others. Some examples of how to support food access include:

Addressing food insecurity for our most vulnerable minority populations means understanding the cultural, social, and economic issues those communities face and what processes have shaped and continue to perpetuate them. For the AA and NHPI communities, this means engaging in intentional and culturally responsive solutions, from community engagement in data collection and policymaking to direct service.

By  Marta Jewson

…

Guaranteed Income programs mirror pandemic support findings

Some of the results of the Rooted School study echo larger, household findings from The Center for Law and Social Policy, which found families reported more stability after the introduction of two pandemic-era programs, the Child Tax Credit and economic impact payments, through the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.

Still, two-thirds of Americans say they couldn’t cover living expenses for one month if they lost their primary income source. One suggested policy solution is to supply families with guaranteed monthly income to keep them stable.

But lawmakers have also targeted young people for additional support. The Young Adult Tax Credit Act would provide a universal $500 monthly payment to all 18- to 24-year-olds in the United States. “Our social safety net rightfully has programs for childhood and seniors, but it fails to address the prevalence of young adult poverty,” said Rep. Morgan McGarvey of Kentucky, a co-sponsor of the Young Adult Tax Credit, who noted that he sees nearly 25% poverty among young adults in his state. (It stands even higher, at 26%, among young adults in Louisiana.)

By Suzanne Wikle

This is the second in a series of commentaries from CLASP experts that explore dimensions of poverty ahead of the U.S. Census Bureau’s annual release of poverty, income, and health insurance coverage statistics from the previous year. On September 10, we’ll get a snapshot of the economic hardship children, youth and young adults, and families experienced in 2023. Ahead of the release, CLASP experts are offering key insights on the impending 2025 tax debate, raising labor standards and enacting new regulations to protect workers, and a fully funded child care system’s role in ending poverty. And, in honor of the 60th anniversary of the War on Poverty, we’ll examine what has and has not changed in the past six decades. The complete series is available here. 

Next month the Census Bureau will release data about how many people in America didn’t have health insurance in 2023. The previous two years showed record-low rates of uninsurance – 8 percent in 2022 and 8.6 percent in 2021 – driven by two key policy changes in response to the COVID pandemic. The 2023 figures may show an increase in uninsurance as millions of people were disenrolled from Medicaid starting in April 2023 when one of these provisions expired – with more threats ahead.

Between March 2020 and April 2023, states were not allowed to disenroll anyone from Medicaid, and tax credits in 2021 to subsidize the purchase of Affordable Care Act (ACA) Marketplace coverage were increased. This change made Marketplace insurance options significantly more affordable. Collectively, these pandemic-era actions led to the greatest increase in health insurance rates since the ACA itself.

As states resumed normal operations for Medicaid in April 2023, they could begin disenrolling people who were no longer eligible or who didn’t complete their renewal process. As a result, 2023 saw a net loss of nine million people from Medicaid, including more than four million children. Therefore, we expect to see a clear drop in Medicaid coverage in the upcoming Census data, even though many states did not complete their unwinding process until 2024.

What’s less clear is how many of those who lost Medicaid coverage gained other coverage, either through an employer or through individual coverage purchased on the ACA Marketplaces. September’s data release will provide more insight into this question.

Likely somewhat offsetting Medicaid losses, Marketplace enrollment hit a new high in 2023 with 16.4 million enrollments (2024 enrollment in the Marketplace grew even more, to 21.3 million people). The growth in Marketplace enrollment since 2020 has been attributed largely to enhanced tax credits passed in 2021 that subsidize the purchase of Marketplace coverage, making Marketplace insurance options significantly more affordable.

The record-high rate of insurance coverage is at risk for several reasons. The end of the COVID-era Medicaid continuous coverage provision has brought back red tape and paperwork hurdles for Medicaid members. The unwinding also highlighted the variation among states, with some recording much higher rates of coverage loss than others due to administrative policy decisions and implementation.

We expect to see even more coverage losses reflected in future data. Some states didn’t start Medicaid disenrollments until later in 2023, and so most of their coverage losses will not be reflected in 2023 data.

The slated end of enhanced subsidies for people purchasing Marketplace plans could also affect the recent gains in health insurance rates. Passed by Congress during the pandemic, these tax credits are scheduled to end in December 2025. In their absence, many people will be priced out of Marketplace plans and become uninsured. The debate about extending enhanced Marketplace subsidies will be part of the larger tax debate looming in 2025 – a debate that will either set our country on a path of investing in health insurance, child tax credits to reduce poverty, and other critical supports or will give more money to wealthy individuals and large corporations at the expense of public goods that benefit all of society.

 

By Jesse Fairbanks

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is planning a pilot program to provide direct rental assistance to some people who are eligible for housing choice vouchers (HCVs). Giving cash instead of vouchers to eligible renters is a monumental change that signals trust in HCV participants. While this change has the potential to simplify the program, the pilot could endanger participating tenants in some states by removing oversight of housing quality. The pilots therefore need to be combined with strengthened protections for tenants nationwide.

HCVs currently assist over five million people in approximately 2.3 million households. Unlike public housing, HCVs depend on the private rental market to supply housing. People participating in the HCV program pay 30 percent of their income to rent a unit from a private landlord, and their voucher generally covers the rest. Unfortunately, the program doesn’t work so simply for most eligible people.

HCVs are unreliable for two major reasons. First, the program is severely underfunded. Only one in four people who are eligible receive a voucher. Applicants remain on the waitlist upward of two years. Second, a person’s ability to use their voucher depends on conditions outside of their control such as landlord participation or local housing markets. As a result, HCVs are the most challenging public benefit to use. One federal study estimated that 40 percent of people who receive a voucher are unable to find a unit, and lose their voucher.

Finding affordable, quality housing that meets an entire family’s needs and is owned by a landlord willing to accept a voucher can feel impossible.

Because vouchers depend on the private market, landlords have significant power to decide whether people with vouchers can use their benefits. Average rents often exceed the amount that public housing authorities are willing to subsidize in places where landlords rapidly raise rents. Many landlords just choose not to participate in the HCV program, citing burdens such as the housing quality inspection. They are legally allowed to refuse vouchers as payment in a majority of states or cities. The fundamental power imbalance between landlords and tenants that harms all people navigating the private rental market also prohibits the HCV program from serving more people.

HUD’s proposed design for direct rental assistance could eliminate some of the excuses landlords give for not participating in the program. It could also increase participants’ autonomy during the housing search.

Under HUD’s design, households selected for a voucher would receive funds by direct deposit from a public housing agency. Each household would then be responsible for paying the full rent to their landlord. A well-designed pilot that deposits money for rent directly into HCV participants’ bank accounts would demonstrate trust in people who receive public benefits, signaling that they are deserving of the community’s help. In contrast, programs that monitor or restrict how people can use their assistance imply that recipients are too incompetent to help themselves. Centering recipients’ autonomy in program design supports the broader narrative shift we need to make programs anti-racist.

However, simply providing cash instead of a voucher won’t help tenants find a unit, as landlords will still know they receive assistance. Many landlords refuse to rent to people participating in the HCV program because of racist or classist stereotypes about people who receive public benefits as not being “quality” tenants. These property owners will continue to find workarounds to discriminate against people with vouchers in places without strong source-of-income protections.

HUD’s proposed design could increase landlord participation by eliminating two of the requirements they find burdensome. For households that received direct rental assistance, there wouldn’t need to be a Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) contract between the landlord and the public housing agency because the tenant would issue the full rent payment. Additionally, the tenant would bear primary responsibility for inspecting the unit. Landlords would no longer be asked to leave their units empty until a lengthy inspection and all repairs deemed necessary by the public housing authority are completed, which landlords claim reduces their profits.

There is valid concern among advocates that weakening housing authorities’ oversight during the housing search will expose more tenants to substandard living conditions. Federal data suggest a little over 3 percent of renters with very low incomes endure severe maintenance issues such as inadequate plumbing, but the potential consequences are life-threatening for people who do. These violations are more common in places with older housing stock or weak laws enforcing habitability standards. They’re also challenging to detect with an untrained eye. Rather than unilaterally eliminate the inspection, housing authorities should be encouraged to allow recipients to determine the most appropriate inspection process for themselves, providing several options such as having a professional inspector double-check the unit after they’ve moved in.

All of these changes would make the experience of renting as an HCV participant more similar to the experience of someone without assistance. This shift may disadvantage recipients in places without strong laws protecting or empowering tenants.

For example, tenants in almost 20 states are not legally allowed to withhold rent when a landlord fails to supply quality housing as written in a lease or local law. Strong rent-withholding laws enable tenants to more safely band together and organize rent strikes if a landlord refuses to bargain with them. These laws are a significant source of power for tenants determined to improve their housing quality. Roughly the same number of states don’t permit tenants to repair maintenance issues and deduct the costs from the rent, either. In theory, a pilot that provides cash instead of vouchers could harmonize with laws that empower tenants to withhold rent when a landlord fails to provide safe housing. But state laws differ dramatically. HCV recipients in places with weak tenant protections may need a HAP contract to preserve minimal rights to a safe home.

The changes HUD has proposed will not right the imbalance of systemic power between landlords and tenants at the core of HCVs’ ineffectiveness. With the rollout of these pilots, the Biden-Harris Administration must explore administrative levers available to standardize tenant protections for people in federally assisted housing, while also pressuring Congress to pass a national tenants’ bill of rights.

By the Imprint Weekly Podcast,

Over the summer, The Imprint Weekly Podcast will feature episodes with subject matter experts to talk about several new rules and regulations issued by the Biden administration in the past year.

On this week’s episode, Ashley Burnside of the Center for Law and Social Policy joins us to discuss a plan to update the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), a federal cash assistance program designed to help low-income families fill the gap. Burnside discussed the changing nature of TANF programs since its inception in 1996, and explains what Biden’s proposed rules for it would change about how states could use the money to support families.

>>Listen

By Jesse Fairbanks, Amira Iwuala, Parker Gilkesson Davis, and Kathy Tran

In 2021, the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) began a community engagement effort called Community-Driven Policies and Practices (CDPP). The project was led by CLASP staff and a steering committee of community members known as the Core Collective. Together, we facilitated a series of power-building sessions in Baltimore, Las Vegas, and Tribal Nations in the Pacific Northwest. Our goal in these sessions was to create a safe, inspiring space for people experiencing poverty to dream up policies with the potential to deliver economic justice and strategies to advance them. The sessions culminated in an advocacy plan to implement a policy goal that each group believed would advance their vision for economic justice.

The first half of this report summarizes CDPP, including the project’s guiding principles, planning team, and engagement strategy. This section also spotlights the advocacy plans that community members drafted while participating in CDPP power-building sessions.

Using CDPP as a case study, the second half of this report explores best practices for engaging people with lived experience of poverty in nonprofit advocacy, based on the ideas of CLASP staff, the Core Collective, and community participants. Each grouping of recommendations is divided into actions that could be carried out by staff leading community engagement and structural changes that would need to be spearheaded by leaders in nonprofits. The recommendations for nonprofit leadership require large-scale changes to the policies, practices, and norms that traditionally govern nonprofit advocacy. We acknowledge that most of these structural changes have not been implemented by CLASP or similar nonprofits.

The recommendations fall into five main categories, all of which are essential goals that nonprofits should keep in mind when engaging community members:

  1. Building Trust and Secure Relationships
  2. Subverting Power Dynamics Rooted in Systemic Injustice
  3. Partnering with Community from Design Through Implementation and Evaluation
  4. Recruiting and Onboarding Community Members
  5. Creating Valuable Experiences for Community Members

The 50+ recommendations in this report are not an exhaustive list of all engagement strategies available to nonprofits. Community engagement is a boundless practice shaped by grassroots leaders over time, with roots in Indigenous democratic decision-making. Our intention with this report is to compile recommendations that, in the experience of CLASP staff, promote meaningful community engagement led by nonprofits or governments.

policy and community engagement goals and steps a graphic that describes all fo the steps needed to engage with communities when determining policy solutions for people with low incomes in poverty

Through CDPP, we were able to assess the merit of a national nonprofit practicing direct, place-based community engagement. We found that direct connections to national nonprofits can provide value to community members through professional development opportunities, access to people in positions of systemic power, and resources to sustain their advocacy. Place-based projects led by a national organization can expand the tools available to local groups to make large-scale policy change. The value that national organizations can provide community members, however, can be stunted by long-standing norms within nonprofits and philanthropy. This report argues that the individual actions of nonprofit staff can only go so far to ensure meaningful community engagement. The entire system underpinning nonprofit advocacy needs reform to sustain staffs’ efforts to create valuable experiences for community members that inspire them to continue fighting for important policy changes.

>> Read the report here

By Fiona Lu and Ashley Burnside,

Since its creation in 1996, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program has provided cash assistance to a smaller and smaller share of families with low incomes. One reason is that many states have never rethought their TANF programs, leaving them stuck with outdated rules and paternalistic requirements. August 22 represents 28 years since Congress enacted the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, which first created the TANF program. Given this milestone, states should take the newly established pilot opportunity to update their TANF programs to support families.

Last year’s Fiscal Responsibility Act authorized new pilots under TANF, creating an exciting opportunity for up to five states to have their success measured not by the process-focused work participation rate (WPR), but by outcomes tied to earnings and family stability and well-being. The pilot represents one important step in turning TANF into a program that adequately reaches families and effectively supports them in times of financial emergencies. The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) has now released the application for states to apply for this pilot.

What is TANF?

The TANF program provides cash assistance to families with low incomes. The program is funded through a federal block grant to states and with state dollars. The federal government holds states accountable for reaching TANF goals through the WPR, which places an emphasis on recipients participating for the required number of hours in a limited list of countable activities, instead of whether TANF improves the whole family’s well-being. If individuals fail to meet the work requirements, they can be sanctioned by losing support from the TANF program, often for an extended period of time.

Tying assistance to fulfilling strict work requirements poses challenges for families with low incomes who are often encountering financial emergencies, like domestic violence or homelessness. Due to this requirement, the program does not focus on higher quality of work; the efficacy of work programs; or addressing potential barriers to work such as education, training, or caregiving. The new pilot program provides an opportunity for states to rethink their programs and implement more effective outcome measures for TANF participants.

How Does the Pilot Program Work?

For up to five chosen states, this pilot program is set to begin on October 1, 2024 and sunset on October 1, 2030. The first year of the pilot will be for baseline data collection. States in the pilot are still expected to have an engagement plan for TANF recipients and have a sanction policy for individuals who do not meet their required engagement activities. The selected states will not be held to the WPR requirements during engagement in the pilot. ACF will measure state-specific family stability and well-being outcomes through one economic domain measurement (i.e. job quality, job access, or job security) and one measurement from another domain, which can be chosen from health, education, community, or social categories. States in the pilot program will participate in a federally funded implementation and outcomes study to assess differences for TANF participants between pilot states and non-pilot states. States will not receive additional federal funds for their participation in the pilot. To apply, states must submit their proposals to ACF by September 3, 2024.

The pilot creates an opportunity for states to be innovative and design their program based on the specific needs of their state. While other changes are urgently needed within the TANF program, this represents one critical step in reforming TANF to be a more effective and human-centered program. The pilot provides important opportunities for states.

Even if states are not accepted into the pilot, they still have the opportunity to make these innovations in their state TANF programs. The caseload reduction credit leaves many states with great flexibility in meeting their WPR requirements without facing a financial penalty. States should take advantage of this flexibility to rethink their TANF programs, whether or not they are selected for the pilots.