TN-06 — Merrilee Wineinger’s reaction to the Trump administration’s proposed policy changes to the most impoverished recipients of public housing was true to her character: “Where’s the compassion in this?”
As Merrilee wrote on her Facebook and Twitter pages:
Affordable housing is extremely important & this lacks compassion. I believe every person should have the dignity of a job but also a living wage. Too many have to work two or three low wage jobs just to make ends meet. We as a nation can do better.
And she’s correct. We can do better with someone like her in office, who understands that enacting policies such as these to the least among us does nothing to help them move upward, but only presses them down further.
Not familiar with the proposals? Here’s a summary.
Currently, the poorest families in public housing have their rent capped at $50 a month, while others pay roughly 30 percent of their adjusted income toward rent or a public-housing agency’ s minimum rent.
The proposal approved by the House Agriculture Committee would expand work initiatives, mandating that most adult recipients under 60 work part-time or enroll in a state-run training program. It would apply to as many as 7 million adults.
Carson’ s proposal would require a family’ s monthly rent portion be set at 35 percent of gross income — not their adjusted net income. Or they would pay 35 percent of their earnings working 15 hours a week at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, which hasn’ t been raised since 2009.
The cap on rent would rise to $150 a month — three times the current $50 a month — proposal sets the family monthly rent contribution at 35 percent of gross income, or 35 percent of their earnings working 15 hours a week at the federal minimum wage. Under the proposal, the cap for the poorest families would rise to about $150 a month, three times the current $50 a month cap. According to an article in The Washington Post, this could impact “ about half of the 4.7 million families receiving housing benefits would be affected, HUD officials said.”
Also, consider this: the House Agriculture Committee recently approved a proposal that “expand work initiatives, mandating that most adult recipients under 60 work part-time or enroll in a state-run training program. It would apply to as many as 7 million adults,” according to the same Washington Post article.
And the Trump administration gave states the green light to impose work requirements on residents enrolled in Medicaid.
We need a congresswoman for the 6th District who understands that 15.4 percent of its residents receive food stamps.
Tennessee’s 6th District deserves a Representative with compassion and who understands that families who don’t have boots — such as the necessities of housing, food, and access to affordable, quality health care — can’t pull themselves up by the bootstraps.
I’m Amelia Morrison Hipps, and I am Merrilee Wineinger’s campaign manager.
Facts about federal housing assistance from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities 2017
• 80 percent of households using federal rental assistance in the United States include children or people who are elderly or disabled.
• Rental assistance supports low-wage working families: in 2016, 75 percent of non-elderly, non-disabled households receiving HUD rental assistance in the United States were working, worked recently, or likely were subject to work requirements.
• Rental assistance helps families in urban and rural areas. More than 673,000 United States households receiving federal rental assistance live in non-metropolitan areas.
•For every assisted household in the United States, twice as many low-income households are homeless or pay more than half their income for rent and do not receive any federal rental assistance due to limited funding.
•When housing costs consume more than half of household income, low-income families are at greater risk of becoming homeless.
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