We can expect a dramatic rise in Pierce County’s homeless population

Last updated: November 1st, 2011 12:18 AM (PDT)

Imagine for a minute that a tornado hits Sumner and does extensive damage. Afterward, people will be displaced until repairs can be accomplished over a period of several years. The 2010 Census listed Sumner’s population as 9,541 persons.

Now consider that in Pierce County as a whole, an estimated 9,030 persons will lose their DSHS financial assistance by the end of this year. As a result, they will lose – or be at severe risk of losing – their housing. More than 5,000 of those persons will have exhausted their Temporary Aid for Needy Families (TANF) benefits. At least 3,300 will be children.

DSHS will terminate 3,930 adults from Disability Lifeline (DL) today. Some (maybe half) of those persons will be eligible for housing assistance vouchers worth an average of $200 a month for those already housed on DL and $450 a month for those unhoused.

The median rental price for a one-bedroom apartment in Pierce County currently is around $700 per month. Median rental for a two-bedroom apartment is around $900 per month. Neither price includes the cost of background checks and damage deposits. Given those rental costs, all former DL recipients will be at very significant risk of homelessness.

In addition, foreclosure filings are now averaging around 600 filings per month. We are not certain how many people will lose their housing because of foreclosure, but let’s just guess 1,000 per month or 12,000 per year. Many of those people will move to rental housing, thus driving up the rental rates, and driving down the already very limited supply of available and affordable rentals. Some will become homeless.

AccessPoint4Housing (AP4H) is the central place to call for housing assistance in Pierce County. AP4H reports that it received 3,403 unduplicated requests for housing assistance during July, August and September of this year. It was able to help attain or preserve housing for only 378 of those callers, because resources are so limited. Of the requests, 1,340 came from single parents with children (reflecting the end of their TANF benefits).

A group of people equivalent to the population of Sumner probably will be homeless in Pierce County by the end of this year. Maybe equivalent to the combined populations of Sumner and Orting.

We need to consider how each of us will help our neighbors, because there are not a lot of official options. Our homeless shelters are already full. Government will do what it can, as will the social services organizations. The religious communities will do what they can. But it will not be enough. Displaced people will “double up,” “couch surf” or share housing. People will live in their cars. But it will not be enough.

Despite our best efforts, many people will not find shelter. Even though we do not tend to think of it this way, they will become refugees. They will need both our help and understanding just to survive.

When things get so bad that just trying to survive is the only real choice available to displaced people, local governments will need to accept encampments and tent cities, also insisting that they maintain sanitation, safety and prohibitions on drug abuse.

Al Ratcliffe is a community psychologist who serves as the volunteer chairman of Pierce County’s HUD-mandated housing Continuum of Care Committee. The opinions expressed here are solely his own.

Read more: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/11/01/v-printerfriendly/1888087/we-can-expect-a-dramatic-rise.html#ixzz1ckmqTOm9

Full link here:

http://www.helpinghandhouse.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Mayor Bloomberg’s Silver Bullet Misses the Mark – Summer 2011 Uncensored Magazine.pdf

What does the “debt deal” mean for homelessness?

Today’s guest post was written by Alliance Vice President for Programs and Policy Steve Berg.

Many of us – especially people outside the beltway – are asking ourselves, “What just happened?”

People who follow what goes on in Washington, D.C. have been watching an ugly debate over federal spending, taxation, and borrowing. On the news, it’s been commonly referred to as the “debt ceiling” debate. For now, that debate is over, to be resumed at a later date.

There are plenty of people commenting on who got the better of whom; today I’ll try to cover what the “debt deal” could mean for homelessness.

First, a quick summary of the debt deal. It cuts federal spending in two ways:

First, it sets maximum levels for discretionary spending (spending that is set each year through the appropriations process, including virtually all targeted spending for homelessness programs) for the next 10 years. The impact of the debt deal comes mostly in the later years. For the 2012 fiscal year that begins in October 2011, discretionary spending is set at $1.042 trillion, $7 billion less than FY 2011 funding levels and $98 billion less than the Obama Administration’s budget request for FY 2012.
Second, the debt deal cuts spending through additional across-the-board reductions to most domestic and defense programs, this time including not only discretionary spending but also some entitlements like Medicare. These will begin in 2013, with the total cuts over ten years to be $1.2 trillion. Some programs for low-income people (Medicaid, for example) would be exempt from the automatic cuts, but others, like Section 8, would not be exempt, which could mean that thousands of families lose their housing. Instead of allowing these cuts, Congress can pass a bill proposed by a “super-committee,” reducing federal debt by at least $1.2 trillion through some combination of spending cuts and revenue increases. But the super-committee has to do that by the end of the 2011 calendar year.

So how will this affect homelessness? No decisions have been made on the details, but there are two ways this deal could have an impact.

First is the impact of the maximum levels set for discretionary funding. This could impact funding for targeted homelessness programs, especially the Emergency Shelter Grants and Continuum of Care run by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). In his original budget, the President proposed an increase of $471 million for HUD’s homeless assistance for 2012 to implement the HEARTH Act, finance 10,000 new HUD-VASH vouchers, and create 7,500 targeted rent vouchers for the Housing and Services for Homeless Persons demonstration. In light of the high rate of joblessness and the struggling economy, all those new resources are desperately needed for homeless and at-risk people. But now we know that overall discretionary spending for FY 2012 will be nearly $100 billion less than what the President’s budget proposed which could jeopardize the creation of these new resources.

Secondly, the work of the “super-committee,” carried out under intense time pressure, creates many dangers in the long run. While entitlement programs for low-income people are exempt from the automatic cuts that take place if the super-committee does nothing, they are not exempt from a super-committee proposal. Roll-backs in Medicaid or TANF, for example, may be tempting for the members of the “super-committee” when they’re overwhelmed with the task of finding cuts to the federal budget. But we know that such cuts would be devastating for people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness and rely on federal programs.

In this context, protecting federal homelessness programs will require a lot of work. And the work will only get harder in succeeding years.

Fortunately, the effectiveness of these programs, the vulnerability of homeless people, and the bipartisan history of the work provide a strong case, but the case has to be made. Increased funding remains eminently doable, but only if people in Congress know that it is important back home.

That’s where you come in. The Alliance’s grassroots efforts have always proved effective. The Alliance works to connect passionate citizens with their Members of Congress so that lawmakers can hear, first-hand, the needs and concerns of their constituents. This is the most effective way that we, as everyday people, can best affect policy change.

To find out what you can do to protect homeless assistance programs, please contact us. You can learn more by visiting our website.

During their time in the program, they took hold of every resource that was available, including budgeting, employment assistance, and options available through partners of Helping Hand House. They enrolled their 5 year old daughter in school for the first time. Ed is taking parenting classes through the Sumner Family Support Center. Both Ed and Sarah now have 2 jobs, and their household income went from $1,600 per month upon program entry to over $2,500 per month at graduation. Ed is working as an employment counselor for people with developmental disabilities, and part-time at Target. Sarah was hired as a customer service representative at Virgin Airlines, and has part-time work through a temp agency.

They saved $750 during their 3 months in the program. These funds, along with a cleaning bonus provided by HHH to assist families upon move-out, allowed them to move into an apartment of their own. They are completely self-sufficient, and are no longer receiving housing assistance of any kind. Not only are they getting back on their feet, they now have the dignity of providing for their own family, important life skills, and a story to tell. 

Article published Jul 8, 2011 (Foster’s Daily – NH/ME)

STRAFFORD — What would drive a school guidance counselor to go dumpster diving?

If you said looking for a place for some students to sleep, you’d be right.

With a little advice from the homeless center director, Strafford School’s Rick Kaufman recently made a trip to Strafford Appliance in Dover in hopes of finding some temporary shelter. What he found were a couple large boxes, each capable of housing two sixth graders or one principal.

Fortunately, the accommodations were for one night only as Strafford School held its first “Sleep-out for the Homeless.” Students, parents and staff hunkered down June 17 for a wet evening on the school field. The event was intended to teach the students a lesson, to increase awareness of homelessness and to raise money for the Homeless Center for Strafford County.

“Most people, when they think of homelessness, think of that person on the side of the street pushing a shopping cart,” said sixth grader Summer Barnes. “But there are all types of homelessness.”

Barnes read about the concept of sleep-outs for the homeless while researching current events for social studies.

Guidance Counselor Kaufman is also in charge of the school’s “student helpers,” a group of 11 students to which Barnes belongs. The student helpers act as big buddies for younger students and also run several events a year aimed at helping others.

“We decided to take Summer’s idea for a sleep-out and make it a fundraiser for the shelter,” Kaufman said.

As the evening began, the skies opened up and blanketed the area with rain water. Plastic protected some of the cardboard boxes somewhat, but the rain made for miserable sleeping conditions. The rain ended as the staff was making the call of whether or not to move the event indoors and they decided to continue outside. The threat of thunderstorms had subsided. Some students and parents slept shelterless in sleeping bags, some in tents, some in Home Depot boxes and one father/daughter team even carted out a park bench and set up a lean-to against it.

“The fact that there was rain was good, it added a level of apprehension about the weather,” Kaufman said. “It made it a little more uncomfortable. The boxes got wet. This gave it an edge and made it more realistic in my opinion.”

But the evening wasn’t all about suffering. Kids swung on the swing set, threw frisbees and played around as they should at that age, Kaufman noted. People gathered around a fire pit, provided by Principal Jerry Gregoire, for talking and marshmallows.

“It doesn’t replicate what it is like to be homeless, but just being outdoors and knowing about it leant to a cause,” Kaufman said.

State Senator Jim Forsythe (R-Dist. 4) took part in the sleep-out with his daughter and Principal Gregoire was one of the cardboard box sleepers.

Kaufman estimates that about 55 people took part in the sleep-out. Bathrooms in the school were made available throughout the night as were the drinking fountains. Students were sent to “bed” around 10 p.m. about the same time that a fox was spotted roaming the grounds. Parents and guardians followed around 11 p.m.

“It was very successful. I always wish there were more people taking part,” Kaufman said. “But everyone involved liked it. Overall it was a very positive experience.”

Kaufman didn’t sleep, opting to stay on watch for the evening. Around 3:30 a.m. the clouds parted and he was the sole member of the group to enjoy an unobstructed view of the moon.

At 6:30 a.m. Senator Forsythe provided some cinnamon buns for everyone and the Brownies and Daisies provided muffins before participants broke down their sleeping areas and headed home.

Kaufman likes to allow the students to run as much of their big events as possible. For Sleep-out for the Homeless, Barnes, fellow sixth grader Briahnna Neily and seventh grader Emily Greene took up the majority of the preparations. None of the girls are strangers to volunteerism, from the soup kitchen to Muscular Dystrophy walks, a cider festival and the Cocheco Valley Humane Society. Recently, Barnes asked her parents to begin donating what they would spend on her birthday present to Resurge International, an organization that helps to provide surgery for those around the world with repairable deformities or injuries.

Sue Harris, from Third Baptist Church, sees the girls with her work at the Food Pantry and the Community Kitchen.

“Any time you bring awareness of social issues with youth to let them know what’s going on and to have a heart, that’s an issue the community should support,” she said. “You don’t have to solve the world’s problems. You can do one little thing.”

One of the early steps in planning for the sleep-out was “Dessert and Dialogue: Homelessness in New Hampshire,” an informational meeting which was attended by, among others, Susan Ford, executive director for the Homeless Center for Strafford County, Maureen Beauregard, of Families in Transition, and Erica MacNeil, liaison for homeless youth for SAU 44. This meeting sparked the idea of using the sleep-out to raise funds for the homeless center.

Sleep-out for the Homeless raised $1,836. All of the funds will be donated to the Homeless Center for Strafford County. Even in this off season, they are accepting bathroom and cleaning supplies, monetary donations or gift certificates, just about anything that can keep through the summer.

Third grader Jack Holland raised the most funds in the lower school and Briahnna Neily raised the most in the upper school thanks in great part to a donation from Lonza Biologics, of Portsmouth, where her father works.

If you find yourself in the unenviable position of dumpster diving, Kaufman recommends appliance store boxes and notes that there is generally plenty of plastic to help weatherproof. And though Home Depot boxes might be more environmentally sound, they are flimsy when it comes to shelter.

http://www.fosters.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110708/GJCOMMUNITY_01/707089983/-1/FOSNEWS

Direct Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XU-oqntaPbY&feature=youtu.be

Housing vouchers could help homeless teens grow, thrive

KATHLEEN MERRYMAN; STAFF WRITER
If you look at one set of federal numbers, there are five homeless teens in Tacoma. If you look at another, there are 250.

But if you listen to the people trying to help them, there are hundreds more throughout Pierce County, and most have little hope of getting into decent, stable homes, or growing into decent, stable adults.

Federal counts, which determine where federal money goes, don’t fit the problem. They don’t even fit each other.

Susan Paredes is Tacoma schools’ liaison with the federal program for homeless kids in school. She can name 250 high school students who don’t have homes. They all go to Tacoma schools, and they all meet federal standards for defining a homeless student. Many are couch surfing – sleeping at the homes of friends or relatives until their welcome wears out.

By contrast, federal Department of Housing and Urban Development rules say that if they were crashing with friends on Jan. 27, the night of the annual homeless count, they had a roof and aren’t homeless. Last year, that tally found five kids.

This kind of undercounting sinks efforts to get money to help these young people.

Now experts in social work and housing are teaming up to fix the long-term hole in services for vulnerable youth. They’re brainstorming ways to get these kids into safe homes with counseling, health care, education and training in life skills.

These aren’t easy kids. Some have run away from home. More have been kicked out, fled for their own safety or were abandoned.

“One mother left one of her daughters, left the state, then came back and left the other daughter,” said Cheryl Jones, executive director of Tacoma’s Allen Renaissance.

“I’ve heard many stories of 12-year-olds who are picked up, then leave when they hear they have to be reported to their parents,” said Diane Powers, planner for Pierce County’s mental health and homeless programs. “They say, ‘I’m going back to the camp.’ Many of them are involved in prostitution.”

And many of them, Jones said, will end up at the state’s sexual offender unit for youths with a felony on their juvenile record.

“What our kids are going through is horrific,” she said.

She uses “our kids” in the broad sense, to cover young people who can’t live with their own families and depend on the rest of us to help them toward a decent future.

Even the most basic emergency shelters are expensive, said Troy Christensen of Pierce County Human Services.

“It requires highly trained staff and notification of families,” he said.

But the investment helps cut the risk that young people will harm themselves, have sex or do something else that might leave the provider liable. Expensive programs are powerful deterrents to agencies that are barely getting by and don’t have enough funds targeted at homeless teens.

Work around that, suggested Michael Mirra, executive director of Tacoma Housing Authority. Take money from general funds and use it to get teens settled and aimed at independence.

Tacoma Housing Authority owns houses, and it distributes vouchers that can be used to pay for housing.

“We have homes with up to six bedrooms. We could make a larger single-family home available as a congregate facility that we would not run,” he said.

The young residents could use housing vouchers to pay their rent, and an agency with a good track record could provide the monitoring, counseling and life-skills training in a group-home setting.

Paredes said some homeless students stay in school, but they are minors, entirely on their own and unable to find housing.

The housing authority can help, Mirra said. “If we could support them with housing vouchers, we would count that as very good use of housing dollars.”

This kind of new thinking about solving old problems with existing funds is welcome. It’s opening the possibility of going beyond shelter to help damaged young people grow into productive community members.

These are kids who would love the chance to someday become taxpayers.

Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677 kathleen.merryman@thenewstribune.com blog.thenewstribune.com/street

Read more: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/03/16/v-lite/1586318/housing-vouchers-could-help-homeless.html#ixzz1GsewxvLb

Spread the word – post it to your Facebook wall, email the link – vote early and often.

CLICK HERE TO VOTE NOW

Transportation is the key

Transportation is a significant key to success for our families, opening doors for stable jobs, childcare, and education. Studies conducted by the Alliance for Youth & Families show that average income increases by 41% with reliable private transportation. In addition, our families can easily save hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars by eliminating the need to use public transportation. This gives them the capacity to get and keep a living wage job in communities outside the immediate area in which they live, as well as utilize affordable childcare options and continue to advance their education. Many of our families are living in rural East Pierce County, where there is limited or non-existent public transportation; in effect, without a reliable car, they are stuck at home and on a swift path to again becoming homeless.

The Community Garage

To this end, Helping Hand House has initiated a partnership with Scott Chestain, owner of a local garage Car Clinic, to creatively resolve the transportation issue for the homeless families in Helping Hand House programs. This program, once fully established, has a great potential to be replicable elsewhere throughout the country for other organizations facing similar challenges.

Car Clinic is providing the usage of their shop as an in-kind contribution, as well as leveraging relationships within the community to support some of the most vulnerable families in our region. Families in Helping Hand House programs will have access to a dedicated Auto Repair Technician to perform auto inspections, repairs on vehicles, and routine maintenance.

We anticipate eventually having the ability to receive reliable donated vehicles for the families in our programs, allowing them to experience the full benefits of vehicle ownership.

The Community Garage will also provide an innovative training ground for apprenticeship of adults in our housing programs, helping them acquire job skills for a well-paying career in the auto repair industry.

Deliverables:
*  Fund a service and mechanic that provides homeless and low income families a safe reliable resource for work on their vehicles.
*   Provide an apprenticeship program for those families wanting to learn the mechanic/automotive technician profession.
*   Provides a safety inspection service for family’s vehicles to ensure they are safe for road operation.  All of our families have children.

Helping Hand House has applied for a $250,000 grant from Pepsi’s Refresh Everything contest to fund the program – but we need your help!

Grants are given on the basis of who gets the most votes by people across the country – people like you. You can vote everyday. You can vote through Facebook, let people know via Twitter – get the word out and make it happen. And that’s what our families need – for your help to make it happen.

Spread the word – post it to your Facebook wall, email the link – vote early and often.

Click here to Vote Now!

The premise we work under? No family who goes through our programs should ever be homeless again. Search through our website or come to a House Warming Tour and learn more about our unique and innovative solutions to family homelessness, eradicating poverty one family at a time, breaking cycles for the generation to come.

No family should ever be homeless. We’re working to make it that way.

Take a look at the

Enjoy!

Click here to download the report (PDF)

Ms. Jarrin, 49, wound up at a motel here, putting down $260 she had managed to scrape together from friends and from selling her living room set, enough for a weeklong stay. It was essentially all the money she had left after her unemployment benefits expired in March. Now she is facing a previously unimaginable situation for a woman who, not that long ago, had a corporate job near New York City and was enrolled in a graduate business school, whose sticker is still emblazoned on her back windshield.

“Barring a miracle, I’m going to be in my car,” she said.

Ms. Jarrin is part of a hard-luck group of jobless Americans whose members have taken to calling themselves “99ers,” because they have exhausted the maximum 99 weeks of unemployment insurance benefits that they can claim.

For them, the resolution recently of the lengthy Senate impasse over extending jobless benefits was no balm. The measure renewed two federal programs that extended jobless benefits in this recession beyond the traditional 26 weeks to anywhere from 60 to 99 weeks, depending on the state’s unemployment rate. But many jobless have now exceeded those limits. They are adjusting to a new, harsh reality with no income.

In June, with long-term unemployment at record levels, about 1.4 million people were out of work for 99 weeks or more, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Not all of them received unemployment benefits, but for many of those who did, the modest payments were a lifeline that enabled them to maintain at least a veneer of normalcy, keeping a roof over their heads, putting gas in their cars, paying electric and phone bills.

(click here to read more)

Pierce County to consolidate departments (Tacoma News Tribune)

Pierce County will consolidate its community services and human services departments as it tries to save money and streamline services.

County Executive Pat McCarthy announced the consolidation this morning.

“We can set up a system that delivers better outcomes, helping more citizens who need our assistance,” McCarthy said in a statement announcing the move. She notified employees in both departments late last week.

The county’s human services department includes services like chemical dependency, mental health and long-term care. Community services covers everything from arts and tourism to homeless assistance and low-income housing.

For several months Deputy Executive Kevin Phelps has led a group studying a possible consolidation of the departments. The group concluded that combining the departments will result in a more effective delivery of services.

Many questions remain to be answered. Among them: how much money, if any, will be saved. The team will spend the next few months creating a detailed implementation plan.

You can view its recommendations to the executive here.

The consolidation of human and community services might be the first phase of a major consolidation of county government. McCarthy ran for executive two years ago on a pledge to improve customer service and find efficiencies in county government.

In addition, the County Council has asked McCarthy to study combining the planning and public works departments. It also has asked the executive to study combining human resources, budget and finance, facilities, risk management and information technology into a new “general services division.”

Reports on those possible consolidations are expected this fall.

Read more: http://blog.thenewstribune.com/politics/2010/05/03/pierce-county-to-consolidate-departments/#ixzz0mtm2xQjf

But the community needs more help – if you want to step in and play a role, click here to check out volunteer opportunities, or join us for a House Warming Tour.

Tough times, folks.

Puyallup-area homeless advocates get $70,000

Paul Allen Foundation grant should help about 125 families this year
Neil Pierson/of The Herald
Published: February 3rd, 2010 06:00 AM

A four-month-long waiting game concluded happily for Puyallup’s Helping Hand House on Jan. 26 when it received a $70,000 grant from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.

Helping Hand House, which has been assisting homeless families throughout East Pierce County for the past 25 years, was one of 66 non-profit groups in the Pacific Northwest to receive an Allen Foundation grant. The foundation, started by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and his sister, Jo Lynn Allen, is donating $4.6 million this year, much of it to groups that assist low-income individuals and families.

Helping Hand House Executive Director Nola Renz said last week that the grant should help about 125 area families during the next year.
“The money will be used in our homeless prevention programs to assist more families who are at risk of eviction or utility shut off,” Renz said.

Receiving a grant from the Allen Foundation is a tough task, Renz explained, because only certain organizations are invited to apply. Helping Hand House applied for its grant last fall after meeting and talking with foundation officials.

Philanthropic efforts have been a part of the Allen Foundation’s mission for 20 years, said Bill Vesneski, the group’s evaluation, planning and research director. Helping Hand House stood out as a worthwhile cause because it’s widely known for excellent service, he said.

“They’ve had a very strong commitment as to measuring and monitoring their impact,” Vesneski said.

The money is especially welcome to Helping Hand House at a time when rising unemployment rates are putting more families at risk of living on the streets. The non-profit agency, which has helped more than 4,600 families in Puyallup, Sumner, South Hill and surrounding areas in the past 25 years, isn’t coming close to meeting demands. Two months ago, the group told Puyallup City Council members it had turned away more than 1,600 families during a six-month span of 2009.

“It has been an enormous challenge to continue to serve more families,” Renz said. “There’s limited resources so we’re always turning families away. That’s the discouraging part.”

The Allen Foundation focuses on a number of opportunities in its gifts, including community arts and music programs, youth education classes and job skill development courses.

The foundation has shifted its priorities to focus on victims of the national recession, Visneski said, and more groups like Helping Hand House are on the slate for grants in 2011.

“The goal is to kind of get the money into emergency relief, to get the money where it’s needed,” Visneski said. “We wanted to make sure we were doing work in Pierce County.”

Helping Hand House prides itself on being a lasting solution to homelessness because families who seek transitional housing opportunities learn to be financially sound and gain employment skills. The organization estimated at least three of four families that complete a transitional housing program don’t become homeless again.

“The exciting thing is that when families leave us they have a permanent solution,” Renz said. “They go into a situation where they have a home and a living-wage job.”

(Can’t see the video? Please click here to go to C-Span video)

The link is below, as is the full text of the article – if you go to the page, be sure to check out the interactive maps on the left side of the article. Just click on the maps for larger views and more info. The first one shows that the increase since 2007 in the number of people living solely on food stamps in WA was 56%. The second map shows usage across the country. If you hover your mouse on WA you get popup boxes for each county with stats on usage. You can also zoom in – control is on the right side of the map or you can double-click. In Pierce County 13% of people use food stamps and 21% of the children are in households using food stamps. Usage is up 63%.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/us/03foodstamps.html?emc=eta1

January 3, 2010

CAPE CORAL, Fla. — After an improbable rise from the Bronx projects to a job selling Gulf Coast homes, Isabel Bermudez lost it all to an epic housing bust — the six-figure income, the house with the pool and the investment property.

Now, as she papers the county with résumés and girds herself for rejection, she is supporting two daughters on an income that inspires a double take: zero dollars in monthly cash and a few hundred dollars in food stamps.

With food-stamp use at a record high and surging by the day, Ms. Bermudez belongs to an overlooked subgroup that is growing especially fast: recipients with no cash income.

About six million Americans receiving food stamps report they have no other income, according to an analysis of state data collected by The New York Times. In declarations that states verify and the federal government audits, they described themselves as unemployed and receiving no cash aid — no welfare, no unemployment insurance, and no pensions, child support or disability pay.

Their numbers were rising before the recession as tougher welfare laws made it harder for poor people to get cash aid, but they have soared by about 50 percent over the past two years. About one in 50 Americans now lives in a household with a reported income that consists of nothing but a food-stamp card.

“It’s the one thing I can count on every month — I know the children are going to have food,” Ms. Bermudez, 42, said with the forced good cheer she mastered selling rows of new stucco homes.

Members of this straitened group range from displaced strivers like Ms. Bermudez to weathered men who sleep in shelters and barter cigarettes. Some draw on savings or sporadic under-the-table jobs. Some move in with relatives. Some get noncash help, like subsidized apartments. While some go without cash incomes only briefly before securing jobs or aid, others rely on food stamps alone for many months.

The surge in this precarious way of life has been so swift that few policy makers have noticed. But it attests to the growing role of food stamps within the safety net. One in eight Americans now receives food stamps, including one in four children.

Here in Florida, the number of people with no income beyond food stamps has doubled in two years and has more than tripled along once-thriving parts of the southwest coast. The building frenzy that lured Ms. Bermudez to Fort Myers and neighboring Cape Coral has left a wasteland of foreclosed homes and written new tales of descent into star-crossed indigence.

A skinny fellow in saggy clothes who spent his childhood in foster care, Rex Britton, 22, hopped a bus from Syracuse two years ago for a job painting parking lots. Now, with unemployment at nearly 14 percent and paving work scarce, he receives $200 a month in food stamps and stays with a girlfriend who survives on a rent subsidy and a government check to help her care for her disabled toddler.

“Without food stamps we’d probably be starving,” Mr. Britton said.

A strapping man who once made a living throwing fastballs, William Trapani, 53, left his dreams on the minor league mound and his front teeth in prison, where he spent nine years for selling cocaine. Now he sleeps at a rescue mission, repairs bicycles for small change, and counts $200 in food stamps as his only secure support.

“I’ve been out looking for work every day — there’s absolutely nothing,” he said.

A grandmother whose voice mail message urges callers to “have a blessed good day,” Wanda Debnam, 53, once drove 18-wheelers and dreamed of selling real estate. But she lost her job at Starbucks this year and moved in with her son in nearby Lehigh Acres. Now she sleeps with her 8-year-old granddaughter under a poster of the Jonas Brothers and uses her food stamps to avoid her daughter-in-law’s cooking.

“I’m climbing the walls,” Ms. Debnam said.

Florida officials have done a better job than most in monitoring the rise of people with no cash income. They say the access to food stamps shows the safety net is working.

“The program is doing what it was designed to do: help very needy people get through a very difficult time,” said Don Winstead, deputy secretary for the Department of Children and Families. “But for this program they would be in even more dire straits.”

But others say the lack of cash support shows the safety net is torn. The main cash welfare program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, has scarcely expanded during the recession; the rolls are still down about 75 percent from their 1990s peak. A different program, unemployment insurance, has rapidly grown, but still omits nearly half the unemployed. Food stamps, easier to get, have become the safety net of last resort.

“The food-stamp program is being asked to do too much,” said James Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, a Washington advocacy group. “People need income support.”

Food stamps, officially the called Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, have taken on a greater role in the safety net for several reasons. Since the benefit buys only food, it draws less suspicion of abuse than cash aid and more political support. And the federal government pays for the whole benefit, giving states reason to maximize enrollment. States typically share in other programs’ costs.

The Times collected income data on food-stamp recipients in 31 states, which account for about 60 percent of the national caseload. On average, 18 percent listed cash income of zero in their most recent monthly filings. Projected over the entire caseload, that suggests six million people in households with no income. About 1.2 million are children.

The numbers have nearly tripled in Nevada over the past two years, doubled in Florida and New York, and grown nearly 90 percent in Minnesota and Utah. In Wayne County, Mich., which includes Detroit, one of every 25 residents reports an income of only food stamps. In Yakima County, Wash., the figure is about one of every 17.

Experts caution that these numbers are estimates. Recipients typically report a small rise in earnings just once every six months, so some people listed as jobless may have recently found some work. New York officials say their numbers include some households with earnings from illegal immigrants, who cannot get food stamps but sometimes live with relatives who do.

Still, there is little doubt that millions of people are relying on incomes of food stamps alone, and their numbers are rapidly growing. “This is a reflection of the hardship that a lot of people in our state are facing; I think that is without question,” said Mr. Winstead, the Florida official.

With their condition mostly overlooked, there is little data on how long these households go without cash incomes or what other resources they have. But they appear an eclectic lot. Florida data shows the population about evenly split between families with children and households with just adults, with the latter group growing fastest during the recession. They are racially mixed as well — about 42 percent white, 32 percent black, and 22 percent Latino — with the growth fastest among whites during the recession.

The expansion of the food-stamp program, which will spend more than $60 billion this year, has so far enjoyed bipartisan support. But it does have conservative critics who worry about the costs and the rise in dependency.

“This is craziness,” said Representative John Linder, a Georgia Republican who is the ranking minority member of a House panel on welfare policy. “We’re at risk of creating an entire class of people, a subset of people, just comfortable getting by living off the government.”

Mr. Linder added: “You don’t improve the economy by paying people to sit around and not work. You improve the economy by lowering taxes” so small businesses will create more jobs.

With nearly 15,000 people in Lee County, Fla., reporting no income but food stamps, the Fort Myers area is a laboratory of inventive survival. When Rhonda Navarro, a cancer patient with a young son, lost running water, she ran a hose from an outdoor spigot that was still working into the shower stall. Mr. Britton, the jobless parking lot painter, sold his blood.

Kevin Zirulo and Diane Marshall, brother and sister, have more unlikely stories than a reality television show. With a third sibling paying their rent, they are living on a food-stamp benefit of $300 a month. A gun collector covered in patriotic tattoos, Mr. Zirulo, 31, has sold off two semiautomatic rifles and a revolver. Ms. Marshall, who has a 7-year-old daughter, scavenges discarded furniture to sell on the Internet.

They said they dropped out of community college and diverted student aid to household expenses. They received $150 from the Nielsen Company, which monitors their television. They grew so desperate this month, they put the breeding services of the family Chihuahua up for bid on Craigslist.

“We look at each other all the time and say we don’t know how we get through,” Ms. Marshall said.

Ms. Bermudez, by contrast, tells what until the recession seemed a storybook tale. Raised in the Bronx by a drug-addicted mother, she landed a clerical job at a Manhattan real estate firm and heard that Fort Myers was booming. On a quick scouting trip in 2002, she got a mortgage on easy terms for a $120,000 home with three bedrooms and a two-car garage. The developer called the floor plan Camelot.

“I screamed, I cried,” she said. “I took so much pride in that house.”

Jobs were as plentiful as credit. Working for two large builders, she quickly moved from clerical jobs to sales and bought an investment home. Her income soared to $180,000, and she kept the pay stubs to prove it. By the time the glut set in and she lost her job, the teaser rates on her mortgages had expired and her monthly payments soared.

She landed a few short-lived jobs as the industry imploded, exhausted her unemployment insurance and spent all her savings. But without steady work in nearly three years, she could not stay afloat. In January, the bank foreclosed on Camelot.

One morning as the eviction deadline approached, Ms. Bermudez woke up without enough food to get through the day. She got emergency supplies at a food pantry for her daughters, Tiffany, now 17, and Ashley, 4, and signed up for food stamps. “My mother lived off the government,” she said. “It wasn’t something as a proud working woman I wanted to do.”

For most of the year, she did have a $600 government check to help her care for Ashley, who has a developmental disability. But she lost it after she was hospitalized and missed an appointment to verify the child’s continued eligibility. While she is trying to get it restored, her sole income now is $320 in food stamps.

Ms. Bermudez recently answered the door in her best business clothes and handed a reporter her résumé, which she distributes by the ream. It notes she was once a “million-dollar producer” and “deals well with the unexpected.”

“I went from making $180,000 to relying on food stamps,” she said. “Without that government program, I wouldn’t be able to feed my children.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/us/03foodstamps.html?emc=eta1