Here’s a simple question with a complicated answer: Why are there so many seniors and people with disabilities who eat at the St. Anthony’s Free Dining Room?

In order to answer that question, you have to talk about SSI/SSP (Supplemental Security Income / State Supplemental Program) benefits and how they relate to hunger and poverty for low-income seniors and people with disabilities.

Here in San Francisco, there are about 45,000 low-income seniors, blind people,  and people with disabilities who receive SSI/SSP benefits.  SSI/SSP provides a very basic standard of living for people who are unable to work because of age, blindness, or disability.  Single SSI/SSP recipients receive $845 per month (93% of the federal poverty level), and couples receive $1,407 per month (115% of the federal poverty level).

SSI/SSP recipients in California are ineligible for the Food Stamp program (which has recently been renamed “Cal Fresh”).  As a result of recent budget cuts, SSI/SSP recipients have seen their benefit levels cut three times over the past two years, have lost their yearly “renters rebate” of $347.50, have had the cost of living adjustment to the state-funded portion of their grant eliminated, and have received no cost of living adjustment to the federally-funded portion of their grant in either 2010 or 2011.

Seniors and people with disabilities who receive SSI/SSP have also seen their out-of-pocket contributions to Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program increase and have lost access to dental benefits altogether.

Here at St. Anthony’s, we see many seniors who are able to afford rent in the small rooms in the single room occupancy hotels of the Tenderloin, but being able to afford food is a struggle. This struggle is explained in more detail in a recent report from San Francisco’s Food Security Task Force.

Unfortunately, Governor Brown has proposed a further reduction ($15 per month) to SSI/SSP benefit levels. If you’d like to speak out against this cut, visit our advocacy alert page.

In San Francisco, nearly one in three people over 75 years old lives in poverty. This is more any other county in California. Not L.A. with its massive urban poverty, not Tulare with its thousands of low-income farm workers, not Humboldt with its devastating unemployment. San Francisco, one of the wealthiest cities in the wealthy U.S.

In the Tenderloin, over 15,000 people live below the federal poverty line. One in six of these are seniors.

More than 76% of seniors survive on smaller monthly incomes as a result of the Social Security cost of living adjustment being denied. In 2009, 92% of seniors’ monthly expenses increased by $40 to $120 while their income did not increase at all.

Nearly half said they were having trouble paying their electrical and utility bills. They made up the difference in hospital and doctors visits.

As my colleague Jen puts it, seniors are no longer living on a fixed income. They’re living on a shrinking income.

That’s why so many programs at St. Anthony’s take special care when it comes to seniors. The Dining Room, the Free Clothing Program, the Social Work Center all provide special services for senior guests. In the Dining Room, Guest Services staff keep on eye on the elderly and flag a social worker when a senior begins not to look well. Social workers check in with seniors to make sure that their safety, health, and well being are being tended to.

The Dining Room also hosts a monthly Senior Brown Bag Program which provides meat, fresh produce, and non-perishable food items, as well as a monthly Emergency Food Assistance Program disbursement, using food supplied by the Federal government. St. Anthony’s has opened an Emergency Clothing Closet upstairs from the Dining Room, crucial for elderly people who have trouble walking the four city blocks to the regular Free Clothing Program.

The Social Work Center helps seniors secure a consistent source of nutritious food, safe housing, benefits, medical care, and money management. It’s a delicate balance of a person’s self-sufficiency, St. Anthony’s support to maintain it, and an intervention available if needed.

We’re all seniors in training, as Fitz, another St. Anthony’s colleague, used to say. One day we’ll be grateful to receive respect from those who also give us help.

Recently I moved, and unfortunately moved away from BART, which means I’m joining the masses of disgruntled early morning commuters toe-tapping and scowling at the nextbus ticker delivering the less than desirable schedule.  Each morning I try and remind myself that people commute to work for hours, people sit in gridlocked traffic, and my half hour (when I’m lucky) commute is not that bad.

When on the bus a peppy man on the intercom delivers a canned message that I can find out about proposed MUNI fee hikes and service cuts at SFMTA.com.  It is again delivered in Spanish and Chinese.  The voice-over sounds almost excited about relaying this news.  As I have learned from St. Anthony Foundation’s advocacy coordinator these fee hikes, while certainly an inconvenience for me, for some are a matter of being able to use the transit system at all.

Currently a senior living on Social Security Income in San Francisco has a set income of $900 a month maximum. No picking up shifts, no swinging extra hours at the office.  That is their income, and that is it. We all know that with rent in our city, groceries, let alone medical bills and pharmacy costs that seniors often must shoulder, by the end of the expenses list, there is little if any room for fee hikes for basic services.

For seniors and people with disabilities these fee hikes are not a mere inconvenience, they are a matter of not making it to critical doctors appointments, or to food programs that sustain them.  That fee hike does not mean being late to an appointment; it means not being able to get to the appointment at all.

Collectively, we cannot sit as passive passengers while public transit becomes a luxury item.

Written by Vincent, St. Mary’s College “Jan Term” intern who took advantage of opportunities to serve at St. Anthony Free Medical Clinic and St. Anthony Dining Room, while also participating in activities that bring to light some of the factors that perpetuate poverty:

Learning about the Tenderloin Neighborhood began my first day. It is home to more than18,00 people according to census data now a decade old. This number of course only includes those with roofs over their heads. These people live in the 25-30 blocks which comprise the neighborhood. It is the poorest in the city and the second most populous after Chinatown. In contrast, it is bordered by Nob Hill, the Civic Center, and the designer stores of Union Square.

For lunch the first day we stood in line with the guests at the Dining Room. I felt more welcomed by the others in line than by those serving food, for whom the numbers of people in line I’m sure get overwhelming. (The Dining Room currently serves 2600 meals per day.) I was sure to keep that in mind the following day when my role was as server, instead of servee. Acknowledging people with a smile is core to the Franciscans (who began the Dining Room and work at St. Boniface Church next door) and their focus on how each person is served. It became the most clear to me that this human decency was nothing short of miraculous when we exited the building after several hours of serving and busing trays. The line stretched down the long inside corridor and wrapped around the corner of the building to the halfway point of the block. (more…)

Balancing the budget on our backs makes news. When the news was broken yesterday that an additional 10% tax will be placed on Californians’ income you could hear the panic in the headlines, in small talk of distraught folks on their morning commute, and in disgruntled cocktail hour conversations.

When it’s on the backs of seniors and people with disabilities it makes rumbles, but rarely conversation and not headlines. People in California who depend on Social Security Income have lived in the same wage since 1996. Imagine that. Living on the same income that you made 13 years ago, with the cost of food, medicine, transportation going up and up each year. To add insult to injury not only has there been no inflation adjustment, but this year alone benefit levels have been cut three times.

Our 10% tax hike, after the money is done plugging this mess of a budget gap, will be returned. And no, it is not ideal, it is not something most of us want to deal with especially around the holiday season. But, perhaps it can be an eye opener, a little jolt to wake us up to the reality that so many people who are dependent on the safety-net face every budget season. They are the first in line to bear the burden of our state’s economic instability.

So when we do face these cuts and are forced to make difficult decisions now we will all have a better understanding, empathy, and perhaps even a stronger drive to speak out for those who feel the pain of these cuts the deepest.

A friend of mine has bi-polar disease. She has worked for periods in her life and she’s looking for a part time job now. But for several years she has lived on government assistance in a government subsidized SRO.

It differs from most privately owned SRO’s: The building is well kept and well supervised and there are services on site. There are no rats and no mould and no one shooting up in the hallway. The bathroom is shared with only one other person. But her entire home is one-third the size of my studio apartment. There is a stove burner, a microwave and a mini-refrigerator with no freezer; she can’t save money by buying larger quantities of food. Her place costs $650. Her check is somewhere in the $800’s.

According to the California Labor Federation, the most recent corporate tax breaks give away $2.5 billion a year, every year, to a handful of the world’s largest corporations.

These tax breaks have no value to the state or the majority of its businesses. They do not create jobs or soften the economic blow so many families are facing. Ending them won’t drive corporations from California.

California’s health and human services have already been slashed $26 billion, and now Governor Schwarzenegger is pushing another round of major cuts to education, health care, public safety and other vital services. He will not increase taxes on anyone or anything.

Seniors will lose their cost of living increase for 2 years, plus employment services, adult protective services, and home delivered meals. Poor families will make 4% less at CalWORKS, reducing a family of 3 to $694 a month. People like my friend will have another 30 to 60 dollars cut from their support.

Many of these folks are working. Many others are struggling to get even a part time job.

Corporations are no strangers to government subsidy. They know what it is to need a lifeline, as my friend does. Why shouldn’t corporations pay as much as individuals and local businesses do for the privilege of working in San Francisco.

Last week, California’s Director of Finance, Mike Genest, was quoted in the New York Time’s saying “Government doesn’t provide services to rich people. It doesn’t even really provide services to the middle class. You have to cut where the money is.” This is his response to the uproar, and borderline desperation, of people begging the government to refrain from making further cuts to life-sustaining programs serving the needs of the poor.

Anxiety continues to rise amongst St. Anthony’s guests and clients who are forced to sit and wait, wondering which of their services will be cut next and how devastating the cut will be. Quite frankly, I am sick and tired of hearing that cutting vital services such as senior programs, medical assistance services, education and meal assistance programs are the only solution to this budget crisis. CalWORKS, California’s welfare-to-work program is now the newest program on the chopping block. Faced with a real possibility of the program’s elimination, Mayor Newsom admits that California would “become the first state in the industrialized world to have no welfare system at all.” I am tired of the government balancing the budget on the backs of the poor.

Revisiting Mike Genest’s quote above, I echo the sentiments of Tim Redmond, found here in this week’s Editor’s Notes section of the San Francisco Bay Guardian: How can you say that the government doesn’t provide services to the rich and middle class? Who among those classes do not benefit from services provided by the government? Do the rich and middle class not send their children to public schools? Do they not ride MUNI to get to work? Do they not use public libraries or enjoy access to state parks? Do the rich not visit public museums and the middle class not enjoy the safety and security afforded them by the police and fire departments? Do they not mail letters through the postal service, bathe in water provided by the municipal water system or participate in events held in state convention centers? No, of course they do, but these and other programs are not those whose legitimacy are debated each time there are tough decisions to make. Cutting programs that are literally essential to the survival of hundreds of thousands of Californians is not a necessity, it’s a political choice. And, until we realize that, and start demanding that our legislators balance this budget with compassion, empathy and wisdom, the people of the Tenderloin, and the communities of people they represent across the state, will only continue to suffer.

St. Anthony Dining Room and Social Work Center try to fill in the gaps of escalating food needs for San Francisco’s poor.

The economic crisis has filled our minds, news and conversations with many troubling questions, from the highest economic strata down to grassroots organizations. All seem to conclude with one resounding answer: uncertainty. On this block of the Tenderloin, the thing we are certain of is that cuts to other agencies will directly result in more people coming to St. Anthony’s for services.

“They just keep coming, more and more every month,” lamented Rosita Nangca, St. Anthony Volunteer, “And now people are coming from all over, usually it’s just from our neighborhood [Tenderloin] but now from Daly City, from everywhere.”

Rosita is not only a volunteer, but a participant in St. Anthony’s Brown Bag program. Every third Thursday of the month St. Anthony Dining Room holds our Senior Brown Bag program, providing 200 seniors with groceries including fresh produce, juice, eggs, beans, rice and other pantry and nutritional staples. Currently our Brown Bag program is stretching to accommodate 215 seniors, straining the program maximum of 200. Each quarter we open enrollment and usually all new participants are accepted. For the first time ever this quarter, we were not able to accommodate all the seniors, and a waitlist was started.

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Today is the day folks, get out and VOTE! There are six propositions dealing with the budget deficit and six opportunities for you to voice your opinion with your vote.

What are we voting on? For an quick and easy break down of the six measures click here.

Who is affected by these measures? Teachers, students, at-risk youth, foster kids, seniors, people with mental illnesses, you and me, and probably the person next to you right now.

How long does it take you to draw 6 one-inch lines? About thirty seconds.

Go to your polling place and VOTE!

Don’t know where your polling place is? Click here and enter your home address to find out.

“As a senior on a fixed income, about 75% of my check goes to my housing. Thanks to St. Anthony’s I can eat every day. St. Anthony’s is a blessing.”

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