Disabled assistance programs could merge

That’s the local nonprofit agency that administers a state program called Housing and Essential Needs, which provides sliding-scale housing assistance to temporarily disabled people facing “extreme economic hardship.” There are approximately 200 Clark County residents now receiving HEN support, according to Share program director Amy Reynolds. According to the state Department of Commerce, in any given month there are approximately 7,500 statewide.

But Housing and Essential Needs’ total caseload could more than triple, to nearly 31,000 — a rise of 333 percent — even while its budget grows by just 13 percent, if scenarios developed by state agencies become reality.

Complex merger

Despite the ongoing economic recovery, Washington still faces a budget squeeze. Tax revenues are lagging and the 2015 state Legislature will be compelled to find additional billions of dollars for education funding, as required by the state Supreme Court’s McCleary decision.

Last spring the state Office of Financial Management instructed all state agencies to prepare 15 percent reduction scenarios for discretionary programs. The Department of Social and Health Services responded by proposing the elimination of its Aged, Blind or Disabled program. That provides cash assistance of no more than $197 a month to permanently disabled low-income people; for many it’s a stopgap measure while they are applying for federal Supplemental Security Income disability benefits, a process that can take years, with no guarantee of outcome. ABD also provides technical assistance for people making that federal application; that too would go away under this plan.

The proposed cut to Aged, Blind or Disabled would save just over $18 million across two years, according to DSHS, and would end cash assistance to more than 23,000 people. Those who then face homelessness or already are homeless could be eligible for the Housing and Essential Needs program, and one-third of the program money would follow them there.

But HEN is also looking at a 15 percent squeeze in its own budget. That would save $7.5 million, and likely would force as many as 580 currently housed people into homelessness, according to the state.

It’s a complicated picture of merging programs, but when you tally up the HEN cut, the many thousands of permanently disabled clients coming into HEN and the sliver of money following them there, the final outcome of it all would be “eligible people being turned away and left to live outside or other places not fit for human habitation such as cars and abandoned buildings,” according to the Department of Commerce, which pays for HEN. “Because this population is especially vulnerable due to their documented disabilities and documented lack of other housing options, some may be hospitalized or die of exposure.”

Here in Clark County, lumping all those disabled, low-income people together in a program without adequate funding “would just be horrific,” Reynolds said. Share would be forced to re-evaluate and reprioritize many of its neediest current clients, she said.

“Maybe we wouldn’t be able to serve any of the people we now serve,” she said. “It would be increasing homelessness in our community.”

Complicated story

Biery grew up in Montana, he said, where his abusive father died in a logging accident. He eventually wound up in Vancouver, where he married and raised two daughters who have pursued higher education. “I did pretty good for a kid whose dad beat on him,” he said. He’s now trying to help raise his stepsons — the children of his second wife, from whom he’s “more or less” separated, he said.

Biery worked as a truck driver for Hogan Transport until the company laid him off. He tells a complicated backstory regarding problems with the law and drug use.

He landed on the streets for two years. He stayed with a friend and even squatted in a little shed behind an apartment complex in the Rose Village neighborhood, near the old St. Johns IGA store. He tried all the local social services but his criminal record cut off too many options. But he did graduate from drug rehabilitation and anger management programs — and did everything else authorities told him to do, he said.

“I got tired of starving. I got tired of being cold,” he said. He tried to get healthy. He started walking miles every day and dropped about 100 pounds, he said. He found quitting crystal meth easier than quitting cigarettes, he said — but he quit them both.

He got a new driving job with Nutter. Eventually he bought a decent trailer for $300 and found a slot for it at Sam’s Good RV Park on Northeast Highway 99. When The Columbian visited in mid-October, he was just getting ready to sink a little welcome cash that he’d been owed into a trade-up.

He was working and saving, he said, when he also started having a hard time breathing. He’d gotten used to walking from his friend’s house to Share House for meals, he said, when suddenly it was tough to take even a handful of steps to the bathroom.

Diagnoses piled up: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease caused by years of smoking (“I quit three years ago but the damage is done,” he mused); adult-onset diabetes; and a “95 percent plugged” artery that required a stent. He’s been in and out of the hospital too many times to count and the same goes for prescriptions he’s taking, he said. He’s had to stop working, but Nutter has graciously assured him that his job is still waiting when he’s healthy enough to return, he said.

Biery is grateful for kind people and generous situations that he knows he barely deserves, he said. “God gives you what you need when you need it,” he said.

Staying alive

Share HEN coordinator John Kimball said as many as 60 local people getting HEN assistance are literally homeless or “couch surfing” with friends or family “who are also impoverished. A few extra bucks helps the whole household make a go of it. They are living on the edge already.”

“If it wasn’t for the HEN program, dude, I’d be on the street if not in my grave,” Biery said. “Without it, I wouldn’t have nothing.”

Biery’s HEN assistance covers a big chunk of his essential expenses — including the rent as well as the power that keeps his lungs full of air. “I need electricity just to keep me healthy,” he said. The deal is that he’ll have support for one year, he said. That’ll take him into next spring. By then he fully expects to be driving a truck again, he said.

Meanwhile, he’s become an expert at stretching food stamps benefits. He has applied for those federal disability benefits — the Supplemental Security Income that takes forever to qualify for — and, as expected, he was turned down.

“What I hear is, they keep postponing people, hoping they’ll die,” Biery said. “But that ain’t my plan. I ain’t perfect, but I mean to stay alive.”