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This bill defines
homelessness and establishes it as an emergency for the purposes of being
granted General Assistance (GA), assuming applicant is not otherwise
ineligible or disqualified from receiving GA. By being deemed an emergency,
municipalities would be allowed to go over the normal monthly cap on housing
expenditures in GA. This will potentially increase assistance payments made
by municipalities and increase amounts reimbursed to municipalities by the
Department of Health and Human Services. A more precise estimate of the
fiscal impact is not possible because recipient data related to number of
months on assistance, amounts paid to each recipient, number of recipients
who return and the frequency of emergency status resides at the municipal level
and varies over time.
Additionally, this bill makes an applicant for general assistance who
voluntarily abandons or refuses to use an available resource without just
cause ineligible to receive general assistance to replace the abandoned or
refused resource for a period of 120 days. This will potentially reduce
assistance payments made by municipalities and reduce amounts reimbursed to
municipalities by the Department of Health and Human Services. The potential
savings to the department is not expected to be significant because the
frequency of refusing or abandoning resources is expected to be very small,
the municipalities abilty to identify abandoned or refused resources is
unknown and recipients typically do not stay in the program, having to
reapply each month they seek help. A more precise estimate of the fiscal
impact is not possible because recipient data related to number of months on
assistance, amounts paid to each recipient, number of recipients who return
and the frequency of refusal of resources resides at the municipal level and
varies over time. |