The president’s proposed budget would cut funding for four Community Action Partnership programs that benefit low income families in St. Joseph.
“All of our major programs except for Head Start, I think, are either set to be drastically cut or completely eliminated,” said Executive Director Whitney Lanning, of the Community Action Partnership of Greater St. Joseph.
She said the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, is set to be eliminated. The weatherization program is also set to be eliminated. In fact, the grant money that sets CAP as a community action agency could be cut.
“The Community Development Block Grant funds are scheduled to be completely eliminated,” Lanning said.
She said if the proposed budget were to go through as it stood Thursday, thousands of people in northwest Missouri would be impacted. CAP St. Joe aided 1,500 low income individuals who applied for utility assistance last year through its LIHEAP program.
“80 percent of the people who utilize it, utilize it one time in their lifetime,” Lanning said. “It’s a program that you can only use one time a year and the primary people who use it are the elderly and the disabled. These are people who are on fixed incomes and are very vulnerable to poverty and things that poverty causes,” she said. “When we’re talking about that program completely going away you’re literally going to have elderly or disabled people living in homes with no heat.”
The proposed budget would eliminate Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding which Lanning said will have an impact in many areas. She points to small towns without the tax revenues for new water lines or streets. With the help of CDBG funding and local matches, Maysville got new water lines, Osborn received a new waste water plant, and new streets are planned in Stewartsville. CAP just got the opportunity to create two new Head Start centers for preschool services in Cameron and Savannah.
Also on the chopping block, $500,000 in Community Services Block Grant (CSBG) funding which Lanning said goes to meet needs throughout their service area of Andrew, Buchanan, Clinton and DeKalb counties. The cut will impact St. Joseph residents struggling to pay their sewer bills.
“There was a real issue with low income individuals getting their water turned off because they were past due on the sewer payments,” Lanning said, “and so there were people going without water. There were kids going to the schools having to take showers at the schools and having to fill up water bottles and take them home.”
“A year and a half ago we were able to create that sewer assistance program and we spend about $3,000-to-$4,000, sometimes $5,000 a month just on people who are low income, elderly, disabled, people who have children, young children in their home, just to make sure their water stays on,” she said.
She said CAP St. Joe isn’t just providing hand-outs to people, as is often the stigma.
“The way our culture, our society, has started talking about the poor, it’s not very favorable,” Lanning said. “It’s almost as if low-income people have done something wrong and deserve to be low income and that’s just not the case. There aren’t that many living wage jobs, and we do have system issues. but completely eliminating them, at least to me, is not the answer.”
“These communities need to know there’s going to be a dramatic, significant change. It’s going to be much more difficult than it already is,” she said.
If the budget passes as proposed, CAP St. Joe would lose up to $6 million – 99 percent of the agency’s funding. She said they receive some funding from the United Way to help with water assistance as well as rent and mortgage assistance. But she said they could lose the funding to employ the people who administer those funds.
At this point, Lanning suggests writing to lawmakers.
“Working with your legislators, working with your city council people, at all levels of government to say ‘we think this is important and we want it to stay,’ I think is the best advice that I can give,” Lanning said.