November 4, 2011 | 12:00 PM | By

D.C.’s Longtime Welfare Recipients Facing Cuts To Assistance

The District government is looking to cut off assistance to longtime welfare recipients. More than 230,000 D.C. residents receive either food stamps, Medicaid help or welfare checks.


About 8 percent of those residents receive welfare checks from a federal program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF. But their eligibility only lasts five years.

“More than half of the clients we have on TANF have been on assistance for over five years,” [Department of Human Services Director David] Berns said. “We haven’t really had a community-focused way … into moving them into self-sufficiency, so they’ve languished in the system.”

The cutoff for TANF federal funding was put in place in 1996. But jurisdictions, including D.C., were slow to enforce that and often found supplemental funding through grants or other programs. Berns said the city is now spending several million dollars annually to keep paying benefits to individuals who ran out the clock on federal assistance.

Read more at: washingtonexaminer.com

  • kevin aiken

    the city council failed them , look  at the 7 eleven’s look at  the  gas  ststion’s  look at the
    construction site’s. and the thing about it  is  that 90%  live,out of the city.we cant even
    get  them job’s  in  there own community  you  have  immigrant  that that work  in a
     7 eleven that don’t  even no  what is cat food  but yet  they  have a job.  i can go  on  and  on  put  this  way  if  all of  them  wanted  jobs  then  what.

    kevin  aiken

  • kevin aiken

    the city council failed them , look  at the 7 eleven’s look at  the  gas  ststion’s  look at the
    construction site’s. and the thing about it  is  that 90%  live,out of the city.we cant even
    get  them job’s  in  there own community  you  have  immigrant  that that work  in a
     7 eleven that don’t  even no  what is cat food  but yet  they  have a job.  i can go  on  and  on  put  this  way  if  all of  them  wanted  jobs  then  what.

    kevin  aiken

  • Edwinacauley

    Its so sad I feel for the.kids some people really needs it at least help them get jobs no job no income then its going to be lets take the kids sad