Blue Mass Group

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Gov’s budget would cut homeless, mental health and employment programs

By 28 Comments

Please take a moment to review the areas of the budget that impact your clients/consumers and advise us as to any other line items in jeopardy that we should be monitoring by emailing Bill Yelenak.

This is the first of several budget proposals that the state will develop over the coming months, and we will continue to keep you informed and advocate on your behalf as the budget process develops.  Learn more about the budget process.

In addition to budget advocacy, the Providers' Council unveiled an ambitious legislative agenda aimed at strengthening community-based human services, but we need your help to increase their likelihood of passage by securing additional co-sponsors.

The February 4 deadline to co-sponsor bills is quickly approaching.  Please take a minute to send a pre-written message to your State Representative and State Senator encouraging them to co-sponsor our bills.

Thank you for all that you do help us support the sector and protect services for your clients/consumers.  If you have any questions or need more information, please email Bill Yelenak.

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  1. The homelessness line item is the only one I can intelligently comment on, since it is the only one listed that is in my secretariat.
    Our proposal is to significantly shift funding away from providing shelter beds and towards keeping people out of shelters. We will spend more on helping keep people in their homes or apartments (thus avoiding shelter) and more on getting people who do become homeless back into housing as quickly as possible.
    This “housing first” approach is not only good policy, but it also saves a lot of money. Keeping people in shelters for extended periods is very expensive. Helping them in these other ways simply costs a lot less (we estimate for the coming year, $23 million less).

    • As a family law attorney, for yes, I have a vibrant private practice which in part funds my court appointed practice, I find over and over again the percentage of folks “working for cash” and “working under the table” is in my experience about 40%.  

      <

      p>In a recent deposition, I encountered both a “plug and print” five year set of tax returns – and 35 1099s with no social security numbers and some were for $38,000 – $70,000 and this is not uncommon.

      <

      p>Besides heavily pruning the bloated, lobbyist driven tax expenditure budger, having sales taxes on both internet sales and using the metrics of current information technology to flush out as much untaxed, underground economic activity are critical.  

      <

      p>Collect the taxes now on the books?  No where close.  Workers who do not have W2 wages or taxes with held and do not pay taxes are very, very common.

      • And balancing the budget on the backs of the poor while not collecting the taxes on the books and allowing corporations a free ride frankly is something I find immoral and intolerable.

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        p>That all being said, placing folks in homes (even a single room or studio) or apartments costs less then 10% of motel or shelter placement, even with supports.

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        p>I have three cases right now where kids would be returned to their parents if only the parents had housing, saving $23,000 a year each in foster care costs for a total of 12 children.

      • Are an embarrassment.  The state requires the payment of a use tax on any good purchased for use in MA on which a MA sales tax or other state’s sales tax (or equivalent) was not assessed.  In my words, if you bought something and would have paid sales tax in MA but didn’t because you bought it somewhere else then you almost certainly owe a use tax.

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        p>All those Amazon packages at Christmas – use tax, especially on the electronics.

        <

        p>All those people buying cars and other goods in NH – use tax.

        <

        p>and the list could go on and on.

        <

        p>Yet, I ask if there is anything done such as:

        <

        p>matching new car registrations with tax collections (sales taxes) and not a word.

        <

        p>asking people to produce credit card statements as part of a tax audit and reviewing the Amazon and other internet purchases, very rare.

        <

        p>There is no need for new laws on the books, just need to enforce the ones already there.  Some are easy, some my take some work, but unless you do it, people will not respect the new rules just like they do not respect the existing rules.

        • though I doubt that use tax avoidance, in and of itself, would justify an audit.

          <

          p>I suspect that
          (i) lots of people just fill in the “get out of jail free” number… IIRC, it’s some percent of adjusted income, and that number means you don’t have to calculate
          (ii) it just doesn’t add up to very much money

          <

          p>I’m not arguing that folks shouldn’t pay it, or that we shouldn’t collect it.  I am arguing that it ought to be a component of every audit, and that the DOR ought to do more audits in general.  I doubt it deserves much more effort than that.  The one exception: autos.  That is bigger value, less frequent a purchase, and easier to track due to registration and insurance, etc.

          • I agree, its not cause for an audit in and of itself, but it does add up and causes businesses in MA to be less competitive against on-line stores due to the built in 6.25% advantage on taxable items for on-line stores.

            <

            p>I would also argue that the use of amazon and other on-line stores over brick and mortar is very prevalent among college students.  Campuses are beseiged with UPS and FedEx trucks with packages purchased on-line many of which should be assessed a sales tax or use tax.  Now many of the students are not MA residents so do not file MA tax returns which would make collections there difficult.  However, I believe that there are many more students that should be filing MA tax returns than do actually file.  Here’s why.  Many students register to vote in MA to partake in elections with the number of such registrations being higher in Presidential election years, of course.  One of the first, if not the first requirement to vote in MA is to declare MA as your state of residence.  This would then subject you to MA tax filing requirements and the use tax, etc.  I think this discussion is overlooked when many students register to vote in MA and the lack of tax compliance in MA by students is a problem worthy of at least a look.  Not wanting to pick on students, but they should comply with the same tax requirements as we do once they declare themselves MA residents.

            • Don’t forget that shipping isn’t free… there are advantages and disadvantages to brick’n’morter and to online purchases.

              <

              p>Now, as for use tax.  Let’s assume that the student’s adjusted gross income (AGI) is less than $25,000.  For undergrads and most grad students who are full time, that’s pretty accurate.

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              p>Guess what?  WS-10

              <

              p>

              Massachusetts Use tax
              AGI per return* liability
              $ 0 – $25,000. . . . . . . . . . . . . $ 0
              25,001 – 40,000. . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
              40,001 – 60,000. . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
              60,001 – 80,000. . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
              80,001 – 100,000. . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
              *From line 7 of Form 1, line 26 Massachusetts AGI Worksheet on page WS-8.

              <

              p>It turns out that their liability is zero.  This isn’t unique to students.  Where does it come from?  I have no idea.  But, it’s legal.  Almost no full-time students owe use tax in Massachusetts.

              <

              p>

              <

              p>P.S. Where a person is registered to vote has nothing to do with tax residency.  The two sets of qualifications/criteria aren’t the same.

        • by making Amazon apply the tax to anything purchased with a Massachusetts credit card/debit card than it would to somehow find a meaningful way to pick who to audit to see if they’re sneaking a few packages from Amazon…

          <

          p>I also don’t like the concept of going out of our way to spend lots of time, money and energy making life miserable for regular people doing something they may or may not even know is against the rules, when there’s much bigger violations of the law, costing a whole lot more money, that’s not being addressed.

          <

          p>We don’t need a police state that harasses the little guys at tax time (it’s inevitable, given the size of our laws and statutes, and the complexities of our tax laws, that everyone will do this at some point in their lives, and probably more than they’d be prepared to admit)… we need a state that makes it easy to apply taxes at the time of purchase, and which is very good at smoking out the big examples of fraud or tax evasion — the flagrant abuses of people who almost certainly know better and which costs this state a whole lot more in the grand scheme of things.

          • Use Tax is miserable.  No one knows when and if it applies to them.  Results in inadvertent noncompliance by the vast majority of good MA residents.

            <

            p>The on-line companies have the capabilities to assess sales tax by state as its relatively rudimentary programming.  All we need is a state legislature willing to apply the rules to on-line and brick and mortar companies.  Multiple benefits: more sales taxes collected; consistent application of sales tax to the sale of the same items regardless of avenue; and provides a potential boost to MA main street retailers (maybe people will get off their computers and go out shopping on Main Street for a change).

            • Use Tax is miserable.  No one knows when and if it applies to them.  Results in inadvertent noncompliance by the vast majority of good MA residents.

              <

              p>What percent just use the worksheet on WS-10 (posted above) and didn’t purchase any individual items out of state with price above $1000?  Because those people are in compliance, period.

              <

              p>So, unless you’ve got data showing “the vast majority of … MA residents” are even in noncompliance, I have a hard time believing that you’re doing anything other than spitballing.

    • According to the Tax foundation, Massachusetts state tax rate is lower than the national average:

      <

      p>http://www.taxfoundation.org/r…

      <

      p>Massachusetts is also one of only seven states to have a flat tax: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F…

      <

      p>Taken together, this means that the wealthiest in Massachusetts pay a lot less than their peers in other states.  

      <

      p>Perhaps its time they pay their fair share so we don’t have to impose more suffering on those with the greatest need, and the least ability to help themselves.

  2. Everybody agrees that a home is better than a shelter.  

    <

    p>Becoming homeless, however, is a crisis that can happen quickly but can take time to solve.  The administration acts as though homelessness can be solved immediately.        

    <

    p>Right now, if you’ve become homeless — because an unexpected illness depleted all your resources, because you lost your job, because your apartment is in a building that was foreclosed on, because the relatives in whose living room your family has been staying insist that you leave before the landlord finds out — there’s an emergency shelter system you and your children may be eligible to stay in while you look for a new place to live.  

    <

    p>The administration’s proposal is to close the door to this temporary shelter for nearly all homeless families.  Instead of a roof over your head, they’ll give you a piece of paper that represents a very modest subsidy you can use to pay for part of the rent in a new apartment – assuming you can find a new apartment.  The subsidies are so small that most communities in the greater Boston area will be far out of your reach.  And the subsidies get smaller and smaller over time.      

    <

    p>So you’ll need to think about a hundred things. But mostly you’ll need to think about where in the world your kids can sleep tonight.  

    <

    p>Nobody envies the task the administration faces in trying to balance its budget in the wake of the Great Recession and severely misplaced financial priorities at the federal level (hello, Senator Brown).  But treating this crisis as an opportunity to do “more with less” is not something I would have expected from Governor Patrick. Governor Romney, more like.                

    • I first heard the Administrations pre budget announcement and thought it sounded great and then I heard Leslie Lawrence from the Coalition for the Homeless this morning on BUR

      <

      p>

      Leslie Lawrence is assistant director of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless. She believes the cuts to emergency shelters will leave families out in the cold.

      “The proposal would only provide shelter to families who are homeless because of domestic violence, fire or natural disaster,” Lawrence said. “And while other families would get housing assistance, the problem is that for some of these families, they can’t lease up something before they’re out on the street, because it takes two weeks to four weeks to be able to secure an apartment.”

      Lawrence said her group asked the administration to provide stopgap funding for families stuck on the streets, but, she said, they said no.

      <

      p>In short you are in the office at 4 in the afternoon with your three kids after you got evicted and they give you a $400 voucher and a list of apartment owners.  

      • Another homeless advocate was quoted supporting the changes.

        <

        p>These changes need to be examined and it needs to be clear that no homeless family will fall through the cracks. At the same time, there is a growing consensus in the world of homelessness policy that shelter, while certainly better than being out on the street, is not really a great response to homelessness and it is much better to immediately get families into housing, which is what this proposal aims to do.

        <

        p>Obviously, the scenario that Judy presents, getting a voucher, a list of apartment owners, and a kick out the door, is not acceptable. But if the scenario is that families in danger of homelessness get quick, comprehensive help finding housing or avoiding eviction in their current housing from both state workers and local housing search agency staff, that is a different story, particularly if the family then avoids spending any nights in either shelter or the street, which seems to be the goal.

        <

        p>This system could definitely be difficult to implement and deserves close watching, but if it is implemented well and includes substantial aid in finding permanent housing (with services, if necessary) than that could be a huge improvement over the current shelter/motel patchwork.

        • This system could definitely be difficult to implement and deserves close watching, but if it is implemented well and includes substantial aid in finding permanent housing (with services, if necessary) than that could be a huge improvement over the current shelter/motel patchwork.

          <

          p>I agree. And that is exactly what we are worried about.  

          • If the program works just like the administration is saying it will, there wouldn’t even be a need be a need to say that homeless families are ineligible for emergency shelter. They’d all get housing first. Problem solved.

            <

            p>So why not take out the “ineligibility” language?    

            <

            p>  

            • All that is left is that you’re right. And if overcrowded and expensive shelters is the real hindrance to fixing the problem, it to me seems like ensuring anyone who needs the emergency shelter, gets it, will help force the administration to work quicker getting people out of the expensive temporary shelter and into the less expensive permanent home.

              <

              p>It also strikes me as reasonable that we should force any bank that wants to foreclose on a building to produce the documents they are supposed to have that proves it can foreclose on the building to begin with.

              <

              p>I have a funny feeling that if we did that, the amount of people getting kicked out of their homes or apartments due to foreclosure would be a helluva lot lower. The SJC’s already got us half the way there, now we just need to finish the job and make the banks produce those documents up front.

                • Where does my dad/mom with three kids that never got the homelessness prevention advice and just got evicted take that $400 voucher for the night?

                  <

                  p>The good Secretary upstream says that

                  <

                  p>

                  Our proposal is to significantly shift funding away from providing shelter beds and towards keeping people out of shelters. We will spend more on helping keep people in their homes or apartments (thus avoiding shelter) and more on getting people who do become homeless back into housing as quickly as possible.

                  <

                  p>I hope that he and his staff are able to figure out a way to help that dad/mom/ get back into housing real quick. Especially in this weather.      

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