UDMO Officials Say Some Of Their Program Eligibility Guidelines Will Soon Be Changing
UDMO Officials Say Some Of Their Program Eligibility Guidelines Will Soon Be Changing
November 16, 2021Steve Schwaller
(Spirit Lake)– Eligibility guidelines for several programs offered by Upper Des Moines Opportunity will soon be changing. CEO Jamie Whitney says it’s the result of federal CARES Act money that will soon be phased out…
“With those funds then, what our state and federal offices are or at least our funders did was raise the guidelines on a lot of that so we could begin assisting families that were either slightly above that poverty scale or whatever due to covid and being unemployed, came a huge demand across the area. Unfortunately we are going to start to see those guidelines come down. Right now with the Community Service Block Grant which funds our outreach, they’re at 200 percent right now but those are going to drop back down to 125 percent as of December 31st. We’re also going to see the same after this year for the Low Income Housing Energy Assistance program and our weatherization program, those will start to decline, and looking at down to their previous levels.”
Whitney says that is likely going to cause some issues for those currently receiving assistance from those programs…
“What tends to happen, though we’ll give adequate warning to everybody that the guidelines will be going down and we can’t help, people don’t always plan ahead, and that’s the unfortunate thing with a lot of the population that we serve. And what will tend to happen is we’ll see an influx of high need come in that we can no longer provide to people, and that’s going to be a real tough thing to get through to them, because not only do they have to go with potentially without a service, they get a little beligerent at times and sometimes very assertive in their manner in trying to get that. It was something that we experienced earlier on and we’re going to experience it again, so we’re going to try to prep our outreach for that as well as our offices for that so we can try to figure out a way to refer them to other resources in the community.”
Whitney adds the costs of supplies and a lack of contractors is also impacting some of their programs, including emergency crisis money for putting in new furnaces for low income residents that qualify. He says the cost of new heating systems is skyrocketing and is straining their resources.
