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Government assistance programs often leave out those who earn slightly above the poverty threshold, creating a gap where people can neither access help nor make ends meet.

In a recent interview for the ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Poverty Project at the University of ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ I ran into a woman who brings in about $2,200 a month for her and her son but does not qualify for SNAP. She makes too much money to receive government help but barely enough to get by. She has had to get rid of her car because she could not afford food, pick and choose what bills to prioritize so she can have money for food, and will even skip meals because she cannot afford food.

Just like many Americans, she is stranded in the gap of being too poor to thrive but not poor enough to qualify for help.

This is a harmful and frustrating gap that causes thousands of families to struggle to get by and reveals a fatal flaw in the way government assistance is designed.

Housing insecurity and poverty are deeply interconnected as we all know. Programs like housing choice vouchers and SNAP provide critical support but most of the time only for those who meet the firm income guidelines. For a lot of families these guidelines don’t feel fair because they don’t look at anything more than income.

In just about every one of my interviews with members of the ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ community it was brought to my attention that they wished government assistance programs looked at the bigger picture within their situation. If someone in their family needs accommodations most of the time that brings up their cost of living which is not taken into account when applying for government assistance, especially SNAP.

For families just above these thresholds, the reality can be grim and earning a little more often means losing everything. This “benefits cliff� traps working families in poverty, forcing impossible choices between better jobs and basic survival.

A solution for this is both achievable and overdue. With America’s harmful welfare avoidance, Desmond reveals in his book ‘Poverty, by America’ that nearly $142 billion in aid for low-income Americans goes unused annually due to the complex eligibility requirements and the administrative hurdles (Desmond, 2023: 89 & 90). As a solution America must adopt a tiered benefits system that allows assistance to gradually taper off as one’s income increases, rather than cutting it off abruptly. By doing this we can prevent families from falling into financial freefall when they start to earn slightly more than they had in the past. Not only would this put the unutilized money to use but it would by far change lives for Americans experiencing poverty and most likely help people get out of poverty by allowing them to start to repay debt and save money.

On another note, policies like these have been successful in plenty of governments elsewhere. For example, in countries with tiered benefit models, families are more supported and encouraged as they climb out of poverty, in time reducing poverty and long-term dependency on government assistance as well as creating stronger communities. It is pretty obvious that Americans can and should follow this governmental framework.

It is way past due that we recognize that poverty is not a steady line on a chart.

It’s a daily struggle for stability and dignity and our policies must start to reflect and accommodate that.