Helping Americans Help Themselves: Toward a National Single Stop Policy and More Efficient, More Effective Poverty Fighting

In “Helping Americans Help Themselves: Toward a National Single Stop Policy and More Efficient, More Effective Poverty Fighting,” Tom Freedman, who is president of Freedman Consulting, LLC and served as a senior advisor to President Clinton, and Michael Weinstein, who is senior vice president of the Robin Hood Foundation, identify the key problems with today’s poverty fighting system:

·         Barriers to Access: Many of those eligible for federal poverty-fighting programs often find the process for enrollment is too cumbersome, the rules governing eligibility are too opaque, or the access to services too difficult.

·         Low Participation Rates: Due to such barriers to access, too many eligible recipients fail to enroll in programs designed to help Americans rise out of poverty.

·         Program Effectiveness: Recent studies show that low utilization significantly damages the poverty-fighting impact of federal efforts.

The best way to address these problems, the authors suggest, is to adopt a national Single Stop policy — the extension of an idea already borne out locally in New York and other cities — to offer the wealth of federal assistance programs at one, easily accessed location. Single Stop would alleviate many of the obstacles to enrollment and would simplify the process for receiving assistance.

Many of the programs aimed at helping Americans help themselves have the potential to make good headway in the fight against poverty. Now, we need to make them more efficient and effective and get those who are eligible to enroll to do so.