Many states across the country have been going through economic crises, leading to budget cuts in important programs. One example of this takes us to Texas, where years of cuts to the state's homelessness program have left local nonprofits scrambling to save their own services.
The Star-Telegram reported on Saturday that during last year's budget crisis, legislators got rid of a $20 million homeless housing and services program, as well as an employment program and street outreach and rental assistance services. The programs were first created in 2009 to help the state's eight largest cities fight homelessness. The $20 million was distributed to local nonprofits in a two-year cycle. Those funds are now gone.
The cuts have forced these same nonprofits to cut costs in order to preserve their own services. The Salvation Army in Fort Worth had to cut their case managers from four to one, and saw its client assessments drop from 1,400 to less than 500 in only three months.
The state will still provide nonprofits with $5 million drawn from various sources, such as the housing trust fund, this year. This was meant to fill the void created by the elimination of the program, but it will still only provide half of the money cities would normally receive. For example, Arlington will only get $250,000 rather than $500,000.
There is some hope for nonprofits on the horizon. The United Way of Tarrant County announced last week it would be awarding $2.4 million in grants from Fort Worth's Directions Home program. These grants would provide money for case managers, career planning, and rental vouching programs. The Salvation Army hopes to use the money to hire two new case managers for its emergency shelter. Yet bigger issues lay ahead. There is currently no funding planned for homelessness programs in 2013. Nonprofits are planning to lobby the state to at least get the $5 million from this year again.
You can read the full story on this issue in The Star-Telegram.
Showing posts with label state budget cuts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label state budget cuts. Show all posts
Monday, March 5, 2012
Friday, March 25, 2011
Oaklan Nonprofit University Gets Hit By Budget Cuts
It looks like yet another round of state budget cuts are impacting a nonprofit. This time, it's Patten University in Oakland, CA.
According to a story in the Mercury News, the Christian university (the only traditional nonprofit college in Oakland) will be affected by a series of cuts that were supposed to be only targeted towards for-profit colleges. However, since Patten because they have high borrowing and default rates. Because of this, they will be subject to a new rule that denies tax-payer funded Cal Grants to schools that have 40% or more students using federal loans, and where 24.6% of borrowers default on those same loans. The new legislation as among $14 billion in state budget cuts signed by Governor Jerry Brown on Thursday; the cuts were mainly a result in growing anger at for-profit universities that get tax-payer money yet don't help their students prepare for jobs.
Patten's president, Gary Moncher, was still very shocked that his school was going to be affected by this new rule, and he said that he and his colleagues were trying to find a way around it. He argued that a very small number of their graduates are skewing the numbers, and that most of the students who default on their loans take classes online, which makes it hard to discourage them from doing this.
If Patten University finds no way around this rule, there will have to be a lot of changes at the school. For one thing, there is speculation that they will cut back on online courses, as they tend to attract students with high borrowing and default rates. Moncher says, however, that they are going to put all of their energy in getting Patten off the list. As he says:
According to a story in the Mercury News, the Christian university (the only traditional nonprofit college in Oakland) will be affected by a series of cuts that were supposed to be only targeted towards for-profit colleges. However, since Patten because they have high borrowing and default rates. Because of this, they will be subject to a new rule that denies tax-payer funded Cal Grants to schools that have 40% or more students using federal loans, and where 24.6% of borrowers default on those same loans. The new legislation as among $14 billion in state budget cuts signed by Governor Jerry Brown on Thursday; the cuts were mainly a result in growing anger at for-profit universities that get tax-payer money yet don't help their students prepare for jobs.
Patten's president, Gary Moncher, was still very shocked that his school was going to be affected by this new rule, and he said that he and his colleagues were trying to find a way around it. He argued that a very small number of their graduates are skewing the numbers, and that most of the students who default on their loans take classes online, which makes it hard to discourage them from doing this.
If Patten University finds no way around this rule, there will have to be a lot of changes at the school. For one thing, there is speculation that they will cut back on online courses, as they tend to attract students with high borrowing and default rates. Moncher says, however, that they are going to put all of their energy in getting Patten off the list. As he says:
"If we are knocked out of Cal Grant eligibility, that will discourage students from coming to Patten. And obviously it would be a loss of revenue, which is bad."Read the full story over at Mercury News.
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