The economic crisis at both the state and federal levels will shortly impact all Americans. But what has gone underreported is how the cuts to vital services, like HIV/AIDS programs, food stamps and Medicare, will affect the LGBT community.

Thank heavens for The Williams Institute at UCLA’s Law School. This great institution puts out great reports examining everything from poverty in the LGBT community to how marriage equality actually HELPS state budgets. Well, the Los Angeles-based Institute put out a paper this month taking a look at the California budget debacle, concluding that the LGBT community will be hit hard by proposed cuts to the state’s funding system.

First, some background. According to the California Health Interview Study (CHIS), a random-dial telephone survey conducted every two years on a wide range of health topics, 13.4% of lesbian/bisexual women and 7.2% of gay/bisexual men live in poverty in the Golden State. That is compared with the wider statistics that 12.4% of all Californians and 13.0% of all Americans live below the poverty line. The Williams Institute found that the children of LGB people are twice as likely to live in poverty as the children of different-sex couples.

So the natural conclusion is that LGBT folks and their families would be hit, if not more so, if public benefits get slashed. And as we know from previous posts, it sometimes costs more to be poor.

The Williams Institute says that any reduction in Medi-Cal spending could affect approximately 88,000 LGB adults. The CHIS shows that that 12.0% of California’s LGB population receive Medi-Cal benefits. Of these Medi-Cal recipients, 27.0% report having at least one child. As a result, we estimate over 25,000 children will also be impacted.”

Unless California and other struggling states get a bailout from the federal government, many of these cuts will become reality – and the effects won’t only be on the young, but also the old. Many elderly LGBT folks saw their retirements go up in smoke as the stock markets collapsed during the latter months of 2008.

The Desert Sun, Palm Springs’ local paper, just put out a story on how the community’s elderly LGBT population is coping. The answer? Not well.

Take Betty Weiss.
At 68, she doesn’t have a partner or family nearby.
‘œI thought I was coming into retirement being able to enjoy life. I just saw it vanish,’ the Thousand Palms resident said.
‘œI’m really scared. I’m not 70 yet and I could live another 20 years. Every time something happens, I’m alone.
‘œWhen I get sick, that’s when I wish that I had a partner. I live in fear when I get sick.’

The Williams Institute Study makes a lot of dire predictions for the thousands of LGB adults who receive Food Stamps, CalWORKS (TANF) benefits, and housing subsidies. “For some of these programs, such as CalWORKS, the majority of recipients have children. While the data does not allow for precise estimates, tens of thousands of children of LGB recipients will also be impacted by cuts to these programs. The net effect on these programs is still unknown since they also rely on federal resources. Nonetheless, it is clear that thousands of LGB people and their families will be negatively affected were these programs’ funding to be cut.”

Last, but not least, the most recent revised California budget also includes more than $80 million in cuts to HIV/AIDS programs such as the AIDS Drugs Assistance Program (ADAP). Although publicly available CHIS data do not identify those receiving ADAP, many LGB people will also be impacted by any cuts to ADAP since over half of California’s 130,000-175,000 people living with HIV/AIDS are men who have sex with men.

We gotta hope that things will change as public officials negotiate and come to their senses. But notwithstanding some federal funding miracle, the LGBT community will have a lot of challenges come 2010 other than reversing Proposition 8. It’s time we used some of that money to take care of our own, since no one else seems to be doing so.

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