Economic Survivial in the Pandemic

Today Crystal talks with returning guest Marcy Bowers from the Statewide Poverty Action Network. Mary gives an update on the continued struggle for low income families as the COVID-19 pandemic continues, and how the Washington State legislature is seeking to address this. A huge takeaway from this episode: Get involved and give the legislature your input!

Resources:

Follow the working families tax exemption discussed on the show here: https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=1297&Year=2021&Initiative=false 

Provide your input by calling the legislative hotline at 1-800-562-6000.

Sign up to participate in committee hearings before the legislature here: https://leg.wa.gov/legislature/Pages/Participating.aspx 

Read Marcy’s op-ed advocating for continued financial support for low-income communities in our state here: https://crosscut.com/opinion/2020/06/ongoing-stimulus-low-income-residents-can-save-wa-communities 

Transcript:

Crystal Fincher (00:13): Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm your host, Crystal Fincher. On this show, we talk to political hacks and policy wonks to gather insight into the local politics and policy through the lens of those doing the work and provide behind the scenes perspectives on politics in our state. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.

 

Today, I'm happy to announce that Marcy Bowers is our guest. She's the Director of the Poverty Action Network, and we are thrilled to have her with us today. I guess I would just start off by asking, what does the Statewide Poverty Action Network do and what brought you to the organization?

 

Marcy Bowers (01:07): Well, hi. Thank you so much for having me today. It is always a pleasure to talk to you and to be here. Poverty Action is an organizing and advocacy organization. We believe that organizing is a key component to doing advocacy work and policy change work. We work with people with low incomes from around the state, we hear from them about what policies we should change, and then we work with them to share their stories and to change those policies. And that is at the state level.

 

And I got into this work, it goes back a long time. I grew up with a single mom. She had to make all sorts of creative choices when I was a kid about how we were going to afford some of the basic food items, and it really stuck with me about - you really can't have real justice and you can't address a number of sociological problems if you are not addressing poverty as a key part of that challenge. And so I feel really lucky that I get paid to do organizing on something I might do as a volunteer without it.

 

Crystal Fincher (02:16): This is so critically important right now. This is on a lot of people's minds, even more now because of the pandemic and how much this is stressing people's finances. More people than ever are out of work. It's a very challenging time for people health-wise - lots of people don't have insurance and they're trying to navigate through that. That is a very oftentimes cost prohibitive and can put people in financial jeopardy, just dealing with that system. And the housing prices are through the roof. The minimum wage has not kept up with inflation. And so everything has gotten more expensive. People are not getting paid enough to keep up with it. This is a really big problem. I guess when you're looking at the state of things right now in Washington, where are we and what can help?

 

Marcy Bowers (03:14): That's a big question, but I think you are absolutely right, that it is harder and harder for people to meet their basic needs to make ends meet. We travel around the state hosting listening sessions - of course this year they've been on Zoom, to hear what people have to say. And probably the number one and number two things that we hear are, we don't have enough money and the costs are going up. So it's a big economic observation that people make, but it's something that people who are living with this reality day-to-day will also tell you are their top two concerns across the board.

 

I think one thing that is always interesting when you kind of look at these big picture things is that often the big economic picture masks some of the deeper disparities, whether that's looking at our economic numbers, excuse me, as a state by race, whether that's looking at the numbers of people who are living in deep poverty. Those numbers have all gotten worse. Even before the pandemic, those numbers were moving in the wrong direction. More people were living in deep poverty. The disparities for black and indigenous women in particular were going up. And those were trending in the wrong direction. And I would say that the pandemic really has done two things there. One, it's made those things worse. Amazon stakeholders and shareholders are doing great right now because everybody also turned to online shopping, but that hasn't changed in most low-income communities and communities of color.

 

The other thing I think that the pandemic did was put a spotlight on the disparities that we had before. I think for people who are falling on hard times for maybe the first time in their life, they had the opportunity to say gosh, maybe I do need to rely on some forms of assistance every once in a while. Maybe there is a role for government to play in some of this. Maybe we don't have to assume that businesses will fix all of this and the private sector will fix all of this.

 

I absolutely agree with you that we are in really difficult, hard times economically for a lot of people, and there's a lot to be sad and disappointed and frustrated about. And I think there are glimmers and moments of hope to look for around how people's perspective on this is changing. Obviously the pandemic does not care whether you are wealthy or not, as it's attempting to infect your body.

 

Crystal Fincher (05:58): Right. And it doesn't care if you're wealthy or not, or if your neighbors are. And the pandemic has definitely reinforced to a lot of people that we're all connected in ways that maybe we didn't appreciate enough before, and both the health and economic wellbeing of our neighbors impacts our lives too. And the better we're all doing, the better we all do. You talk about some glimmers of hope. Right now we are at the beginning of the state legislative session and, as you alluded to, people who are extremely well off, the uber rich have actually gotten richer during this pandemic. And it's also made people at the bottom struggle even more. The issue of income inequality and the difference in what we're asking, the burden that we're asking the extremely rich people to bear versus poor people, couldn't be more different. And there are some proposals to address this in the legislature. What can help?

 

Marcy Bowers (07:07):

I think so my first glimmer of hope, and I appreciate that you just serve that up to me on a T, is I do think the proposal to tax capital gains and to use some of that to fund a Working Families Tax Credit or a state version of the federal Earned Income Tax Credit, I think that's getting more traction than it's ever had before. I think it is being talked about fairly seriously now. I think there are more votes than we've seen. I will tell you sort of on an organizational, personal note, we worked really hard on getting the bill introduced to reform - reform's not the right word. You can edit me out later. To update and modernize the Working Families Tax Credit and make it more inclusive.

That bill was introduced on Monday and by Tuesday we had 46 sponsors in the House on that bill. That is almost 50% of the State House signing on to create and fund and modernize an Earned Income Tax Credit. And that also makes it eligible to ITIN filers, who are often, but not always, immigrant tax filers. A little known other community of people who often use ITIN filers are domestic violence and intimate partner violence survivors. For confidentiality, they use a number that's different than their Social Security number when filing. And so that would be opening up the tax credit to them, but then also making it more available to the people at the lowest income levels in our state.

 

That is a big glimmer of hope to me. That's a ray of hope, maybe more than even a glimmer, but that has so much traction and so much excitement. And the governor has been talking about it, which is also really exciting.

 

Crystal Fincher (08:55): That is very exciting. And I'm really happy to hear that it does include a lot of immigrant communities that are so often excluded from safety nets and help, which doesn't make much sense overall when we look at the impact that that has on our communities and the benefit that it would offer our communities to take care of people who are such a critical and instrumental part of our community. They've been left out of previous COVID relief and so much, so that is very welcome news to hear that they aren't being left behind this time.

 

And other communities, like you talked about, the intimate partner violence, people who've experienced that. Oftentimes there are several groups who are overlooked, and so kudos for making sure that you're bringing everyone along, which of course an organization like yours should be doing, but sometimes it doesn't happen that way. So, that's great.

 

What exactly would this do? If someone is in a position to receive this, what could they expect?

 

Marcy Bowers (10:07): The short version of the story is they can expect some cash. So the way we have modeled it is starting at the very lowest income scales, you get the full benefit, which would be - around $500 would be the benefit, and then it scales up a little bit more with kids. And one of the things, in addition to it just being cash that people can spend however they want and need to meet the needs that they have in their families, is that there's not hoops to jump through to get it. I am a big believer in our state's safety net programs. I think it is absolutely crucial to do that, and I am troubled by how many hoops people have to jump through to just get basic assistance. And I think one of the amazing things about something like this is it's a little bit like a stimulus check, or we're calling it a recovery rebate, where you just get it. You don't have to jump through hoops. You don't have to spend a bunch of time proving your hardship. You don't have to tell your trauma over and over and over again. You just get to receive cash without a bunch of strings attached to it, that you can spend on whatever you and your family need.

 

That, to me, is also something that gives me a lot of hope - that that conversation where we might, as a society, stop questioning the decision making abilities of people who just don't have money, but somehow they can't make a good position. That narrative needs to go. And I think this is another glimmer of hope that this is getting traction and we are beginning to see a shift in how people talk about this kind of stuff.

 

Crystal Fincher (11:45): I completely agree. The conversation around direct cash assistance, which is the most effective way to provide help, and, as you talked about, it has a direct stimulating effect on the economy. So much data to back that up, that if we give people who need it the most – money - they spend it on things they need in their communities. It helps all of our local businesses who are employing our other neighbors. It just makes sense.

 

You talk about we don't make people jump through hoops. The conversation has evolved on this and I have learned a lot over time on this. We talk about, well, what if people get it who don't deserve it or who don't need it? When we put so many barriers before people, it just makes it harder to get it to the people who really do need it and it just prevents it from helping the people who it needs to help and stimulating the economy.

 

If we need to claw back money, you want to do that. You can do that through taxation on the other end, but it should not slow down how we help people and the assistance that we provide. So I appreciate you driving that conversation and you driving that policy, because it is critically important and we need it now more than ever. Families need it now more than ever, and it's really time we stop enabling conversations that make it seem like being poor is some kind of moral failing, a lack of education, that they're just not worthy of having nice things, needing to prove that they deserve it somehow. People deserve to have their basic needs met and to not be insecure with housing or food or any of their other necessities. So thank you so much for doing work in that area. I'm really excited to hear that it's had such a positive reception so far.

 

What's the bill number and what can people do if they want to support that, or I guess, how should they contact their legislators? I assume it will be having a hearing at some point in time, so how can they help advocate for this?

 

Marcy Bowers (14:06): Well, the bill number is... There will be a Senate bill in the coming days, but right now the House bill number is 1297. So one, two, nine, seven, and the prime sponsor of it is Representative Thai, and I think she's done an amazing job. I think this is sort of this other piece of the conversation that would give me a glimmer of hope, and then I really will come back and answer your question about how to be involved - is that I think after the 2020 election, we also saw a new class of freshmen that is our most diverse in history. So based on our most racially diverse, more women than we've ever had before, more of a diversity of experiences, more people who have an experience with poverty and hardship. There's a previously incarcerated legislator now, there's organizers, and that is also very, very, very exciting to me as an organizer, to see people who are excited to come to the legislature and represent their history and their communities and their stories, and speak up and upset a little bit of the status quo that sort of holds things exactly where they've been.

 

Crystal Fincher (15:17):

You're listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. I'm your host, Crystal Fincher. And our guest today is Marcy Bowers from the Statewide Poverty Action Network.

 

Marcy Bowers (15:32): As far as how to take action, there will be hearings coming up, but probably the easiest thing to share over the radio about how to take action is the legislative hotline number. And that phone number is 1(800) 562-6000. And I love the legislative hotline number because you literally call it and some actual live people answer the phone and they take your address and they ask you what you want to tell your legislators, and they literally type a message that goes directly to your legislators.

 

Just on a funny note, I made it my personal mission one year to have the hotline receptionist, or the folks who answered the call there, to know who I was, and so I called the legislative hotline every single day for an entire legislative session. Until finally toward the end of session, it was maybe sometime in March, I called and they said, "Legislative hotline, what's your message?" And I said, "Hi, this is Marcy." And they were like, "Hi, Marcy." I felt like I had had a big achievement.

 

Crystal Fincher (16:48): Oh my goodness. That makes sense. And great tip because super easy, super accessible, to call in and they will give your message to your legislator. Because sometimes it can be hard to figure out, who should I even talk to? Who are my legislators? What's going on? Another thing, as I think about it, that is a little bit different this year, that is definitely different this year, but that can make engaging with your legislators more accessible, is that because we are in this pandemic, they are having a lot of committee meetings and committee hearings via Zoom. And people can sign in and testify via Zoom from wherever they're at. So this has made it a lot more accessible and possible for people to get involved. They don't have to drive to Olympia to have a hearing. 

 

They just started not that long ago having satellite sites but still, you had to get to a satellite site. Now you can sign on to Zoom, as so many of us have done so often, especially since the pandemic. So that's another option that's available if people are following the bill number. And you can Google it, it'll take you to the page and it'll actually just tell you when the - you can see when committee meetings and hearings are coming up, if you want more information on that or any other bills. So just ways to get more involved.

 

I mentioned before we started recording, speaking of the new legislators that are in, we have a very diverse class and just elected a number of black women into the legislature. I just received Representative Kirsten Harris-Talley's first legislative email update, and so that just made me feel warm and fuzzy as I was reading that, so that was a little exciting shortly before we started recording today.

 

I guess that goes into other questions. So we've got capital gains, we've got tax credit relief. What else is there that can help, either in the legislature or even looking at policies that could be helpful at the more local level, whether it's through cities with city councils or county councils. What are policies that we need to be implementing right now and what are policies that people can go to their elected representatives to say, this is what we are expecting you to do to help?

 

Marcy Bowers (19:29): I think it's a good question. It's a big question, again. You're good at the big questions. I think if I were to try and think about kind of what a theme is for this - and it is that individual families and small communities cannot do this alone. And what we need are some of the bigger institutions of our world to play a part in this. Part of why I frame it that way is that during the last recession, almost across the board, states and counties and municipalities did a ton of cost cutting and austerity measures. They gutted their budgets. And some of our priorities this year are still pieces of undoing the mess that was done during the great recession a decade ago. And so I think that if I were to try and think about thematically what is it that the state and local governments need to do, it is to recognize that now is the time for investing in our communities, for bolstering and shoring up the economic situations of our institutions and of our communities and our families. That this is not the time for sort of belt tightening and all of those other weird euphemisms we use for essentially eliminating social programming. Now is not the time for that.

 

I think that message is being heard. I think that's being heard at many levels at this point. And I think that it needs to be a continuous drum beat. And I think one of the key clear components, in addition to direct cash assistance, that I am probably most worried about at just about every level of government is what to do when the eviction moratoriums end. How are we going to ensure that people have some way to pay their back rent, to pay their current rent, to pay their future rent, and not have an incredibly huge spike in homelessness. That it would be not only cruel, but it would also be a public health nightmare in addition to that and on top of that.

 

I think cities are looking at this. I think counties are looking at this. I know the state is looking at this. Theoretically Congress is looking at this. And I think that that component of having a plan for what happens when eviction moratoriums. And when eventually when these sort of state of emergencies end, all of these measures that we have rightfully put in place during this emergency at all levels of government - at some point they're going to end - and it would be a gigantic mistake and incredibly cruel and set us back in a public health measure if we don't have a plan for what happens when the state of emergency is officially over.

 

Crystal Fincher (22:33): What should that plan be? I mean, is it wholesale forgiveness? There are questions related to that in terms of small landlords versus large or corporate landlords. It seems like there needs to be rent forgiveness and some mortgage relief for smaller landlords. What is the package of remedies that you're looking at to actually address this? Because you're exactly right. We're kind of kicking the can down the road - we're literally kicking the can down the road, and pressing a pause button, but we are not undoing the accumulation of debt.

 

As we all know, if people are having a hard time paying their bills right now, there's no way they're going to come up with oftentimes 5 or 10, a multi-thousand dollar balloon payment on top of all of their other bills. That's just not realistic. So we're going to be looking at an eviction tsunami whenever this ends. And, like you said, it would be a public health crisis. It would be a public budget crisis. As you talked about, those austerity measures are actually more expensive in the long run. It costs less to keep someone in their home than to remedy the situation once they do become homeless and experience all of the other challenges that are related to that. We do pay for that as a society. We cannot act like we don't experience consequences from allowing our neighbors to become homeless.

 

If we can take action to prevent that, that is the responsibility, and the lesson that we've learned from going through this before, as you mentioned. So what should be put into place in tandem with the ending of the eviction moratoriums?

 

Marcy Bowers (24:34): I should be clear, I'm not a housing policy expert. We've got some good friends who do that. But I do think it is probably some combination of rental assistance, some forgiveness in some settings, probably some payment plans, some additional work on building more housing, because I think that's one of the aspects that isn't talked about quite as much - is that rightfully there's fewer evictions, but that also means that the people who were homeless at the beginning of an eviction moratorium didn't actually see any turnover in the existing housing stock, so they have been having a much harder time finding a place to live.

 

So we still have, even with all the temporary measures, we still have this problem of a lack of affordable housing. I don't want to totally take our eye off the prize of the need, it's not even a prize, take our eye off the larger problem of needing more affordable housing overall. I suspect, not being a housing expert, that it will be a variety and a combination of things. I know our parent agency provides nonprofit housing and it was a pretty interesting budget conversation when we had no income from our very low income tenants for 8 months of a 12 month fiscal cycle. And I'm aware of that challenge across non-profit housing as well. And I don't think they should be evicted and have to pay their rent right now when there's no opportunity for work.

 

Crystal Fincher (26:18): Part of this conversation as a society that we have to reckon with, that, I think, our common discourse does not currently, is we have to be realistic about what the consequences are of the actions that we take. And we hear so often, there was just another very online conversation about raising the minimum wage and all of the various reactions to that going, "It's going to put everyone out of work and it's going to make a Big Mac cost $20," which is all of the conversation that we hear every time that the minimum wage is raised. And as we saw in Seattle, the sky did not fall. In fact, it helped a number of people and businesses.

 

As we are navigating through this, I think we need to be realistic in that, yeah, we are asking people who have $60 million to maybe have $57 million. That we're going to ask them to carry some kind of tax burden. We don't have an income tax in this state. We have the most regressive tax structure, meaning that we ask poor people to pay a much higher percentage of their income in taxes than we ask rich people, and we have a system of fees to compensate for the taxes that we are not asking from people who can so easily afford them.

 

We have billionaires that are here in our state, who have gotten billions of dollars richer just during the pandemic, and what we're really talking about is, should we be putting people onto the street or should we be asking people like Jeff Bezos to maybe deal with $298 billion instead of $300 billion. That's what we're talking about. And I think that we just have to continue to focus on really having the scale of the conversation and what is a consequence of asking for a tiny percentage more in taxes for people who actually can't spend the amount of money that they have in their lifetimes versus the consequences of not providing those taxes and not having any way to keep people in their homes, or keep them fed, or to have those necessities in life. That's certainly a soap box that I have hopped on before, I'll continue to hop on, but I am comfortable asking someone to scrape by with $57 million instead of $60 million, because it can benefit so many other people.

 

I guess as we are wrapping this up, what message would you send to people who are listening, whether they're in the position of being in need of help right now or wondering what they can do to help?

 

Marcy Bowers (29:17): I think my message is, in some ways, it's always the same, which is that now is the opportunity to speak up. Now is the opportunity to tell people why this is important, to speak your truth to power, to stand up. I think as the Trump administration comes to a close, I think we saw the consequences of staying silent when voices really needed to come out and say something different. And this is the time. This is our time. This is the time to come out and say, this is what we want to see, this history is unjust and it can be fixed. Policy problems and a decision to not have a capital gains tax or an income tax is what got us into this mess and changing that policy can help be part of the strategy to get us out of this mess.

 

It's time to stand up and say something and to not be afraid that your voice doesn't matter. I've heard often over the years, "Well, I don't know. I'm just one person. Does it really matter?" And it really does. Legislators hear a whole lot of facts and figures, they get a lot of statistics, they get a lot of dollar amounts, but what they don't necessarily get a lot of are people telling them why a change is needed and how it would impact them. Whether that's calling the hotline number, whether that's signing up to testify via the legislative website. Even if it's not, even if you're not ready to testify, you can still sign up and say, I'm pro this bill, or I'm con this bad bill. You don't have to be ready necessarily to speak up. You can just be ready to put your name out there, excuse me, and say you support something. But now's the time.

 

Crystal Fincher (30:58): Well said. Very well said. Thank you so much for joining us today. We will include in our show notes, as we do all the time, a full text transcript of the show in addition to the audio, and we will include links to both the information about the bills that we talked about and information on how you can sign up to testify or just to signal that you are for or against a particular bill. So make sure to make your voice heard, the legislature is considering these issues right now, and it really does matter if they hear from you or not. That does make a difference. Thank you so much, and we'll talk to you next time.

 

Marcy Bowers (31:43): Thank you so much.