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Adult Foster Care and SNAP

MLRI
Low-income persons who provide in-home care to disabled adults through the Adult Foster Care (AFC) program may be entitled to higher SNAP benefits. A household has the choice to include or exclude adult foster care members in the SNAP application.  The attached flyer gives additional…

SNAP Benefits: Resources for Legally Present Immigrants (FAQs in English, Spanish, Portuguese)

MLRI
Certain low-income immigrants who are legally present may qualify for SNAP (food assistance) benefits. The amount of benefits depends on household income and expenses. Below are FAQs in English, Spanish and Portuguese. State-funded SNAP benefits ended in April of 2024. These fliers were updated in…

Foster Care Families and SNAP

MLRI
Low income families who provide foster care may be entitled to higher SNAP benefits. If you are caring for a foster child, you have the choice to include or exclude your foster child in the SNAP application. This is true even though your family and foster child share all food together. Learn…

SNAP Replacement Benefits due to Natural Disaster, Power Loss, Flooding or other Misfortune

MLRI
Federal and state SNAP rules provide for replacement of food lost by individual SNAP recipients due to "household misfortune." Household misfortune includes fire, flood, loss of electricity (for 4 hours or more), equipment (refrigerator/freezer) failure or other disaster. To…

Pillars, Policies, And Plausible Pathways Linking Digital Inclusion And Health Equity

Amy R. Sheon and Elaine C. Khoong
Digital inclusion and health equity are connected through direct and indirect pathways. Strengthening both pathways will require broad policy and structural reforms to eliminate geographically based sociodemographic segregation and create conditions for people to use the internet to thrive.

Decades of Disinvestment: Historic Redlining and Mortgage Lending Since 1981

National Community Reinvestment Coalition
A link to a report that uncovers evidence on the impact of redlining.  Redlining was one of several practices and policies which were instrumental in the creation of existing patterns of residential segregation.  

Elder Benefits Programs -- BBT Training

CLA, DLC, GBLS, MLRI, GSSSI
Materials from the April 30, 2024 Elder Benefits training, presented as part of the MLRI/MCLE Basic Benefits Training Series: Agenda Presentations Elder Basic Benefits Training: Additional resources for older adults (pdf of slides) Elder Basic Benefits Training: Medicare part D and…

Massachusetts State Supplement Payment Levels

Disability Law Center
Massachusetts State Supplement Payment Levels for 2024

House Ways and Means FY 2025 Budget Proposal: MLRI's Preliminary Analysis of Selected Issues

MLRI
On April 10, 2024, the House Committee on Ways and Means released its budget proposal for fiscal year 2025 (FY 25), which is referred to as House 4600.  MLRI offers this preliminary analysis of selected budget topics affecting low-income residents of the Commonwealth.   Download…

The new census racial categories ‘erase’ Afro Latinos

Tanya Kateri Hernandez
The new OMB standard now combines both inquiries into a single question of “What is your race and/ or ethnicity?” and collapses Latino/Hispanic ethnic identity into the list of ethno-racial categories with Black, White, Asian, American Indian, Middle Eastern, Native Hawaiian. While the OMB…

FCC rule against broadband digital discrimination goes into effect

Linda Hardesty
The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law required the FCC to adopt rules to prevent and eliminate digital discrimination in regard to access to broadband, and those rules went into effect on March 22. According to the FCC, the rules will “help to ameliorate a digital divide that has…

Narrative Toolkits

The FrameWorks Institute
With sample language and user notes, FrameWorks’ issue-based toolkits offer practical framing strategies that communicators can put to immediate use.

2024 Upper Income Limits for MassHealth and other Coverage Programs

MLRI
Attached is MLRI's March 1, 2024 Table upper income limits in MassHealth, MSP, Health Safety Net, CMSP and ConnectorCare, along with the Nov 1 2024 Table (updated Jan 30, 2025) showing the updated income limits for ConnectorCare coverage in 2025; open enrollment for 2025 begins on Nov 1,…

Shifting the Harmful Narratives and Practices of Work Requirements

Jhumpa Bhattacharya, Anne Priceand Saadia Van Winkle
Work requirements for public assistance programs come from a long history of racism in the United States, are ineffective, and are bad for the economy. So, what keeps them alive today?  Means-tested forms of structural racism, such as requiring a person to work to receive public benefits,…

Work Requirements Are Rooted in the History of Slavery

Ife Finch Floyd and Suzanne Wikle
Work requirements—or requiring people to find employment in order to access public benefits—force people to prove that they deserve a social safety net. But where did they come from, and why are they still a central part of economic policy today? 

The Racial Wealth Divide And Black Homeownership: New Data Show Small Gains, Deep Fragility

Joseph Dean
KEY TAKEAWAYS: Black households had the largest percentage increase of any group in median net worth from 2019 to 2022, up 60% to $44,900. Black wealth gains did not, however, narrow the racial wealth divide to any meaningful degree: A three percentage-point contraction in the Black-White…

Criminalization of Homelessness

Eric Tars, Legal Director, National Homelessness Law Center
From vagrancy laws and the workhouses of pre-industrial England to legal segregation, sundown towns, and anti-Okie laws in the U.S., ordinances regulating the use of public space have long been used to exclude marginalized persons based on race, gender identity, national origin, disability, age, and…

Sworn Statement for Declaring Shelter Expenses for SNAP

MLRI
Households applying for SNAP benefits are not required to submit a lease, landlord verification or rent receipt to verify shelter costs. Instead, households can self declare rent, mortgage, and type of utility costs by sending DTA a written statement or providing the information to DTA over the…

The DTA Assistance Line: Information for Clients and Community Organizations

MLRI
MLRI knows that right now it can be very hard to reach DTA by phone. Click here for a list of tips from MLRI on how to get help if you can't get through the DTA Assistance Line.  How do I reach DTA? DTA has one main phone number called the DTA Assistance Line: …

Income and Benefit Standards for SNAP

MLRI
SNAP benefit levels, gross and net income tests, and deductions.

National Trends of School Pushout: Summary of Discipline Data for Girls in U.S. Public Schools, 2011-2018

National Black Women's Justice Institute
A snapshot of national disciplinary trends among girls in public schools broken down by race and ethnicity across four school years between 2011 and 2018.

Governor's FY 2025 Budget Proposal: MLRI's Preliminary Analysis of Selected Issues

MLRI
On January 24, 2024, Governor Healey released her budget proposal for fiscal year 2025 (FY 25), which is referred to as House 2. MLRI offers this preliminary analysis of selected budget topics impacting low-income residents of the Commonwealth. Download MLRI's preliminary analysis…

Why DEI Leaders Are Burning Out — and How Organizations Can Help

Kelly Pledger Weeks, Nicolina Taylor, Alison Hall Birch, Myrtle P. Bell, Anna Nottingham, and Louwanda Evans
Our in-depth interviews with 23 HR and DEI professionals across various industries in the United States offered evidence that the mantle of DEI work is emotionally taxing. These professionals shared vivid accounts of stress and frustration and expressed the need for near-constant emotional…

Answers to Common Bankruptcy Questions

Greater Boston Legal Services and National Consumer Law Center
This brochure was originally prepared by the National Consumer Law Center, and adapted for Massachusetts by Greater Boston Legal Services. View it on the MassLegalHelp website: Answers to Common Bankruptcy Questions What is involved in Filing for Bankruptcy

What Is Marginalization & What Can You Do About It?

Beth Castle
Marginalization, as we currently define it, is the act of relegating someone to an unimportant or powerless position—making them feel, if you will, like they’re the notes squeezed into the margins of society. Scrawled. Practically unreadable. Small. At work, marginalization happens because a…

Building Narrative Power

Color of Change
Papers and Presentations Focused on Strategy, Infrastructure & Content for Culture Change and Narrative Change Strategies

Who lives here: Digging deep into Boston's demographics

Simón Rios
More than 650,000 people live in Boston — tiny by comparison to other major cities — but nearly 5 million inhabit the metro area. Boston itself officially became a majority-minority city in 2000, meaning fewer than half of residents identify as “non-Hispanic white.” Latinos, Black and…

Are You Constantly On Guard at Work? You Might Be Experiencing Emotional Tax

Stephanie Olsen
Emotional tax is defined as a psychological burden, usually as a result of being different from those around you in terms of race or gender.  Are you always on high alert, defending and explaining yourself when you really shouldn’t have to? Maybe you hide your true self, trying to deflect…

Race Relations in Mexico- The Color Hierarchy

LibreTexts
Explanation of how racial relations in Mexico have been influenced by the colonial caste system.   Document date unknown.

How Tone Policing is Used to Silence Marginalized People

Nicole Cardoza, Anti-Racism Daily
Tone policing is one of many ways that dominant culture “polices” marginalized people. Either subconsciously (informed by one’s unconscious bias) or intentionally, some people use tone policing to deflect from their own inappropriate misconduct and put the person reacting to their…

Diversity Nudges The transformational power of small changes in attracting, recruiting, and onboarding new employees can deliver a diversity dividend

Paola Cecchi-Dimeglio
Despite their commitments to diversifying their workforces, many companies continue to struggle with attracting, hiring, and retaining employees from underrepresented groups. Achieving workplace diversity is not easy, but leaders can target, address, and nudge specific data points and…

Refugees, Asylum Seekers, and Migrants

Amnesty International
There are many reasons why people around the globe seek to rebuild their lives in a different country. Some people leave home to get a job or an education. Others are forced to flee persecution or human rights violations such as torture. Millions flee from armed conflicts or other crises or…

Settlement: SNAP lawsuit against DTA about use of SNAP out of state

MLRI
  This information is for people who got a notice titled "Notice of Class Action Settlement in SNAP Lawsuit Against the Department of Transitional Assistance (DTA)." These notices were mailed by DTA on July 3, 2023. Click here to see the notice in English.  Para leer esta…

Haitian Immigrants in the United States

Beatrice Dain and Jeanne Batalova
The recent increase in immigration to the United States from Haiti is the latest chapter in a decades-long story of migration in response to an array of disasters and crises. The United States is the world’s top destination for Haitian migrants. The nearly 731,000 Haiti-born U.S. residents are…

White patients are more likely than Black patients to be given opioid medication for pain in US emergency departments

Trevor Thompson and Sofia Stathi
White people who visit hospital emergency departments with pain are 26% more likely than Black people to be given opioid pain medications such as morphine. This was a key finding from our recent study, published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. We also found that Black patients were…

I studied 1 million home sales in metro Atlanta and found that Black families are being squeezed out of homeownership by corporate investors

Brian Y. An
It turns out that while Wall Street firms control just a sliver of the single-family rental market nationally, they can have much more influence at the local level. In the Atlanta metro area, these firms own nearly one-third of all single-family rental properties. They’re even more…

2023 Upper Income Limits in MassHealth and Health Connector

MLRI & MassHealth
MassHealth updates its income standards with the current year's poverty level on March 1. Attached is MLRI's table showing the upper income levels for MassHealth and Health Connector programs, updated to show the cost of living adjustments for 2023 that take effect in MassHealth…

How to think about race and administrative burdens

Don Moynihan
Administrative burdens limit access to resources and generate negative experiences of government. A related concern is that these burdens reinforce patterns of inequality. Indeed, the first formal guidance the the Biden administration offered on reducing administration burdens was in…

Racial bullying in schools is on the rise — including here in Mass.

Alexis RickmersOren Sellstrom
At a tranquil pond on Cape Cod this summer, a white teenager invoked George Floyd’s name. But it wasn’t to support the Black Lives Matter movement — it was to torment a Black youth, mocking him as his white friend allegedly trying to drown him. Earlier this month, white students at Concord…

Income/Food Benefits and Immigrant Eligibility: Chart on Eligible Statuses

Pat Baker, MLRI & Naomi Meyer, GBLS
Cash and food stamp/SNAP eligibility chart by immigration status for Massachusetts residents.

Five Steps to Build and Sustain Diversity in Your Organization

Keith D. Dorsey
Creating an equitable environment and supporting diverse populations in navigating them are key to sustaining workplace diversity. Organizations can work toward this goal by taking five steps: committing to sponsorship, addressing systemic factors to eliminate glass ceilings, diagnosing “glass…

Why Pay Transparency Regulations Are a Strategic Management Opportunity

Tamara Montag-Smit, Karoline Evans, Brandon Smit, and Cassondra Batz-Barbarich
Robust appraisal systems make pay transparency an opportunity to improve performance rather than a compliance burden.     

The Racism Black Kids Endure Is Spiraling Into a Health Crisis

Margo Snipe
Article discussing how new research shows that although racism might not be the most common type of discrimination, it had the greatest impact on teens. For Black kids, that stress is often caused by racism that comes in school settings: from peers, teachers, or administrators

New MassHealth Unit for Problem Cases

MassHealth
New Escalation Protocol for Problem MassHealth Cases: The Service Solution Unit (SSU) MassHealth is standing up a new process to “escalate” problem MassHealth cases after initial attempts to resolve an issue with MassHealth Customer Service or the MassHealth Enrollment Center or other units…

Vietnamese Immigrants in the United States

Jeanne Batalova
In previous decades, the vast majority of Vietnamese immigrants to the United States arrived as refugees. Recently, most are coming through family reunification channels, either as immediate relatives of U.S. citizens or through other family-sponsored pathways. The change represents an evolution of…

Measuring The Enduring Imprint Of Structural Racism On American Neighborhoods

Zachary Dyer, Matthew J. Alcusky, Sandro Galea, and Arlene Ash
A long history of discriminatory policies in the United States has created disparities in neighborhood resources that shape ethnoracial health inequities today. To quantify these differences, we organized publicly available data on forty-two variables at the census tract level within nine domains…

Latino, Hispanic, Latinx, Chicano: The History Behind the Terms

Yara SIMÓN
The effort to coin a term to describe a wildly diverse group of Americans has long stirred controversy. The terms Latino, Hispanic and Latinx are often used interchangeably to describe a group that makes up about 19 percent of the U.S. population. While it’s now common to use umbrella terms to…

Race Wealth Snapshots

National Community Reinvestment Coalition
Catalog of socioeconomic briefs on racial wealth gaps.

Framework for Evaluating Reformist Reforms vs Abolitionist Steps

UpEND
The questions in this document provide a guide to analyze whether proposed reforms to family policing further entrench the family policing system or move us closer to abolition of family policing. The questions we ask are a reflection of the world we want to build—one without family policing and one…

MassHealth Monitoring Project

MLRI
The mission of MLRI’s MassHealth Monitoring Project is to ensure that everyone on MassHealth keeps their coverage, or moves to other affordable coverage, during the April 1, 2023 to March 31, 2024 MassHealth eligibility redetermination process. This website - which includes…