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9525-7429503140710333375INCREASED BENEFITS DURING THE COVID-19 CRISISINCREASED BENEFITS DURING THE COVID-19 CRISISCOVID BENEFITS - INCREASED BENEFITS DURING THE COVID-19 CRISISUNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS - APPLY ONLINE OR CALL IF YOU ARE NOT WORKING BECAUSE OF COVIDAPPLY EVEN IF YOU WERE A CONTRACTOR, GIG WORKER, SELF EMPLOYED OR UNEMPLOYED APPLY EVEN IF YOU WERE DENIED BEFORE COVIDAPPLY IF YOU CAN’T GET OUT TO LOOK FOR A JOBDO NOT APPLY IF YOU ARE DISABLED OR GETTING PAID LEAVEPAID SICK LEAVE – 2 WEEKS APPLY IF YOU ARE SICK, QUARANTINED, OR CARING FOR SOMEONE ELSEAPPLY EVEN IF YOUR JOB HAS NO LEAVEAPPLY IF YOUR KIDS SCHOOL OR DAYCARE IS CLOSEDPAID EMERGENCY LEAVE – 3 MONTHSAPPLY IF YOUR KIDS SCHOOL OR DAYCARE IS CLOSEDFOOD STAMPS – APPLY IF YOU WERE DENIED OR NOT ELIGIBLE BEFORE COVID TANF – APPLY IF YOU HAVE KIDS AND LITTLE OR NO INCOME THIS MONTHCALL 2-1-1 OR APPLY ONLINE FOR SNAP AND TANFWORK REQUIREMENTS AND JOB SEARCH REQUIRMENTS WAIVED DURING COVID FOR SNAP, TANF, AND UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITSMOST BENEFITS WILL NOT BE CUT OFF DURING COVIDYOUR MEDICAID WILL NOT BE CUT OFF DURING COVIDSNAP IS EXTENDED 6 MONTHSRENEWAL PACKETS FROM TX HHSC NEED NOT BE SENT IN STIMULUS PAYMENT $1200 PER ADULT, $500 PER CHILD AUTOMATIC FOR PEOPLE WITH VALID SS NUMBER. SOME MAY NEED TO FILE INFORMATION TO THE IRS.If you are not working because of COVID-19, new laws offer several ways to help you and your family get through this difficult period:UNEMPLOYMENT: Apply for unemployment benefits as soon as possible even if you do not have a “work history.” The Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) decides your eligibility based on the income of the week you apply, so you are probably considered underemployed (and possibly eligible for benefits) for the week you get laid off, and completely unemployed the next week. In-person applications are not being accepted in TWC offices during the pandemic, so apply online at . We know it is hard right now to get an application filed because the system is not set up to handle so many people at once. We suggest trying to submit your online application late at night, since the online system works 24/7. KEEP TRYING. If you are asked for a PIN number from a previous application but you can’t remember it, TWC tells us that they are removing this requirement and that you should try again after March 30, 2020, but it seems to still be a problem. You can also call TWC’s Tele-Center at 800-939-6631 from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., Saturday through Sunday. TWC has published that their phone system will only accept calls from certain area codes at certain times: Area codes ending in:2 on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, 1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. 3, 4, 5, and 6 on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.7 and 8 on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, 8:00 a.m. – noon9 on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 8:00 a.m. – noon.If you are calling over and over and not getting through, you should start writing down the dates and times that you called or tried to file an application online. TWC has said that they will provide retroactive benefits back to the date of a COVID–related lay-off.Regular unemployment benefits are usually paid to people who have enough work and taxes paid in the last 1? years. Those benefits are automatically extended for 13 weeks for people who are getting them now. If you get unemployment benefits because of a COVID-19 lay-off, they will not count against your employer.But, the new CARES ACT, signed into law on March 27, 2020, allows people with no work history to get unemployment benefits if they are able to work but can’t because of the COVID crisis. Even people who are working less than normal, or underemployed, may be eligible for benefits. If you were a contractor, self-employed, or not employed before the COVID-19 crisis, you were not eligible before for regular unemployment. These individuals are eligible for this new kind of unemployment benefits. Under the new laws, there is no requirement to search for work during this COVID-19 crisis. Remember: You are not eligible for any kind of unemployment if you are disabled and unable to work because of medical reasons not connected to COVID-19. Other important information:Unemployment benefits can last up to 39 weeks.The minimum benefit amount for people without enough previous work is more than $800 per week, The additional benefit will not count against household requirements for Medicaid or CHIP. The additional benefit period goes from March 30, 2020 and will end July 31, 2020.All unemployment benefits can be paid retroactively to a period BEFORE YOU APPLIED during the COVID crisis. After you file an application, you will get one or more decisions by mail. Sometimes TWC sends one letter about one issue and another letter about the same case, but a different issue. If any letter says that you are not eligible, you may want to appeal, or consult Lone Star Legal Aid to see if you should appeal. Generally TWC makes an initial decision within about two weeks, but that has changed now because of the different kinds of applications and because of the huge numbers of cases. Make sure your address is correct on your application and keep a close eye on your mail. TWC has extremely strict 14 day deadlines for filing most appeals, and they will not accept any excuse for filing an appeal late. If your job calls you back to work and you don’t want to go back to work, there are some circumstances where you may be able to keep getting unemployment:? If you are responsible for caring for a child whose regular school or day-care is closed still because of COVID;?if you are sick and trying to get diagnosis or treatment for COVID or caring for someone who is sick; if you are over 65 or otherwise at high risk for infection.? TWC will rely on criteria for high risk set out by the Department of State Health Services.?? On their website under FAQ's, they list as high risk: People over 65, or with heart, lung or liver disease, diabetes, cancer, kidney dialysis, severe obesity, or weakened immunity.? Other reasons for not going back to work will be decided on a case-by case basis.STIMULUS PAYMENT:Most low and middle income people with a valid Social security number will automatically get a stimulus payment of $1200 per adult and $500 per child under 16 years old. Many people have already received their stimulus checks.? People getting SSI will receive their stimulus checks in May.? If you have not received the stimulus check for you or for your children, you will probably need to claim it on your 2020 tax return, next year. This is based on the law that the Senate passed on March 25, 2020. The amount will be less for people with more than $75,000 income per adult. Because the first batches of payments are based on the 2018 and 2019 tax return, people who have not filed a 2018 or 2019 tax return may not get this benefit right away and may need to take further action to either file a 2019 return or to just give the federal government information about where to send the money. People who get veteran’s benefits and Social Security benefits and SSI benefits will also get this stimulus payment automatically. People who get SSI will get their own $1200 check automatically but will need to report to the IRS if they have a child who wants to get the $500 child’s benefit. People who did not file a 2018 or 2019 return and are not getting any of the above benefits will need to file more information with the IRS to get the benefit. If the person is under the income limit for needing to file a return for 2019, they can just file a little information to tell the IRS where to send the check. People who have enough income to have to file a 2019 return will need to file a whole return to get the stimulus check. If you need to send more information to the IRS you can find out what you need to do and file the necessary reports at the IRS website. Go to and click on the "Non-Filers: Enter Payment Info Here" button. This site will request basic information to confirm eligibility, calculate and send the payments.FOOD STAMPS:If you are already getting food stamps and your income has changed because of COVID-19, you need to report the change within 10 days of your job loss or wage reduction to the food stamp office through the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC). Food stamps cases set for renewal will be automatically extended until further notice. The best way to report is to fax a report of change form or a written statement to (877) 447-2839. You can also upload the report to from a smart phone. The report must include your name and either your social security number or your case number. If possible, you should include or attach a copy of any supporting documentation (such as a letter or e-mail saying that your employer is closed and you are laid off). Otherwise, HHSC may ask for the evidence. If you do not have any written proof, give HHSC the employer’s phone number and address so HHSC can try to get proof themselves. Any increase resulting from the change should happen for the next month after the report. There will be an automatic increase in food stamps for households with children of school age. Some school districts may start paying an amount equal to school lunch through the food stamps card. If you are not getting food stamps, you may want to apply. Anyone getting food stamps in April or May 2020 will get the maximum amount for the household size. The maximum food stamps benefit amount in Texas is $194 monthly for an individual and $646 monthly for a household of four. You can apply at , but food stamps offices are open. Keep these rules in mind: HHSC counts monthly income to determine your eligibility for food stamps, so if you were laid off in March, they will count the reduced amount in March and will count $0 of income in April unless you have started working again.HHSC requires certain people to apply together in a “household,” such as spouses who live together and children 21 years old or younger, who live with their parents. Generally the income of everyone in the household is added together, but there are special rules to not count income of students who work. So if you are not working, but your spouse is working, you may be eligible for less food stamps, or none. The amount of food stamps is a slightly complicated calculation. Lone Star Legal Aid can quickly calculate in short phone call how much food stamps you should get. The food stamp program uses a limit for certain kinds of resources to decide your eligibility. The value of property and assets that you can access and sell are called “countable resources” and is limited to $5000, not counting land, the homestead where you live and most vehicles. Money in any kind of bank, savings or investment account counts as a resource.You can apply for food stamps online or through the HHSC website, including with a smartphone. Any documents you need to send to HHSC should not be mailed because then you have no proof. Instead, fax documents to (877) 447-2839 as explained above or upload them through the HHSC website. HHSC is required to decide a food stamps application within 30 days after it is filed. They have been doing well at that recently, but may get backlogged if a large number of people apply in the next few months. You can appeal anything HHSC does or fails to do: you can appeal if you are denied, if you have not received a response 35 days after applying or you think the amount of food stamps is wrong. You appeal by sending them something in writing that includes your name and either a case number or your social security number and stating specifically that you want to appeal (not complain). Lone Star Legal Aid often represents people in this kind of appeal. The usual food stamps requirements for people to look for work and go to Worksource trainings is cancelled for now. Able bodied (not disabled) adults without dependents (kids), or ABAWDS, were previously limited to three months of food stamps. That limit is lifted during this crisis.SNAP-CAP is a special food stamp program that is available for people over 50 years old who get SSI. The benefit amounts are either $75 or $130 monthly (depending on your housing costs), and the application form is extremely short and easy to complete. During April and May 2020 Snap Cap amounts will be $194 monthly. FAMILY LEAVE: Under the existing law, the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), employers of a certain size are required to allow workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave without losing their job for personal sickness, to take care of sick family members or for a new baby. That could well apply to anyone who is sick or caring for a sick family member. It would not apply to many other people who cannot work just because of stay-at home orders. Under the new Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA), paid sick and family leave are now available to: employees where the employer has less than 500 employees, some local, state and federal government employees, and employees under a multi-employer collective agreement. Employers smaller than 50 employees might be left out if they request it, and health care workers and first responders may be left out. (If your employer does not fit into a covered employer category, you may be eligible for leave under regular FMLA rules that keep you from being fired, but do not provide pay. )There are two new kinds of required leave that do provide pay. Under FFCRA Emergency Paid Sick Leave Act, Full time employees can get up to 80 hours of fully paid time off (maximum $511 per day, $5110 total) for self-quarantine, seeking diagnosis, treatment, or preventive care for COVID-19.Full time employees can get up to 80 hours at 2/3 of your regular pay (maximum $200/day) to care for a family member with COVID-19, to care for a child because school was closed due to COVID-19 or because their child care is unavailable due to COVID-19.Two week EPSL paid leave is available to government employees.Under the Emergency Paid family Leave Act, Employers are required to provide 12 weeks of protected leave, the first two unpaid and the other 10 paid at least 2/3 of your usual pay, to take care of kids because of school closure or unavailable child care due to COVID-19. Health care workers and first responders may not be eligible to use this law, but their employers would have to offer a good reason to deny this relief. Government workers are not eligible for this 12-week paid leave program. You can request family leave by notifying your employer in writing (by fax, e-mail or certified mail so you have proof) that you want to take the kind of leave that fits your situation. If the employer refuses to pay you, you can sue them later for twice what they should have paid. The new required paid leave can start as soon as April 2, 2020 if you request it. The money your employer pays you will be refunded by the federal government through a tax refund. In fact, if you are self-employed, but not working because of COVID-19, you can pay yourself for medical leave under these programs and get it back as a tax refund. If you request these new kinds of paid leave and your employer wrongly fails to pay them you can sue them later (within 2 years) for twice what they should have paid and attorney fees. Lone Star Legal Aid will not start filing this kind of lawsuits for at least several months, but a lawsuit depends on you sending your employer a request as soon as possible. We have attached three sample letters at the end to request paid leave. If you are getting paid leave, you are not eligible for unemployment.HEALTH CARE:If you have health insurance – it must pay for any testing or treatment for COVID-19. If you have Medicaid, or CHIP this coverage will be automatically extended during the COVID-19 crisis. If you do not have health insurance – your children, at least, may be eligible for Medicaid or CHIP, depending on your income. If you have minor children living with you, you may be eligible for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and the Medicaid that goes with it. However, the TANF program has extremely low income and resource limits, limiting benefits to only those with the greatest need. If your income stops this month, your income will be counted as the amount you actually got in the last month of work, and $0 for the next month, just like food stamps. For most households applying for children’s Medicaid, you may have no more than $2000 in property and assets, and no more than $3000 in property and assets if the household includes a disabled person. Medicaid counts land as a resource and bank accounts, but not a homestead where you live. You can apply for Medicaid online at , and you can also apply at the same time for food stamps and/or TANF. An application for children’s Medicaid is also an application for CHIP. If you are denied Medicaid for having too much income or resources, you will automatically be considered for CHIP, which has higher income limits and no limit on resources. If you are not eligible for Medicaid, CHIP, or Medicare – you may want to apply for a County Indigent Health Care Program (CIHCP) or get care from a federally qualified health care center (FQHC). Based on being laid off, you may be eligible for one of these programs that you were not eligible for before the layoff. This care is provided to low income individuals based on their gross income compared to the federal poverty guidelines.CIHCP: One way to get care is through a County Indigent Health Care Program. Every county in Texas has some kind of county indigent health care program. You can search online for your county’s contact person in the Texas CIHCP directory or at . In Harris County, we have the Harris Health system, which operates Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital, Ben Taub Hospital and dozens of other clinics. The Harris Health system is able to serve individuals whose gross income is no more than $1595 monthly. Other counties have limits as low as $224 of monthly gross income ($459 monthly for a household of 4). Counties with hospital districts usually have much higher income limits. If you are denied eligibility for a CIHCP program, you can appeal, but you may not win if you are over the income limits, even though those limits are very low. A CIHCP may not legally limit eligibility based on citizenship status, but some do. If you are denied for that reason, you may want to talk to a legal aid program or other lawyer about appealing. FQHC: Another way to get medical treatment is through a Federally Qualified Health Clinic. These are clinics set up with federal funding. They can provide care to anyone who lives in their area with sliding scale fees, which means little or no cost for low income people. Their main limitation is that they are only a clinic and are not able to do major surgery or provide some specialty care. They can provide good care for regular doctor visits, office treatment, and prescriptions. Some counties do not have an FQHC clinic, but there are a 73 in Texas, and you can find a list at: ROOM: Federal law requires any emergency room to provide treatment to any person who shows up with an emergency = a problem that threatens the person’s life, the loss of a limb or a sense (like vision or hearing) or active labor. So a person who shows up in any of these conditions has to be treated until the emergency is over. A possible case of COVID-19 is probably not an “emergency” if the symptoms are not life threatening, especially for a person 4 to 60 years old. COVID-19 is much more dangerous for very young children and for the elderly, so it probably is an “emergency” for them, especially as symptoms of high fever and/or difficulty breathing get worse. Keep these things in mind:Even though the federal law requires the emergency room to provide treatment for an emergency, it does not keep them from sending a huge bill afterwards. Emergency rooms are very annoyed by people who try to get treatment for things that clearly are not an emergency. If you just need your prescription refilled, you should go somewhere else. They will be even more annoyed during this crisis because they will be busy dealing with many people who are in real danger. SOCIAL SECURITY/SSI:There are no special COVID-19 benefits for people already getting Social Security or SSI but there should be no delay in getting regular benefits by direct deposit. People can get the stimulus payment without any negative effect on their Social Security or SSI. People getting disability benefits (Retirement/Survivors or SSI) will not be eligible to also get unemployment benefits under the regular program or under the special COVID-19 unemployment. If you receive a retirement or survivors benefit not based on a disability, you can apply for unemployment. Social Security local offices and Social Security Judge’s offices (OHO) are closed to the public, but are still conducting business by phone, mail and electronically. Judges are still holding hearings by phone. If you are don’t want to have your hearing by phone, they will reschedule your hearing to a later date. During the COVID-19 crisis, local SSA offices are not working on any new cases that would stop disability benefits for people who have them. They are also not starting cases to collect reimbursement from people they overpaid. If you need to do something with a local SSA office, you can call them because they have now released the real phone number for each local office online. Just search for: Social Security Office near me. Important: if you talk to them, TAKE CAREFUL NOTES showing the date, who you talked to, and what they said. You can also call (800) 772-1213 to reach a Social Security worker in some other city by phone. They take a long time to answer, but they usually do answer after 10 – 30 minutes.LETTERS TO ASK FOR PAID LEAVESICK EMPLOYEE LETTER # 1: "I need to take my 10 days Paid Sick Leave under the Families First Corona Virus Response Act HR 6201, starting ______ (date) because of coronavirus. Please let me know if you need any more details. I am taking it because (check one)___ I'm sick and I have COVID symptoms so I'm trying to get at test or see a doctor, or___ I'm been told I need to be quarantined or isolated because of possible COVID exposure"I wouldn't ask for this if it were going to cost you money, but I read that the federal government will give you a tax credit for this COVID related leave. Thank you.OREMPLOYEE WITH KIDS OUT OF SCHOOL OR DAYCARE LETTER # 2 (not government employees): "My kids are out of school because of the COVID school closure. I need to take my 10 days Paid Sick Leave and then my 50 days Emergency Family and Medical Leave under the Families First Corona Virus Response Act HR 6201, starting ______ (date) because of coronavirus. Please let me know if you need any more details. I wouldn't ask for this if it were going to cost you money, but I read that the federal government will give you a tax credit for this COVID related leave. Thank you.OREMPLOYEE TAKING CARE OF SOMEONE SICK LETTER # 3: "I need to take my 10 days Paid Sick Leave under the Families First Corona Virus Response Act HR 6201, starting ______ (date) because of coronavirus. Please let me know if you need any more details. I am taking it because I'm taking care of someone who: (check one)___ is sick and I have COVID symptoms so I'm trying to get at test or see a doctor, or___ has been told to be quarantined or isolated because of possible COVID exposure"I wouldn't ask for this if it were going to cost you money, but I read that the federal government will give you a tax credit for this COVID related leave. Thank you." ................
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