... Although maintaining a safety net for the poor is the governments job, welfare in Utah has become so entangled with the states dominant religion that the agency in charge of public assistance here counts a percentage of the welfare provided by the LDS Church toward the states own welfare spending, according to a memorandum of understanding between the church and the state obtained by ProPublica.
What that means is that over the past decade, the Utah State Legislature has been able to get out of spending at least $75 million on fighting poverty that it otherwise would have had to spend under federal law, a review of budget documents shows.
The churchs extensive, highly regarded welfare program is centered at a place called Welfare Square, ensconced among warehouses on Salt Lake Citys west side. There, poor people provided they obtain approval of their grocery list from a lay bishop, who oversees a congregation can get orders of food for free from the Bishops Storehouse, as well as buy low-priced clothes and furniture from the church-owned Deseret Industries thrift store. (Bishops can also authorize temporary cash assistance for rent, car payments and the like; recipients often have to volunteer for the church to obtain the aid.)
Welfare Square was built in 1938 amid the Great Depression, an intentional repudiation by church leaders of government welfare as epitomized by President Franklin Roosevelts New Deal. We take care of our own, they famously said.
But Bellamy, a Black single mother, is not one of the churchs own and, unlike the government, a church is often allowed to discriminate based on religion.
The bishop of her local congregation, called a ward, decided that as a precondition of receiving welfare, she would have to read, understand and embrace LDS scripture, Bellamy told ProPublica. Church representatives came by her apartment to decide what individual food items she did and did not need while pressuring her to attend Sunday services, she said.
A church spokesperson, who was not authorized to speak on the record for this story, said that Bellamys is just one experience, and there are likely thousands of people across Utah who would swear by the help theyve received from the church and the guidance theyve been given toward a more self-sufficient life. He said that because some bishops are more rigid about providing aid than others, some people may wind up in situations like Bellamys, but that most in the church default to compassion.
The spokesperson also said that conversations about welfare are between individuals (like Bellamy and others whose stories also appear in this article) and their bishop, and that the church would not break what it regards as a sacred confidentiality.
Bellamy cooperated at first with what was being asked of her. She felt shed go along if thats what I needed to do for some type of goodness to come to my family, she said, adding that she knew that many in her community had benefited greatly from church welfare and their LDS faith.
Yet she ultimately balked, especially at the thought of being baptized in front of strangers. Im sorry, she said, I dont believe in it. And its important what I believe in.
For her refusal, she says, she and her family were denied welfare by the church, just as they had been by the state.
ProPublica is investigating the state of welfare across the Southwest, where the skyrocketing cost of living has made cash assistance for struggling families an issue that has been brought to the fore again amid debate over President Joe Bidens child tax credit more desperately needed than ever.
What the 1996 welfare reform law did, in essence, was dramatically shrink the safety net for the poorest Americans while leaving what aid remained in the hands of individual states, issuing each a block grant of federal welfare funding and significant discretion over how to spend, or not spend, the cash. ... The first thing Utah did under the 1996 law was to become increasingly closefisted about helping poor people, creating a labyrinthine system of employment and self-improvement programs that applicants must partake in including resume-writing seminars, screenings for drug use, counseling sessions and continual paperwork as well as strict income limits they must not surpass. As of 2019, the state was providing direct assistance to about 3,000 families out of nearly 30,000 living in poverty, a precipitous decline from the mid-90s, when Utahs program served roughly 60% of these parents and children. (Utah denied welfare applications, on average, more than 1,300 times every month last year, including during the pandemic.)
A single mother of one here is eligible for $399 a month in state assistance, and only if she has a net income of $456 a month or less.