‘A job in itself’: The red tape to access food, housing, and help holds back Mass. families - The Boston Globe (2025)

“It’s exhausting, it’s stressful,” Delarosa said. “It’s like a job in itself.”

Millions of low-income people in Massachusetts — often women and families of color — have to navigate a labyrinth of red tape to eat, access health care, and stay housed. Making a mistake or missing a deadline means a delay in services or losing vital access altogether.

State efforts to consolidate state and federal programs into a common application have not materialized, despite a 2022 law meant to ease the administrative burden for those in need. Many are left to navigate the bureaucracy on their own, or coach each other through the grueling process even as they face evictions and food insecurity.

Across the country, several states have created systems in which people access benefits through one universal application.

“If we have programs that are, by design, not responsive to people’s needs, that reinforces that pattern of inequality and who’s represented in democracy,” said Carolyn Barnes, an associate professor at the University of Chicago.

In Massachusetts, one in six families — or more than a million people — relies on SNAP benefits. Over 2 million people are on MassHealth. And more than a quarter million people live in federally subsidized housing, with hundreds of thousands more relying on networks of state and federal programs to make ends meet.

Researchers who study administrative burden break it down into three categories: compliance costs, which include printing and mailing documents and attending agency interviews to access services; learning costs, which involve figuring out eligibility for different programs and how to actually apply for them; and psychological costs, or the shame and frustrations that come with asking for help.

“You have to open your whole life up to feel like you qualify for this crap housing,” said Marcia Boston, 74, who lives in state subsidized housing in Arlington that she said has mice and is too cramped.

Boston was on a centralized state wait list through the Common Housing Application for Massachusetts Programs, or CHAMP, for eight years in hopes of being able to move to Northampton. She was checking in every few months when she received an email from the state that she was removed from the list. She is still not sure why.

In 2022, then-Governor Charlie Baker signed a law to consolidate state programs into one common application similar to the existing common housing application. Agencies would share information, allowing people to apply once, rather than repeatedly fill out various forms to find out what they’re eligible for.

The Department of Transitional Assistance is working to build a centralized hub that would do just that, but a spokesperson for the office declined to commit to a timeline, explaining that the office is in final contract negotiations with a vendor.

Officials said the first iteration of the tool would not come until after 2025 and would not initially include affordable housing programs. Instead, it will focus on SNAP and cash benefits for children, older adults, and people with disabilities, and it would leverage federal dollars to partially fund its creation.

Those funds are pending federal approval but state officials said they expect them to come through.

But as Trump administration officials eye cuts to programs such as Medicaid and Social Security, advocates and families who rely on those benefits are nervous about the potential impact. Even if the tool is finally created, budget cuts could mean longer wait times as fewer staff are available to process applications or support families.

Social safety net programs are used by all sorts of people. In Massachusetts, 45 percent of SNAP recipients, for example, are white people, 23 percent identify as Latino or Hispanic, and 14 percent are Black. Many programs, especially federal programs, also require participants to be US citizens to be eligible for benefits.

The largest beneficiary of such benefits, though, are children and seniors.

Several residents who use social benefits told the Globe they’ve had to coach each other on how to apply or handle a rejection notice. One Facebook group for low-income people living in Boston has more than 7,400 members, many of whom post messages for guidance or information on new programs.

Researchers admonish that this loss of trust ripples out to other parts of civic engagement such as elections, and can lead to lower voter turnout, according to Meredith Dost, a fellow at the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin Madison.

Among all 50 states, Massachusetts is in the middle of the pack when it comes to creating accessible health insurance, she said.

For people who struggle to access technology, those who don’t speak English, and people with disabilities, applying for services is particularly challenging.

Carolyn Villers, executive director of the Massachusetts Senior Action Council, has watched as older adults struggle with MassHealth’s 38-page application.

On average, she said, it takes people an hour and a half to fill out the paperwork if they’re getting help from an assistant. If long-term services are needed, the application then requires five years’ worth of documentation.

“It’s a really high burden and, as you can imagine, a lot of people get overwhelmed with the process and give up totally,” she said.

What is also troubling to Villers is the burden to staff: “It’s silly for people in three different agencies to be processing the same paperwork for one person.”

Often, individuals who need affordable housing could also benefit from state insurance, subsidized transportation, or heating and energy assistance.

More than a decade ago, Colorado unveiled a one-stop-shop digital tool called the Program Eligibility and Application Kit, or PEAK, to help residents apply to state and federal programs all at once, with automatic renewals in some cases.

“They did it on a shoestring budget. A lot of people volunteered out of their regular roles,” said Mike West, the product owner of PEAK who manages a staff of seven that keeps the tool working smoothly. The original cost for the tool was around $600,000, state officials estimate.

“Our job at PEAK is to make that look seamless and make that look friendly in the space of a smartphone screen,” West said.

Back in Massachusetts, Delarosa keeps a close eye on her mail and email. Inevitably, it will be time again to file another application. Up next is a renewal for Transitional Aid to Families with Dependent Children, a cash program for very low-income families, due in May.

The paperwork never gets easier, Delarosa said, but, “What else are you supposed to do?”

This story was produced by the Globe’s Money, Power, Inequality team, which covers the racial wealth gap in Greater Boston. You can sign up for the newsletter here.

Esmy Jimenez can be reached at esmy.jimenez@globe.com. Follow her @esmyjimenez.