Chandra Evans, 49, didn’t think getting help would be so hard.

When COVID-19 swept through Dallas, she suffered health crises that debilitated her, leaving her without a job and a home. “I became almost paraplegic,” Evans said. “I couldn’t move my arms up and down. I can’t stand for more than 30 minutes at a time.”

In 2020, she got help at the Stewpot, a local nonprofit that helps people experiencing homelessness access documents like birth certificates and driver’s licenses. With the help of case managers, she applied for disability but keeps getting denied, she said.

To help ensure that seniors, children and other eligible city residents get access to programs that provide critical resources like nutrition, health care and other support families need, the city of Dallas is teaming up with national nonprofit Benefits Data Trust.

The two-year, $2.75 million project, supported by American Rescue Plan Act funds, is a part of the city’s broader strategy to reduce barriers to participation in state, local and federal benefit programs while improving economic stability for families.

Benefits Data Trust will host workshops for local organizations that serve eligible residents to help elevate national best practices in benefits enrollment like case management and expertly staffed call centers. The firm will also deliver a strategic roadmap for the city of Dallas to build a comprehensive benefits access system.

Dallas’ Office of Community Care contracts with community partners to help residents get benefits, including supporting more than 10,000 clients monthly, said director Jessica Galleshaw.

Evans will continue to play the waiting game before she gets a hearing to plead her case and provide all the right documents. That’s a common hurdle benefits-seekers face when going through the enrollment and appeals process.

“I can’t give up,” Evans said. “I’m strong-minded so I’ve just got to keep believing in my own power.”

Benefits gap

Evans is one of many in Dallas County navigating a benefits enrollment process that’s often so burdensome, experts say many people likely eligible for support aren’t getting it.

More than $1 billion in benefits funding annually is left unspent, according to Samantha Lustberg, the senior director of benefits delivery and utilization for Child Poverty Action Lab, a nonprofit organization dedicated to fighting and ending childhood poverty in Dallas.

“These dollars are going to go somewhere,” Lustberg said. “They are already budgeted. So we might as well bring them back into families’ pockets and into the Dallas economy.”

The most widely used benefits programs include Women Infants and Children, or WIC, and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, previously called food stamps.

“For families with children and single-income families especially, it can be such a struggle to get food on the table and keep a roof over their head and get [their] kids to school,” Galleshaw said.

The burden of the enrollment process, including the hours it takes to re-enroll every six months, is a struggle for families trying to scrape by, Galleshaw said.

“These are historically disadvantaged communities that have not ever really received the full scale of support that they need and deserve,” she said.

Benefits Data Trust

Tonya Edwards, Benefits Data Trust’s associate director of engagement for Texas, oversees the contract with the city of Dallas’ Office of Community Care, including conducting research and delivering a “landscape analysis” of the systems and the organizations that often play a role in benefits enrollment.

By the contract’s end in 2025, Benefits Data Trust will make recommendations on how the city might create a deeper system to collectively expand access to benefits, Edwards said.

“It’d be up to the city to determine what they would adopt and what is sustainable,” Edwards said. “Whatever we recommended, we don’t want it to be in place for only six months or a year.”

The director said she’s met with almost 100 local leaders and organizations laying the groundwork since beginning the partnership. Edward says she’s helped nonprofits understand how Benefits Data Trust works and learn about the obstacles clients face when trying to get benefits.

“And have gotten a lot of positive responses, a lot of great feedback on how it is for benefits access and that the need is great,” Edwards said. “No one has a magic wand solution on how to fix it. But we’re trying to gather that data and to make some recommendations for the city.”

Edwards said residents who are likely eligible for benefits but don’t receive them face three common hurdles: a lack of awareness, public stigmas and cumbersome applications.

After reporting findings from the landscape analysis, Edwards said Benefits Data Trust then plans to pilot some programs it has seen to be successful in other states, like robust outreach programs through texting and letter campaigns.

Another solution is having benefits-seekers call into the organization’s direct services center, where staff helps residents complete applications for them. The firm has helped over 900,000 people who call into the center through the enrollment process.

For the last nearly 20 years, the Philadelphia-based nonprofit has been engineering solutions that would close the benefits access gap. Since 2005, Benefits Data Trust has provided people with over $10 billion in assistance.

CPAL partnership

Alan Cohen, the CEO of Child Poverty Action Lab, saw an article about BenePhilly and reached out to Benefits Data Trust to see how its services could come to Texas, Edwards said.

“One of the most powerful and achievable strategies Dallas can pursue to support children is helping working families access the hundreds of millions of dollars that go underutilized each year in the form of benefits ranging from food stamps or tax credits,” Cohen said. “We are excited to see our longstanding partners at City Hall and BDT working together to leverage data and proactively deliver available benefits to Dallas families.”

Benefits Data Trust’s relationship with CPAL started with creating a “benefits crosswalk” designed to help people navigate the often tedious enrollment process. Benefits Data Trust examined seven different public benefits in Dallas County, including eligibility requirements and the processes for accessing them.

Then the organization conducted a “gap analysis” of Dallas County, examining the amount of money that’s available to likely eligible people and the number of people who are actually using the benefits.

In 2022, $500 million in benefits were left on the table in Dallas County, excluding ones like Medicaid and Earned Income Tax Credit, according to Edwards.

About $80 billion that’s available each year to eligible benefits-seekers nationally goes unspent, according to the organization’s data.

“That’s a huge gap,” Edwards said. “If we can put our little drop in the bucket to help continue to close that gap, then that is ultimately what we’re trying to do.”