The House Health Committee is pushing two simple but possibly life-changing bills for the state’s neediest residents, allowing homeless people to get free copies of their birth certificates and steering Oregon State Hospital officials to sign up patients for federal assistance as they leave the mental hospital.
The committee swiftly and unanimously passed House Bill 2302, affecting state hospital patients, on Wednesday, while it debated the bill for the homeless on Friday.
In the last decade, Oregon was compelled to comply with post-9/11 federal identification laws and require residents to show a birth certificate when they acquire or renew their driver license or identification card.
The new rules have made it more complicated for residents to receive an ID card and prove who they are.
“Homeless people are ineligible to get the services they qualify for because they don’t have an ID card -- and they can’t get an ID card because they need a birth certificate,” said Rep. John Lively, D-Springfield, the chief sponsor of House Bill 2402, which would require the Center for Health Statistics to give homeless people a free copy.
The Center for Health Statistics, housed in the state Public Health Division of the Oregon Health Authority, charges people $25 a copy for their birth certificate -- producing a copy of the public record likely does not actually cost that much, but the fees are set that high to absorb the total cost of the record division.
Freshman legislator Rep. Teresa Alonso Leon, D-Woodburn, said she had students experience this hardship as an administrator of a General Education Development program. Homeless and low-income youth were unable to take the test to get a high school equivalency -- and a better chance to be self-sufficient, because they faced the same conundrum. “This is a baseline for opportunity,” she said.
To reimburse the Center for Health Statistics for the lost revenue, the bill would require $45,000 to $95,000 from the general fund -- a small price tag for a state agency with a total budget of nearly $20 billion, but still extra money when the state is already facing a $1.8 billion budget gap next biennium.
Lively said that the state estimates it has 14,000 homeless individuals in Oregon.
Because of the cost, Rep. Mitch Greenlick, D-Portland, the chairman of the Health Committee, delayed a vote on HB 2402 to determine if the Public Health Division could find a way to lower that cost and absorb the loss of fees from giving complimentary birth certificates to the homeless.
HB 2302
Oregon State Hospital superintendent Greg Roberts told legislators Wednesday that the hospital is already tasked with signing up discharged patients on the Oregon Health Plan -- but currently had no authority to automatically sign up patients for food stamps or federal disability payments.
“Oregon State Hospital does not have statutory authority to apply for all benefits for which patients may be eligible,” Roberts testified. “As a result, some patients are discharged without the benefits they need already in place. … Furthermore, they do not have the financial resources to pay for housing, food and other daily basic living needs.”
Roberts stipulated that the bill would only apply to outgoing patients who don’t have a legal guardian who can help them. “We would always look for consent from the patient or the guardian. If the patient has a guardian, we defer to the guardian.”
The state hospital does not have patients younger than 18 -- the guardians he mentioned are for adults unable to make decisions for themselves.
If the released mental patients can be hooked up with disability benefits, it could prevent them from living on the streets and returning to the state institution -- or, it could reduce delays in discharging patients, as the state would be more assured that the person would have the financial support for a safe place to live, Bob Joondeph, the director of Disability Rights Oregon, wrote in his submitted testimony.
Chris can be reached at [email protected].
