Rolando Rubio III/Daily Journal Carla Ruiz, left, lead office assistant for Human Services Agency, explains the intake process to congressional, state Senate and Assembly field representatives and aides.

San Mateo County is in line for federal stimulus money and continues receiving some state funds earmarked for necessities like food, shelter and clothing. However, all the money in the world won’t help if the county legally can’t offer help to those who make more than the federal poverty level or own too many assets to qualify for food stamps. Simply put, the poor in San Mateo County aren’t poor enough — despite the high cost of living.

“We have to change the rules. It’s not working for us,” Sharif Etman, director of finance for the Human Services Agency, told a room of fellow providers and representatives from the county’s elected politicians.

Amending eligibility restrictions lets HSA and nonprofit providers be more flexible and better do their jobs, Etman said.

The nonprofit and social service sectors are awash in rules and regulations, he said, and anyone working in those arenas hear the common refrain that change is — if not near impossible — very time consuming.

“Guess what? We have years. We have the time,” Etman said.

Etman and others participating in the panel discussion and HSA tour told the legislative representatives the face of need in San Mateo County can be different than other counties and states where $17,000 may be enough to eke by. Within the county, too, officials need to know that unemployment rates and poverty levels are not uniform. The average income and number of households at risk for foreclosure in Hillsborough is not the same as East Palo Alto or North Fair Oaks.

The 5.4 percent unemployment rate in particular is “not a consistent picture throughout the county,” said Helyn Dahle, chair of the Workforce Investment Board and admittedly a recent layoff herself.

Across the board, participants said requests for help are as much as doubling. The frustration is not just finding the funding but also determining how to sign up a family for the food program when they make just too much money or finding shelter for a county worker who is employed but living in her car with two dogs.

Aside from rising figures, providers are seeing both faces of those who had previously become self-sufficient but once again need help and those who have never had to ask for help before. This group is a new special needs category and without an idea of where to begin often turn to their elected leaders on the state and federal levels, said Duane Bay, director of the Department of Housing.

Unfortunately, some of these needy people will learn they can’t be helped under traditional parameters, said HSA Director Beverly Beasley Johnson.

“We’re trying to treat unusual circumstances with conventional rules,” Johnson said, reiterating that the federal rules in particular “don’t work.”

Johnson asked that asset exemptions recently enacted for food stamp families be expanded to individuals, that emancipated foster youth be eligible for food stamps, the clock stop for CalWorks clients who are currently kicked out of the program after 60 months of use and fingerprinting for food programs be stopped. The last, Johnson said, shows a “criminalization of poverty” which is a barrier to care alongside transportation, mental illness, substance abuse and sometimes just plain shame at queuing up in a line with small children looking for help.

While paying her property taxes, Johnson said she realized a number of people will make “an awful, awful choice” this week between that payment and food and shelter.

Yet, again, some of these families will not be at a level of deprivation to meet federal eligibility. These families, she said, “haven’t fallen hard enough.”

The San Mateo County Board of Supervisors recently approved up to $500,000 in funding through its Economic Urgency Initiative to help fill these gaps. Meanwhile, HSA is still waiting on federal guidelines to apply for stimulus funding and agencies throughout the county are waiting to see if Election Day will mean less money through a series of propositions before voters. Each is careful not to lobby a position because funding for one often means less money for another.

Michelle Durand can be reached by e-mail: michelle@smdailyjournal.com or by phone: (650) 344-5200 ext. 102.