In addition to the great burden imposed on public assistance agencies due to lack of a health insurance program, gaps and inadequacies in existing social insurance programs have increased case loads. Too low insurance benefits and too short duration of unemployment benefits require supplementation or meeting full need where possible, through assistance payments. Increasing coverage and insurance benefits would reduce a current drain on public assistance funds and provide an income in a more acceptable form to eligible workers and their dependents. Thus assistance recipients must make full use of other community resources providing services free or at low cost. Public hospitals and clinics are a great help but are not available in many localities.
Housing is a very important and expensive item in budgets of low income families.
For years the menace to a community of concentration of poverty, communicable disease and delinquency has been recognized, but only in recent years has any real effort and money gone into eliminating such areas and providing suitable low-cost housing for those requiring resettlement. Continuation of slum conditions and neglect of people who are forced to live under unwholesome conditions threaten the well-being of the whole community. Children in the slums accept as normal, ill health, limited education, and juvenile and adult delinquent behavior, since they see so much of it in their neighborhoods and homes. Even adults who have had higher standards of living, but are forced through illness or death of the wage earner or other reasons to seek low rents in the slums, become discouraged and lose ambition. In their frustration, some indulge in anti-social behavior.