Hanif asks about immigration status impact on enrollment
Hanif raises concerns that public charge fears and immigration policy changes may be driving enrollment declines among immigrant seniors, and asks whether DOF tracks this, with Shear noting DOF doesn't ask immigration status but will look into the issue with community partners.
For example, I know that when public charge happened back after 2016, a lot of older adults with legal immigration status even that we saw got off whatever benefits they were on because they were afraid of their immigration status.
And I know that HR1 and other things that are happening impact that.
And so I just wanted to know if there's a way to track that and also knowing that, how are we going to sort of shore up what we can and cannot do on the city level?
So I'd be interested to see, and again, if you could follow up and come back to us, if there's a way to see how those impacts are sort of factoring into the enrollment numbers here or if at all.
That was just something we wanted to follow up on.
We will look into that.
Okay.
We do have challenges.
Obviously, we do not ask the immigration status of people who are applying to the programs.
Yes, that I know.
But especially with community partners on the ground, I think narratively speaking at least and somewhat like...
Even with the OACs, I'm sure.
or they'll be able to tell you what some of the challenges are.
And so I'm just curious to see if there's any sort of data that is correlated with that and then in response on the city side what we can and should be looking to do.
So that was just the question there.
And I have a bunch more, but I'm going to pause here to allow our other co-chair as well as members to ask questions.