The California Medical Assistance Program (Medi-Cal) is California's Medicaid program serving low-income families, seniors, persons with disabilities, children in foster care, pregnant women, and childless adults with incomes below 138% of federal poverty level.
Since 1933, California law has required counties to provide relief to the poor, including health care services and general assistance.
[10] California has provided some form of general assistance since the mid-1800s, and much of the language can be traced back to the Pauper Act of 1901.
[9][11][12] San Francisco Proposition N of 2002, colloquially known as Care Not Cash, was a San Francisco ballot measure sponsored by Supervisor Gavin Newsom designed to cut the money given in the General Assistance programs to homeless people in exchange for shelters and other forms of services.
City and county-based housing authorities manage the Housing Choice Voucher program for the payment of rent assistance to private landlords on behalf of low-income households, as well as overseeing Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) entitlements and HOME Investment Partnerships Program (HOME) funding.
Some other examples of local and area housing authorities include the: Workforce development programs provide a combination of education and training services to prepare individuals for work and to help them improve their prospects in the labor market.
Title I of the 2014 Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act authorizes programs to provide employment and training services, and establishes the "one-stop" delivery system.
[18] The California Budget Act of 1995 had required the Health and Welfare Agency Data Center (now the California Office of Systems Integration), in collaboration with the County Welfare Directors Association, to develop a plan to consolidate the systems to no more than four county consortia; ABX1 of 2011 required OSI to oversee the LRS contract and the creation of a new consortium to replace the LEADER and C-IV consortia.
The current CPM poverty rate is 20%, but if welfare benefits were excluded from the estimates of families' resources that would rise to 28%.