Effective immediately, Guarantee Income (GI) payments that have any amount of non-government funding and are exempt from being considered as income for CalWORKs are also not counted as income for CalFresh. This means that CalFresh GI exemptions are no longer limited to funds from individually approved CalWORKs demonstration projects.
Some programs have already been screened and approved by the California Department of Social Services to meet the requirements to be exempt for CalFresh purposes. Counties can rely on those approvals. To exempt future GI payments for CalFresh, counties will need to determine whether GI payments contain any non-governmental funds.
For resource determinations, this change will not impact households that have Modified Categorical Eligibility status because they do not have a resource limit for CalFresh. Households that do not have Modified Categorical Eligibility must meet a resource test, and they will be at risk of losing CalFresh if GI payments that they save put them over the resource limit at initial application, semi-annual reporting, or annual recertification. Households that do not have Modified Categorial Eligibility are households that contain sanctioned individuals, or elderly or disabled households with income over 200% of the Federal Poverty Level. (ACL 23-60, July 5, 2023.)