. PEORIA, Ill. In early March, with the weather warming and her day of reckoning with the power company fast approaching, Shawna Brewer slid her bill from the envelope and tried not to cry. She owed $4,242.44. It was the beginning of another month for Shawna, 38, in which her main goal was survival. Like millions of Americans, she was not just poor, she was poor in ways that often rendered her unaccounted for by many of the government aid programs and charitable groups that could offer help. Her blighted Zip code had become the sort of place where hundreds of families could lose their electricity; few would complain and no one in a position of power or influence would even notice.
The federal government is in the midst of one of the biggest expansions of the social safety net in U.S. history, committing $5 trillion over the last year. And yet for all its successes, the trillions in aid have often failed to reach the poorest Americans in places like the south end of Peoria where hundreds lost power last fall.