Effective Monday the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration is moving its South Bend offices from downtown to a building on the city’s far northwest edge. A township trustee says getting out to the new location will pose another challenge for the poor.
The FSSA is moving its South Bend offices out of The Commerce Center on Colfax Avenue, where they’ve been for eight years, to an office building on Moreau Court, off Nimtz Parkway. The move was planned last year, before President Donald Trump and Governor Mike Braun took office and implemented cuts to everything from Medicaid to food aid.
Still, Portage Township Trustee Jason Critchlow says the timing couldn’t be worse, as the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says the Republicans’ Big Beautiful Bill will make the rich richer and the poor poorer.
“Mobility and transportation are some of the top concerns that are being voiced right now by residents. I think it’s devastating. I think it’s just, could not be worse timing. It’s like hit after hit after hit that is coming after the same group of people, and that is non-wealthy people.”
The state office administers federal food aid, TANF benefits, Medicaid and job training. It also provides income verification paperwork that people need in order to get help from the township trustee for things like rent and utility bills.
Transpo last year learned that the Moreau Court building was getting a new governmental tenant this year, so in June it adjusted its Blackthorn Route to serve the new site, but it will only run six times a day, compared to 15 to 20 daily trips for a typical route.
Critchlow says he’s offered FSSA free office space at the township trustee building downtown, as a sort of second small satellite office, but the state agency hasn’t seemed interested.
FSSA officials did not reply to WVPE’s interview request Wednesday.
