Add San Mateo County General Assistance

[hua7450]

Fixes #8359.

Summary

Adds San Mateo County General Assistance (SMC GA) as a local California cash assistance program. Also fixes two pre-existing Alameda County GA bugs surfaced during review (see Related Fixes).

Regulatory Authority

• San Mateo County HSA General Assistance Fact Sheet (Feb 2025)
• San Mateo County HSA Standards of Assistance Chart (C-335 Rev. 12.2025)
• San Mateo County Board Resolution 21-720, Modifications A–O (Sept 2021, full implementation March 1, 2022)
• San Mateo County Board File 26-290 (Apr 7, 2026 Board Memo) — NMOHC-with-BHRS/SMMC-referral COLA increase to $1,626.07 effective Jan 1, 2026

Eligibility

Requirement	Source	How Modeled
San Mateo County residency	Fact Sheet p.1	in_smc
At least 18 years old	Fact Sheet p.1	age >= minimum_age (parameter)
Qualified immigration status	Fact Sheet p.1	ca_smc_general_assistance_immigration_status_eligible_person
No minor children in SPM unit	Resolution 21-720 p.2 WHEREAS clause: "individuals who have no minor children"	~has_minor_child
Not currently receiving SSI	Board Memo p.1 (Interim Aid Reimbursement framing)	ssi == 0 (already implies categorical + income test + takeup)
Meets work requirement	Fact Sheet p.1	ca_smc_general_assistance_meets_work_requirements (see Work Requirement)
Countable income strictly below payment standard	Fact Sheet p.2 "Maximum Aid Payment"; the property limit "must be under" parallel	Strict < (per-applicant after scaling)
Countable property strictly below $1,464	Fact Sheet p.2; C-335 chart	Strict < against flat limit

Payment Standards

Per the C-335 chart, by living arrangement:

Living arrangement	Maximum Aid Payment	Effective Date
Independent Living	$732	2023-10-01
Drug & Alcohol Treatment Center	$732	2023-10-01
NMOHC without BHRS/SMMC referral	$732	2023-10-01
NMOHC with BHRS/SMMC referral	$1,599.07 → $1,626.07	2025-01-01 → 2026-01-01

NMOHC-with-referral tracks the California SSI NMOHC rate (CDSS-set, annual Jan-1 COLA). Pre-2025 amounts are not in the available source PDFs; noted with an inline comment in payment_standard.yaml.

Property Rules

• Flat $1,464 limit (not scaled by number of applicants) — household-level resource pooling matches SSI/SNAP/TANF; couples cannot double the limit by breaking out.
• Vehicle exemption: one vehicle per SPM unit excluded at the household average value, plus a partial exclusion of $2,928 against the combined equity of additional vehicles. Computed as max(additional_vehicle_equity - $2,928, 0). PolicyEngine has only aggregate household_vehicles_value and household_vehicles_owned, so the average-based proportional approximation is the only viable approach.

Income and Benefit

• Earned-income deduction: 20% (Resolution Modification E aligns SMC with CalFresh; cross-cites 7 CFR § 273.9(d)(2)).
• Income pooling: all SPM-unit member income is summed (regardless of categorical eligibility) — a unit with a high-income member should not qualify regardless of who applies.
• Per-applicant scaling: payment standard and benefit are per eligible person; total benefit = (standard − per-person countable income) × n_eligible.

Work Requirement

The Fact Sheet requires "available for full-time employment" plus VRS Work Center participation. Exemptions:

Exemption	Modeled
Employed full-time	Yes — any earned income > 0 (matches Riverside General Relief)
Age 65+	Yes (senior_exemption_age parameter)
Disabled	Yes (is_disabled)
Attending school for HS diploma	Approximated via is_full_time_student
Limited English proficiency	Yes — household-level is_non_english_speaking_home (defaults to False, so doesn't silently exempt everyone)
Participating in work program	Yes — via new generic is_in_work_program input (see below)
Caregiver for ill household member	Not tracked at the moment
Child under 16	Moot — minor children disqualify the SPM unit anyway
HSA-approved training program	Not tracked at the moment

New cross-program input: is_in_work_program

A generic Person/MONTH boolean input letting callers explicitly mark work-program participation (VRS Work Center, CalWORKs Welfare-to-Work, SNAP E&T, TANF work activities, ABAWD work-program participation). Lives in variables/household/demographic/person/ alongside is_disabled, is_full_time_student, etc. Reusable across SMC GA, Riverside GR, and federal/state programs that currently model work compliance only through observable proxies.

Related Fixes (Alameda County)

Two pre-existing bugs in Alameda General Assistance surfaced during review and are fixed in this PR:

1. in_ala.py typo: county == "Alameda_COUNTY_CA" → "ALAMEDA_COUNTY_CA". The mixed-case string never matched the all-caps enum, silently making every Alameda household ineligible.
2. programs.yaml parameter prefix: gov.local.ca.ala.ga → gov.local.ca.ala.general_assistance to match the actual parameter folder structure.

Changelog: changelog.d/fixed/8360.md.

Not Modeled (by design)

Requirement	Source	Reason
15-day county residency	Fact Sheet p.1	We don't track length-of-county-residency at the moment
Identification / SSN verification	Fact Sheet p.1	Verification flows are administrative
Interview, QR-7 reporting, renewal	Fact Sheet p.2	Administrative process
Application for other potential income	Fact Sheet p.1 (and Board Memo IAR framing)	Modeled indirectly via ssi == 0; CAPI not separately gated
Drug-felon / fleeing-felon disqualifications	Fact Sheet p.2 (Client Responsibility)	Not in available source data
Pre-October 2023 historical amounts	C-335 chart	Authoritative pre-Oct-2023 amounts not in available sources; verified_start_year: 2023 in programs.yaml
Pre-January 2025 NMOHC-with-referral rates	C-335 chart	CDSS sets the rate annually; pre-2025 values not in available sources

Files

parameters/gov/local/ca/smc/general_assistance/
variables/gov/local/ca/smc/general_assistance/
tests/policy/baseline/gov/local/ca/smc/general_assistance/
variables/household/demographic/person/is_in_work_program.py
variables/gov/local/ca/ala/in_ala.py            (typo fix)
programs.yaml                                    (SMC entry + Alameda parameter_prefix fix)
changelog.d/fixed/8360.md

Test plan

• 68 SMC GA tests pass
• 18 Alameda GA tests still pass after the typo fix
• make format clean
• CI passes

[codecov]

Codecov Report

❌ Patch coverage is 99.45946% with 1 line in your changes missing coverage. Please review.
✅ Project coverage is 98.96%. Comparing base (92fdab8) to head (5a51d79).
⚠️ Report is 21 commits behind head on main.

Files with missing lines	Patch %	Lines
...licyengine_us/variables/gov/local/ca/ala/in_ala.py	0.00%	1 Missing ⚠️

Additional details and impacted files

@@             Coverage Diff             @@
##              main    #8360      +/-   ##
===========================================
- Coverage   100.00%   98.96%   -1.04%     
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  Files            2       15      +13     
  Lines           57      193     +136     
  Branches         1        0       -1     
===========================================
+ Hits            57      191     +134     
- Misses           0        2       +2     

Flag	Coverage Δ
unittests	98.96% <99.45%> (-1.04%)	⬇️

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