How we research benefit rules

Rose City Benefitsonly exists to be trustworthy — if the rules we show you are wrong, the whole thing is useless. Here is exactly how we build and check every program on this site.

Where the rules come from

We only use official sources: a program’s own government or agency page, its published administrative rules, or an official PDF or fact sheet. We don’t summarize from blog posts, forum threads, or other benefits sites, and we don’t rely on our own memory of how a program works.

Every program is cited, with a verbatim quote

For every single program on this site, we save the exact sentence from the official source that supports the rule we show — not a paraphrase — along with the source URL and the date we fetched it. Tap “See the rule” on any program card to read that quote and go straight to the source yourself. A program with no citation never gets published.

Income limits come from published tables

Where a program’s income limit is based on a percentage of a published government figure, we use the actual current table, not an estimate:

• Federal programs tied to the poverty line use the 2026 HHS federal poverty guidelines.
• Oregon programs tied to state median income use the Oregon FFY2026 state median income table.
• The Portland Water Bureau discount uses the Water Bureau’s own published MFI (median family income) table, not the federal poverty line — these are different numbers, and mixing them up produces a wrong (much lower) income limit. See the updates log for a real example of us catching and fixing that exact mistake.

What we do not do

• We never decide anyone’s eligibility. Only the program can approve or deny a case. We point you to the official source so you can confirm it yourself, or so a caseworker can.
• We don’t collect or store what you enter. The household details you type into the tool are never saved, sent to us, or used to train anything. See our privacy page.
• No paid placement. Nothing you see is sponsored, boosted, or hidden because of a payment. There is no advertising on this site.

How often we re-check things

Links to official sources are re-checked periodically with an automated link checker, so a card doesn’t quietly point at a dead page. Citations — the actual quoted rule text, not just the link — are periodically re-verified against the live source page, since agencies update thresholds and requirements without warning. Every program shows the date its citation was last fetched, so you can see for yourself how fresh it is.

The honest limits

Rules change. Funding for a program can run out mid-year, even when the written rule hasn’t changed. We are one small, independent effort trying to track dozens of programs across federal, state, county, and local agencies — we will sometimes be behind, and we would rather tell you that plainly than pretend otherwise. That’s exactly why every card links to the official source: always confirm there before you rely on anything we show you.

Found something that looks wrong? Read our corrections policy or email hello@rosecitybenefits.org.