Re: Millions Eligible for Food Stamps Aren't Applying

[Margaret Coleman <drmsecon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ohio also has one of the ten highest welfare caseload to population ratios
in the US.  I believe that Cuyahoga County in Ohio has the highest
caseload/population ratio in the US -- the Brookings Institute has put out a
good study on caseload/population ratios.  Not surprisingly, caseload
decline in urban areas has been much lower than the nation as a whole.
maggie coleman

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:

> Reviving a "Poor People's Movement" is one of the campaigns that I
> think American leftists -- especially leftists in Ohio -- should be
> working on.  The following article says "Ohio had one of the steepest
> declines in food stamp participation....Last year, [only] 59 percent
> [of the eligible poor] got them."  It would be a good campaign for
> the Green Party or the Labor Party to get involved in, working
> perhaps with the Ohio Empowerment Coalition (at
> <http://www.overtherhine.org/contactcenter/oec/>), BREAD (at
> <http://www.nabrit.com/bread/>), the Black Radical Congress (at
> <http://blackradicalcongress.com/> -- Ohio has two BRC local
> organizing committees, one in Cleveland [Cynthia Triplett,
> 216-391-9015 / whited@xxxxxxx], the other Toledo [Abdul Alkalimat,
> aalkali@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]), and other orgs, though I don't know if
> it would & even could.
>
> Without a movement that links the poor, progressive unionists,
> religious leftists, activist lawyers, etc., folks won't even get what
> they are entitled to, much less demand better programs than what
> exists.
>
> Yoshie
>
> *****   New York Times 26 February 2001
>
> Millions Eligible for Food Stamps Aren't Applying
>
> By ELIZABETH BECKER
>
> CLEVELAND - As she weighs bunches of purple grapes or rings up fat
> chicken legs at the supermarket where she works, Fannie Payne cannot
> keep from daydreaming.
>
> "It's difficult to work at a grocery store all day, looking at all
> the food I can't buy," Mrs. Payne said.  "So I imagine filling up my
> cart with one of those big orders and bringing home enough food for
> all my kids."
>
> Instead, she said that she and her husband, Michael, a factory
> worker, routinely go without dinner to make sure their four children
> have enough to eat.  They visit a private hunger center monthly for
> three days' worth of free groceries, to help stretch the $60 a week
> they spend on food.
>
> But they have yet to turn to the government for food stamps.
>
> "I've never talked to anyone in government assistance," Mrs. Payne
> said.  "I didn't think we'd be eligible because we own a home and a
> car."
>
> Workers at the local food bank said it appeared the Paynes might
> qualify for food stamps.  Local welfare officials said their
> eligibility could not be determined unless the family filled out an
> application, which the Paynes said they now intended to do.
>
> The Paynes say they have never been solicited to apply for food
> stamps.  In that, they are not alone.  In a study last year, the
> Department of Agriculture reported that at least 12 million people -
> including at least a million children - are not receiving food stamps
> even though they are eligible.  Based on detailed annual surveys of
> tens of thousands of people, the Census Bureau has estimated that 3.7
> million households experience hunger as a result of not having enough
> money for food, and that many more - 9.7 percent of all households -
> cannot reliably afford all their basic food needs.
>
> "There is no reason that any American in 2001 should go hungry," said
> Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana, who is chairman of
> the Agriculture Committee.  "States should do everything possible to
> make certain that those who qualify for food stamps know it and are
> enrolled if they so choose.  That was the intent of the law."
>
> Yet that has not happened in most states.  Despite studies warning
> that bureaucratic hurdles discourage the poor from applying for food
> stamps, states have been wary of streamlining their application
> processes.
>
> A major reason, some critics say, is that states fear they will be
> penalized by the federal government for giving recipients too much in
> food stamps - or too little.  In 1996, Arizona was fined $21 million
> because of the high number of errors its social workers made in
> calculating the size of benefits.  Those complicated calculations are
> based on mandates drawn up by the Agriculture Department to deter
> fraud.  But as a result, many states require the poor to fill out
> long applications and visit welfare offices every three months to
> make sure the benefits are correct.
>
> "This is a nutrition program and it should be simplified," said
> Joseph Gauntner, director of Cuyahoga Health and Nutrition, a tough
> critic of the food stamp program he administers for the county that
> includes Cleveland.  "Now the rules read like a welfare program that
> is all about preventing fraud with ridiculously rigorous requirements
> for a benefit that averages only $73 a month."
>
> Food stamp rolls have tumbled to 17 million people from 24.9 million
> at the time of the 1996 welfare overhaul law, according to
> Agriculture Department figures.  Only half of that drop can be
> attributed to the strong economy or new restrictions that removed the
> eligibility of some adults without children and immigrants, according
> to studies by the Agriculture Department and the Center for Budget
> and Policy Priorities, a liberal public policy research group.
>
> "Food stamp participation has fallen much more than the strength of
> the economy would explain," said Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, the
> senior Democrat on the Agriculture Committee.  "At the same time, the
> demands on food banks, soup kitchens and similar food sources have
> increased markedly."
>
> America's Second Harvest, the principal nonprofit source for food
> banks across the country, has doubled the amount of food it
> distributes, to two billion pounds in the last two years, says
> Douglas O'Brien, the group's policy director.
>
> Ohio had one of the steepest declines in food stamp participation.
> In 1994, 80 percent of the state's eligible poor received food
> stamps.  Last year, 59 percent got them.
>
> Mr. Gauntner wants the state to streamline application forms and
> procedures for food stamps and adopt options offered by Congress in
> November that would adjust rules to reflect the higher cost of
> living, including a change that would allow a family on food stamps
> to own a reliable car for work.
>
> He also wants money for a program to tell people about food stamps.
>
> "Working doesn't mean you're getting out of poverty anymore," Mr.
> Gauntner said.  "The issue isn't getting people to work anymore, it's
> figuring out how to help them feed themselves after they come home
> from work."
>
> Rather than urging an expansion of food stamp programs, Mr. Lugar
> proposes greater tax benefits for corporations and small businesses
> that donate food to the nonprofit private food banks.  He said that
> this could encourage producers and restaurants to donate some of the
> more than 80 billion pounds of food wasted each year in the United
> States.
>
> As Ohio's food stamp rolls plunged, demand at private food banks like
> the Euclid Hunger Center in suburban Cleveland exploded.  When it
> opened 10 years ago, the center was an emergency pantry for 100
> families.  Last year it helped 1,000 families, giving out 255,000
> pounds of groceries - canned soups, pasta, vegetables - from the
> Cleveland Food Bank.
>
> Fannie Payne signed up there and, with a family of six on an income
> of $1,900 a month, qualified for three bags of groceries each month.
>
> Lisa Hamler-Podolski, executive director of Ohio's branch of Second
> Harvest, said that a third of the people at Ohio's food banks last
> year were first-time users.
>
> "They are a new class of people, mainly working poor, who are running
> out of resources," Ms. Hamler-Podolski said.
>
> "We're behind on all of our bills," Mrs. Payne said.  "We don't pay
> electricity until they threaten a cutoff.  To be honest, I'm behind
> two months on the mortgage - that's $600 a month.  We owe $800 on the
> water bill and $500 for heat."
>
> The Euclid Hunger Center helped her seek aid from her parish, St.
> William's Catholic Church.  But it hurt that three cars broke down in
> six months.
>
> "They all died and we had to get Mike to work, so we bought a good
> used car we can't afford," she said.
>
> The first thing to go was money for food for herself and her husband.
>
> "Some nights Mike and I eat our kids' leftovers, and when I don't
> have any money for milk I feed the kids soup for breakfast," she said.
>
> Discount coupons helped Mrs. Payne stretch her money, but each month
> the situation got worse.
>
> Recently her husband volunteered for his factory's latest shift, 10
> p.m. to 6 a.m., to earn extra money.  She started working four days a
> week, 5 p.m. to midnight.  Now their 13-year-old daughter, Kali, is
> in charge of the house from 10 to midnight, looking after the
> sleeping children - Sara, 9, Joseph, 7, and Alex, 3.
>
> Joseph has noticed that food has grown scarce lately.  When he and
> his mother were shopping recently, Joseph stopped a stranger with
> food bulging out of her cart and asked her if she was rich.
>
> "No," the woman answered.  "I have to feed a big family of five people."
>
> "We're a family of six people," Joseph said, "and we could never buy
> that much food."   *****