Thanks to everyone who joined in on the national call-in day to support SNAP in the Farm Bill.  Here’s an update on the Farm Bill action from July 11.

On Wednesday, July 11, the House Agriculture Committee voted to accept $16 billion in cuts over 10 years to SNAP (the “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program”, also known as “food stamps” or “CalFresh” here in California).  A group of Representatives (Reps. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, Joe Baca of California, Peter Welch of Vermont, Marcia Fudge of Ohio and Terri Sewell of Alabama) attempted to reinstate $16 billion to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program, but their amendment failed on a 15 to 31 vote.

What would the $16 billion in cuts to SNAP mean for California?

• Put restrictions on the use of “Categorical Eligibility”.  In California, AB 433 of 2008 (one of our Hunger Action Day bills) implemented modified Categorical Eligibility in California, extending CalFresh to individuals whose income is low enough for them to qualify but who have assets (savings, retirement funds) that would make them ineligible.  Restricting the use of Categorical Eligibility in California  would make approximately 177,000 low-income households ineligible for CalFresh.
• Put restrictions on the use of the “Heat and Eat” option.  In California, AB 6 of 2011 (another one of our Hunger Action Day bills) will, starting January 1, 2013, increase CalFresh benefits by $43/month for about 200,000 California households by allowing them to automatically qualify for a deduction for utility payments.  The Farm Bill amendment to restrict the use of Heat and Eat will limit states’ abilities to automatically allow for a utility deduction.

What happened and why?

SNAP enrollment has risen from 19 million in 2002 to 46 million in 2012.  Those who favor cutting SNAP see SNAP spending as a drain on the economy and are trying to cut costs by identifying what they call “loopholes” used by states to ease SNAP enrollment.  Two of the “loopholes” they’re trying to close are Categorical Eligibility and Heat and Eat. As House Agriculture Committee Chair Frank Lucas stated, “SNAP’s resources have been stretched because this administration has encouraged states to take liberties in how the program is administered”.

Anti-Hunger advocates who support SNAP see the program as an important economic stimulus and point out that SNAP enrollment is supposed to rise during times of economic difficulty, when more people are experiencing job loss, poverty, and hunger.  As the economy improves, SNAP enrollment rates will go down.  The Congressional Budget Office projects that the share of the population that participates in SNAP will fall back to 2008 levels in coming years and that SNAP costs as a share of the economy will fall back to their 1995 level by 2019.

Anti-hunger advocates see streamlining efforts such as Categorical Eligibility and Heat and Eat not as loopholes, but as tools to reduce administrative burdens on states and on SNAP participants while helping to ensure that hungry low-income people are able to access nutrition benefits.  Categorical eligibility helps low-wage working families with children and seniors with modest savings to qualify for SNAP.   Heat and Eat helps reduce paperwork and allows low-income people who don’t have utility bills in their name, but who still pay utility costs, to receive a SNAP benefit that is above the minimum benefit level of $16 per month.  A cut to Heat and Eat would disproportionately affect seniors, the disabled, and working poor families with children.

Next Steps:

There is still a lot of dissention in the House of Representatives around the Farm Bill.  Although it has passed through the House Agriculture Committee, there doesn’t seem to be much support for the bill in the full House.  The more conservative members of the House would like to see the bill’s price tag cut down further.  The more liberal members of the House don’t like the Farm Bill in its current form because of the SNAP cuts.

To further complicate matters, the Senate’s version of the Farm Bill differs significantly from the House’s version.  It is unclear at this point whether either house of Congress will bring the Farm Bill to the floor for a vote before the current version of the bill expires in September. They may decide to extend the current Farm Bill until the November election and to deal with creating a new Farm Bill at a less politically contentious time.

We will continue to keep you updated on upcoming opportunities to contact your representatives and advocate for a fair Farm Bill that does not hurt hungry people.

(Pictured: St. Anthony’s Advocate Franky and Assemblymember Sandre’ Swanson (D, Oakland) testify on behalf of AB 828)

St. Anthony’s has supported AB 828, the Nutritional Assistance for Families Act, and its goal to lift the lifetime ban on CalFresh (the new name for California’s “food stamp” program) assistance for people with prior low-level drug convictions. We have testified in support of the bill in front of both the Assembly and Senate Human Services Committees. because we believe that CalFresh benefits are critical for successful community re-entry and economic self-sufficiency. Denied these benefits, individuals who have already paid their debt to society are unable to secure nutritious food for their families.

AB 828 is currently stuck in the Senate Appropriations Committee on the “suspense file”.  We need to ask the Chair of this committee, Senator Christine Kehoe, to support the passage of AB 828 out of the suspense file so that it can be voted on by the entire Senate.

Please join St. Anthony’s in supporting AB 828 by writing to Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Christine Kehoe.  Hand written snail-mailed letters pack the most punch, but email is OK, too.

To send snail mail to Senator Kehoe, use this address:
The Honorable Christine Kehoe
Chair, Senate Appropriations Committee
State Capitol, Room 5050
Sacramento, CA 95814

To email the Senator, use this address: senator.kehoe@sen.ca.gov

Not sure what to say?  Feel free to use our sample letter, below.

Dear Senator Kehoe:

I support Assembly Bill 828 (Swanson) and its goal to lift the lifetime ban on CalFresh assistance for people with prior low-level drug convictions.

Access to CalFresh benefits is critical for formerly incarcerated people to successfully re-enter their community and stay self-sufficient.  Since people have already served their time, I think they deserve to qualify for CalFresh like any other individual.  When formerly incarcerated people are unemployed or underemployed with no food assistance, it makes it harder for them to feed their family.  Thirty-seven states and the District of Columbia have already restored nutrition benefits to this vulnerable population (USDA, June 2009).

For these reasons, I strongly support AB 828 and urge you and your colleagues to pass it out of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Sincerely,
(Your Name)

The following blog entry was written by Kendra Capece, Micah Fellow from St. Mary’s College who is interning with St. Anthony’s advocacy program this summer.

As St. Anthony’s Advocacy intern, today in the Dining Room I began outreach around a new issue, the Restaurant Meals Program. This service allows people who are homeless, disabled or seniors to use their food stamps (called CalFresh in California) in participating restaurants. (CalFresh benefits are stored on EBT cards, as pictured above.)  This is an incredibly necessary program because as one can imagine, being homeless, living in an single room occupancy hotel with no kitchen or not being physically able to cook presents serious hardships around fulfilling the basic need to eat. There has been talk at the federal level, however, that this program should be cut because of its lack of nutritional value, as many of the participating restaurants serve fast food.  (In my conversations with beneficiaries of the program, it was suggested that the government should be working to expand the program by getting more local, nutritious restaurants on board rather than cutting it. )  In response to the proposed elimination of the Restaurant Meals Program, a group of activists have started work on video testimony of people who use the program and don’t want to see it perish, in the hopes of educating the public and providing policymakers with a face behind the issue.

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Although the “Great Recession” technically ended in 2009, hunger and food insecurity continue to be a problem for many Americans.   For the past 60 years, the trends we’ve seen at St. Anthony’s Dining Room have mirrored nationwide struggles with hunger.  

When we look at the number of meals we’ve served between February 15 - March 1 of 2011, we see a 15% increase over the in the number of meals we served over the same period one year ago.   What we see at St. Anthony’s isn’t a phenomenon specific to San Francisco or to the Tenderloin: hunger continues to be a problem in communities across the nation.   Recent  reports from the Food Research and Action Center and Feeding America show that large numbers of households across the country are having trouble affording enough food. 

An article in the March 28, 2011 San Francisco Chronicle explains more about the specific issues that are related to hunger in California.  One of the factors related to hunger in our state is the burdensome and unnecessary barriers to the federal Food Stamp program (named “Cal Fresh” in California) that are  in place in California.  Only 50% of the people who are eligible for Cal Fresh actually participate in the program, and burdensome administrative requirements like mandatory finger imaging and quarterly reporting requirements contribute to California’s low participation rate.

St. Anthony’s is working with anti-hunger groups from across the state to cut through the red tape and improve California’s Cal Fresh participation rate, and you can join us!   We’ll be bringing a busload of advocates to Sacramento for Hunger Action Day on Tuesday May 17, 2011.  We’ll talk to our legislators about hunger issues in our communities and legislation that can help reduce hunger statewide.  If you’re interested in participating, please email Colleen at crivecca@stanthonysf.org

On Tuesday, January 25, St. Anthony Foundation joined advocates from around the state in Sacramento to speak with our representatives about hunger issues as part of California Hunger Action’s legislative leadership visit day. For our last legislative visit of the day, St. Anthony Foundation staff Colleen Rivecca and Celina Sutton joined with Western Center on Law and Poverty’s Jessica Bartholow and St. Anthony Foundation guest Franky Fardella to talk to Assembly member Tom Ammiano about the anti-hunger advocacy issues we would be working on this year.

One of the issues that caught Assembly member Ammiano’s attention was a complicated issue that could be addressed with a simple solution.  Due to a rather confusing state-level policy, many counties, San Francisco included, were unnecessarily sanctioning General Assistance recipients who fail to meet work requirements by removing their Cal Fresh (formerly known as “Food Stamp”) benefits.

By making a simple administrative change, General Assistance recipients who are unable to meet work requirements while our unemployment level remains above the national average don’t have to face hunger and the loss of their CalFresh benefits.  Cal Fresh benefits are funded through federal dollars, yet they are spent at local grocery stores and farmers’ markets, creating an economic benefit for our community while helping to support struggling San Franciscans with access to food.

Assembly member Ammiano discussed our concerns with San Francisco City Hall a few days after our visit to Sacramento.  A few days later, we were thrilled to learn that the San Francisco Food Stamp department revised their Food Stamp Employment and Training Policy in order to take advantage of changes to state and federal law that allows CalFresh recipients on General Assistance to retain their CalFresh benefits when unemployment rates are above the national average.

We are excited to have played a part in this important policy change that will improve the lives of struggling San Franciscans while providing an economic boost to local merchants, grocers, and farmers markets — all at no cost to the City of San Francisco.

Would you cut dinner to pay for lunch?  It doesn’t make much sense, does it?  Unfortunately, our legislators in Washington D.C. are entertaining this  choice right now: they’re thinking about paying for Child Nutrition Reauthorization (CNR) by cutting the SNAP (food stamps) program! This would be the first time in the history of the program that Food Stamp benefits would be reduced. Should the bill that includes CNR pass in its current form, a family of four can expect their benefits to drop about $59 a month starting in October 2013.

CNR affects nutrition programs for children: the National School Lunch Program, the School Breakfast Program, the Summer Food Service Program, and the Afterschool Snack and Meal Program, among others. On a typical day during the 2008-09 school year, 31.3 million children in more than 99,000 schools and residential child care institutions participated in the school lunch program.

SNAP/Food Stamps provides monthly benefits that can be used to purchase food at grocery stores and farmers’ markets. 41.8 million people nation-wide participated in the Food Stamp program in July of 2010.

Do you think it’s a good idea to cut food stamps (dinner) to pay for CNR (school lunch)? To make your voice heard, visit the website of our friends at FRAC (Food Research and Action Center), where you can send an email to the White House.

A recent article in the Washington Post has brought to light what many of us who are familiar with social services already know: millions of people across the U.S. are having to wait weeks or even months for food assistance.

The recession has contributed to huge caseload increases for the Food Stamp Program:  A record 40 million people currently receive Food Stamps nation-wide.  Administrative delays, bureaucratic red tape, and the overwhelming demand for food assistance have been offered as excuses for the backlog.   But the reality is that hunger can’t wait.  As one Food Stamp applicant stated, “I understand they say government is slow, but people are starving”.

When people can’t access government benefits like Food Stamps, where do they turn?  Anyone familiar with St. Anthony Foundation’s services knows the answer to that question: people turn to community-based emergency food programs like our dining room and our food pantry.   Is it any wonder that our Dining Room has been serving an unprecedented amount of food at the same time that our federally-funded Food Stamp program has seen unprecedented growth?

St. Anthony Foundation doesn’t just provide food for people in need.  We also work with our law makers to try to improve government programs that assist the poor.  Over the past five years that I’ve worked at St. Anthony’s, we’ve advocated to simplify, streamline, and de-stigmatize California’s Food Stamp program.  We’ve also worked hard to help our legislators and community members to understand that Food Stamps are an important part of our local economic recovery.  Food Stamps don’t just assist the poor; they also provide a stimulus for local food sellers as well as a boost to local government coffers.

A hungry community can’t be a strong and healthy community. That’s why we at St. Anthony Foundation provide immediate food assistance through direct services like our Dining Room. That’s also why we advocate for a stronger safety net and for a just society where all people have the chance to flourish.

What do we do now that the budget has left the Conference Committee and is in the hands of the Big 5? To answer that question, here’s an advocacy message from California Food Policy Advocates.

Action Items! What YOU can do!

1. Thank the budget conference committee for their positive actions to save CFAP (the California Food Assistance Program) and eliminate SFIS (finger imaging). To see who was on the budget conference committee: http://bit.ly/131K4h

2. Join with others in actions calling for the closing corporate tax
loopholes! Follow this link for more info: http://bit.ly/12EaHD

3. Support legislation from Senator Padilla and Senator Steinberg to
raise tobacco taxes and levies on oil extraction. Follow this link for
more info: http://bit.ly/14duKz

4. Tell the Big Five that revenue solutions must be part of the final
budget!

Contact Info for the “Big Five”:

Governor Schwarzenegger: http://bit.ly/pQ65C

Assembly Speaker Karen Bass: http://bit.ly/12Tzlj

Assembly Minority Leader Sam Blakeslee: http://bit.ly/EzAYI

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg: http://bit.ly/eYHlN

Senate Minority Leader Dennis Hollingsworth: http://bit.ly/eMeFi

Mark Leno took advantage of his place on the budget conference committee to propose eliminating the costly finger imaging system through the budget process rather than through the legislative process. The removal of the finger imaging system will take place if Governer Shwartzenegger signs off on the budget in the next few weeks.

It seems that two solid weeks of hearings about devistating cuts to health and human services prepared the Budget Conference Committee to make the decision it made today – to get rid of the costly and inefficient finger imaging system as a way to help balance the budget without restricting Californians’ access to the social service programs they need now more than ever!

Mandatory finger imaging for food stamp recipants was put in place by legislation in 1996 but did not get implemented statewide until 2000. Even though the legislation did not include it, SFIS takes a photograph in addition to a finger image. The process, designed to deter welfare fraud, created detering barriers to many low-income Californians who qualified for food stamps.

St. Anthony Foundation advocates for public policies that will promote nutrition and healthy eating for all, regardless of income.  We were very excited that two of the anti-hunger bills that we’ve supported for years were signed into law in 2008.

New Anti-Hunger Bills

AB 433 removes the asset test for Food  Stamp applicants.  This means that low-income families with savings or retirement accounts worth more than $2,000 will no longer be denied Food Stamps.  The passage of this bill is timely: since the bill was signed this fall, California’s unemployment rate has climbed steadlily.  AB 433 will help newly-unemployed families afford food without depleting their savings.

AB 2300 is an important step forward in helping reduce paperwork burdens on low-income families.  AB 2300 allows families who are already  enrolled in Medi-Cal (the state’s Medicaid program) to enroll their children (and maintain enrollment) in free school meals without additional paperwork.

More work ahead in 2009

During this economic downturn, a lot of political energy will be spent on figuring out how to stimulate the economy.  Economists of all stripes believe that increasing access to Food Stamps is one of the most effective ways to do this.    Not only do Food Stamps allow struggling families to put nutritious food on the table, they create a multiplier effect in local economies, with each dollar of food stamps generating $1.84 in economic activity.  This economic activity not only helps grocers and growers, but also state and local governments.

Join us for Hunger Action Day!

St. Anthony Foundation will be working with anti-hunger groups from across the state to urge our Sacramento legislators to help improve access to the Food Stamp program by:

• Simplifying the food stamp application process.
• Enacting reforms that will allow more low income single adults to access Food Stamps.
• Making it possible for more persons in drug/alcohol recovery programs to access Food Stamps and decrease the likelihood of recidivism.

Hunger Action Day will be on Wednesday May 20, 2009.  If you’d like to join St. Anthony Foundation in advocating for anti-hunger legislation at Hunger Action Day, contact Colleen Rivecca at crivecca@stanthonysf.org.