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The end of disbursement of extra allotments for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) at the end of February has already begun to send ripples across the country as families and individuals who depended on the extra benefits to feed themselves have been left hanging.
Food insecurity activists, policymakers, social justice advocates, elected officials and families are worried that more people will go hungry, an already overburdened food distribution system will buckle under the weight of demand and the most vulnerable will be pushed into greater poverty and despair.
Daniel del Pielago, organizing director of Empower DC, said these cuts and Republican plans to disembowel the social safety net – including Medicare and Social Security – is a deliberate and cruel policy choice aimed directly at the working class, low-income households and the poor in this country.
“It’s part of this onslaught of safety net services being cut. I just heard from [the]city that they’re cutting the Emergency Rental Program 6½ months earlier than expected. And rents in May will go up 8.9% here in the District,” del Pielago said. “D.C. is super expensive, there are no livable wages for a certain segment of the population and there’s a sustained attack on low-income people. What we’re seeing in terms of the onslaught is the ‘Trump effect’ coming into play. We have a bunch of people making these decisions which don’t benefit low-income residents and Black people. They were attempting and now they’re having success.”
How America’s Most Vulnerable is Affected
Anne Miskey, CEO of Union Station Homeless Services in Los Angeles, said America’s poorest and most vulnerable have had to endure several consequential gut punches in a row: The COVID-19 global pandemic, the end of federal subsidies and stimulus funding and now these SNAP cuts. In the 20 years she’s worked in this field, Miskey said, she’s never seen the levels of hunger exacerbated by COVID-19 which sparked states of hunger not seen in a generation.
Miskey, a nationally recognized expert on strategic, innovative and effective solutions to ending homelessness, added that growing numbers of families are backed against the wall, primarily in Latino communities.
“The Latino homeless population has risen by 25%. African Americans have always had disproportionately high numbers who’re homeless. We’re seeing food insecurity and homelessness hit families and individuals really hard,” Miskey said.
She said people are living “close to the bone” in terms of making incomes stretch.
“Every month is the juggling of rent, a car, food,” she said. “The fact is we have so many people who’re food insecure, don’t know where their next meal is coming from [on]a daily basis, need to make a decision between paying rent or putting food on the table or fixing their car so they can keep their jobs. The fact that this is a choice people have to make is absolutely shameful.”
Already, food security activists and experts said, having the bottom drop out of the SNAP program so suddenly has pushed those who are food insecure closer to what they describe as a “hunger cliff.” The cuts are expected to create the most hardships for families with children, senior citizens and people with disabilities. According to Time Magazine, data shows that the SNAP emergency allotments helped keep close to 4.2 million people above the poverty line during the last quarter of 2021. The primary beneficiaries were African Americans and Latinos.
For the past year, as the COVID threat has receded, inflation has been battering Americans’ pocketbooks. At one point, inflation was hovering in the 9-10% range with food prices, gasoline and rent soaring, and food shortages, the Ukraine-Russia conflict and supply chain issues contributing to the high costs of essential foodstuff and products.
Local Mother Feels the Sting
Emily, a mother of three who lives in the D.C. area, said she’s a human example of the consequences of government policy.
“We were getting an extra $295 dollars a month during COVID which really helped especially during the lockdown,” said Emily, whose children include a disabled daughter. “But recently, we were informed that the extra allotment would be cut. Now my daughter is getting $65 a month. How can anyone live on that? The government needs to focus on strengthening the safety net for the working poor and middle class because so many hardworking people, and those with disabilities, are falling through the cracks.”
The SNAP emergency allotments were designed to alleviate food insecurity and stimulate the US economy throughout the COVID pandemic public health emergency. DC Hunger Solutions estimates that the cuts will affect more than 90,000 people in the nation’s capital. When this “hunger cliff” hits, on average, each SNAP participant will lose over $90 a month, DC Hunger Solutions officials said on their website.
“As a result, average SNAP benefits will fall to a meager $6 a person a day. The “hunger cliff” will hit all age groups and all parts of the District of Columbia,” staff said. “The steepest cliff will be for many older adults who only qualify for the minimum SNAP benefit — dropping from $281 a month to $30.”
Activists Call Out Politicians
Although the SNAP extra allotments, stimulus funds and other assistance from the federal government, helped stave off hunger and homelessness during the COVID-19 crisis, Kymone T. Freeman said politicians have inexplicably allowed a critical lifeline to expire.
“This sounds like more austerity to me. The fact that they are cutting anything at this time is obscene– immoral. All it means is more hardship for the poor,” said Freeman, a social justice activist, playwright and co-founder of WEACT Radio in Washington, D.C. “This will increase crime as well as poverty, distress and misery. The cuts are contributing to hunger. Thirty percent of the children in Washington, D.C. live in poverty. A budget is a moral document, and this is where their morality lies.”
Freeman, a seasoned social and criminal justice activist and author, said politicians have fallen far short when it comes to focusing on and delivering programs, projects and policies for working- and middle-class Americans, particularly African Americans.
“We need deliverables from politicians. We have not achieved our goals and civil society and Civil Rights organizations will never aid us,” he said. “When they developed their legislation, they didn’t engage us. I’m not saying they don’t deliver some progress, but it’s not enough. It’s never going to be enough when it comes from the top down. They’ll give us just enough to stop protesting and go home.”
Looking Ahead, Fearing the Worst
Miskey said although she’s hoping the hunger and homelessness landscape will improve, she’s fearing the worst.
“A great deal of the inflation and high prices we’re seeing is because of corporate greed,” she said. “We’re expecting homelessness to skyrocket. During COVID, we rented all these hotels and shelters. We managed pretty well during COVID as local, state and federal money poured in. But with the funding money gone, we’re trying to figure things out. The cost of living, rent and evictions are going up. The cost of living is driving people into homelessness. Things are going to get pretty bad because of the cost of living.”
The “hunger cliff” – a combination of high inflation, soaring food costs and a significant reduction of benefits – will ratchet up food insecurity and general hardship in Washington, DC and cities, towns and villages across the country. The District is slated to lose more than $14 million in benefits each monthly because of the loss of the extra allotments. Emergency food providers can’t fill this gap, officials from DC Hunger Solutions said, because even before the cuts, food banks, pantries, and soup kitchens have reported high demand for assistance.
Feeding America said SNAP provides about nine times the number of meals the food bank network does, and already food banks are contending with the crushing weight of food demands as 41 million Americans – the vast majority of whom have jobs – left trying to find enough food for themselves and their children.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture says 1 in 8 Americans are going to bed hungry and as many as 54 million people will struggle with hunger this year. Food security advocates echo Miskey’s criticisms of the system by pointing out that Americans are going hungry while farmers are paid to plow under their crops. Cases of people resorting to shoplifting to eat have skyrocketed, and as has become customary in the United States, the most vulnerable are affected the worst.
A Harris Poll, which sought to better understand how Americans feel about the emerging food crisis in the U.S., found that those surveyed had significant concerns about hunger, food waste, and limited access to affordable and nutritious food.
Among the findings: there are more than 6,500 food deserts across the U.S., affecting more than 19 million Americans with densely populated and traditionally underserved communities of color are being hit the hardest. Rural Americans who have to deal with difficulty getting to supermarkets are at risk as well. Seventy-six percent of Americans said they’re seeing more empty shelves at grocery stores now than at the beginning of 2022, the survey said, and 87 percent of Americans – especially parents and Millenials – expressed deep concerns about the rising cost of groceries, and empty shelves.
Massachusetts’ Democratic Congressman Jim McGovern has been blunt, arguing that hunger in America is a man-made crisis.
“I almost always start off discussions about hunger by reminding everyone that hunger is a political condition. Too many people think that America’s hunger crisis is the result of some kind of scarcity or lack of food – but nothing could be further from the truth,” said McGovern, ranking member of the House Rules Committee and co-chair of The House Hunger Caucus in a statement on his website. “America is a land of abundance. Billions of dollars’ worth of food goes to waste in this country every single year, yet nearly 40 million Americans, including 1 in 8 children in Massachusetts, do not know where their next meal is going to come from.”
“The truth is that we have the food, the ability, and the means to end hunger in America — what we lack is the political will and moral courage to act.”
