Sixty-one million dollars in food stamps could feed a lot of hungry people in San Francisco. The San Francisco Food Bank has estimated that last year alone, 61 million dollars worth of food stamps that could have been distributed to eligible San Francisco residents went undistributed.

The obvious question: With so many hungry people in San Francisco, why are 61 million dollars worth of food stamps not being distributed?

There are many barriers people face to receiving food stamps. The first barrier that people face might be whether they have the knowledge that the food stamp program exists, and that they could be eligible to receive food stamps. Other barriers include lack of knowledge and confusion about food stamp eligibility rules concerning issues such as immigration status and past drug convictions.

Despite the San Francisco Human Services Agency employing some food stamp workers who speak different languages, people who are not fluent in English have increased difficulty accessing all government social services, including the food stamp program. Illiterate community members similarly face difficulties accessing red-tape-laden, jump-through-many-hoops-of-paperwork social services, including accessing food stamps.

In spite of poverty, need and hunger, many community members don’t access all the social services they are eligible for and have a right to. Our community is weary of being treated like criminals on the hustle every time we apply for social services that our government seems to resent as begrudged hand-outs for lazy welfare queens and kings wanting to live off other hard-working taxpayers‚ labor.

The reality is that these social services, including food stamps, are needed because our economic system is based on a few people living like kings and queens off of other people‚s labor. It’s called capitalism, with a few living richly at the top of a socio-economic pyramid on the labor of the masses. However, those living like kings and queens off the labor of others are not those applying for and eligible for food stamps. The masses at the bottom of the pyramid of capitalism are the hungry people eligible for food stamps.

Having established that the federal food stamp program is just another crumb thrown off the table in attempts to stave off the revolution of the starving and dispossessed, there are still many people working in San Francisco’s Human Service Agency and in San Francisco community-based non-profit organizations whose interest is to get food to the hungry, regardless of who-has-what analysis about why those masses are hungry.

There are people in the San Francisco Human Service Agency and in community-based organizations who want to see the millions of available food stamp dollars that have not been being distributed in San Francisco get distributed, and are beginning to work together to do just that.

Likewise, there have been other recent attempts to address some of the barriers hungry people face to receiving food stamps which are actual social injustices, such as the state-wide billed sponsored by our very own Mark Leno. Assembly Bill 1796, which creates food stamp eligibility for persons who have been convicted of felony drug possession for personal use, went into effect in California in January of this year. The bill is only one step towards addressing the greater social injustice of the cruel and unusual punishment denying those with drug felony convictions food when they are hungry, but at least it is one step in the right direction.

In 1996, federal welfare legislation barred individuals with felony drug convictions after August 22, 1996 from receiving food stamps. Individual states that want to can opt out of this federal legislation and provide food stamps to community members with felony drug convictions anyway. However, opt-out legislation in California was vetoed in 1999, 2001 and 2002. California AB 1796 allows for individuals with drug felony convictions involving use or possession for personal use to apply for food stamps; however those with felony drug convictions including “cultivating, harvesting, or processing marijuana or any part thereof,” “manufacturing a controlled substance,” “unlawfully transporting,” “selling, furnishing, administering, giving away, possessing for sale, purchasing for purposes of sale,” and “possessing precursors with the intent to manufacture a controlled substance,” are still ineligible for food stamps and can still literally starve, for all our government cares.

San Francisco Supervisor Sophie Maxwell is sponsoring the new San Francisco Food Security Task Force, co-created by local non-profits such as the San Francisco Food Bank and St. Anthony’s Foundation. The Food Security Task Force will include one member each from the Human Service Agency, the Department of Public Health, the Department of Children, Youth and Families, the Mayor’s Office on Community Development, the Recreation and Park Department, and the San Francisco Unified School District. Also on the Food Security Task Force shall be four representatives of community based organizations, including the San Francisco Food Bank and St. Anthony’s Foundation, with no organization having more than one representative on the Task Force.

The Coalition on Homelessness is applying for one of these community-based organization seats on the Task Force.

Written into the legislation creating the Food Security Task Force under the “Purposes of Task Force; Strategic Plan” is the following: “The Food Security Task Force shall recommend to the Board of Supervisors legislative action and city-wide strategies that would increase participation in federally funded programs such as the Food Stamp program, Summer Food Service, the Child and Adult Care Food Program, the Homeless Children Nutrition Program, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women Infants and Children (WIC), the National School Lunch Program and the National School Breakfast Program. The Task Force shall also provide general advice and assistance to the Board of Supervisors with regard to funding priorities, legislative action, and city policies on addressing hunger and enhancing the food security of San Francisco residents in addition to any other issues within the Task Force’s expertise. To accomplish these goals, the Food Security Task Force shall prepare a written, comprehensive, and coordinated strategic plan setting forth its recommendations and suggestions on implementation. The Task Force shall submit the plan to the Board of Supervisors within twelve months after the first meeting of the Task Force.”

The vision and work creating the Food Security Task Force grew partly out of the San Francisco Food Stamp Access and Participation Group, a collaboration of community activists working in many non-profits such as the San Francisco Food Bank, St. Anthony’s Foundation, the Homeless Advocacy Project, and San Francisco Food Systems (to name only a few,) and pro-active members of San Francisco’s Human Services Agency such as Leo O’Farrell, the director of San Francisco’s food stamp distribution program, and Linda Lito, who is the director of HAS’s food stamp outreach.

Together they started a pilot program entitled “Food Stamps In A Day.” Rather than requiring food stamp applicants to come to the Human Service Agency to apply for food stamps, the Food Stamps In A Day pilot program brings the food stamp application process out into the community to prospective food stamp applicants where they already are.

Food Stamps In A Day’s pilot program debuted one day at St. Anthony’s soup kitchen, allowing hungry community members accessing the soup kitchen to also apply for food stamps. 74 applications processed in one day at St. Anthony’s soup kitchen yielded 43 new food stamp cases from eligible community members who had been standing in line for a free hot meal at St. Anthony’s, who were eligible for food stamps but had not been receiving food stamps. These community members were able to access their food stamps the very next day, hence the program’s name.

But what of the 31 food stamp applicants out of the 74 at St. Anthony’s soup kitchen that day who applied but were denied? Some of those denied were denied because of felony drug convictions involving sales, some were denied because of their immigration status, some were denied because they receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and one was a student (why do you think they call them “starving students?”)

In the 1970s, California chose to “cash-out” food stamps for recipients of SSI. Elderly and disabled Californians getting SSI also receive SSP, a state supplemental payment, that theoretically covers food costs and makes them ineligible to receive food stamps. Some families with disabled members get more food stamp benefits under this program; however the SSI/SSP program is not enough in California’s inflated economy, which includes sky-high housing costs, to meet people’s basic needs and keep people healthy and fed. SSI recipients in California need more resources for food.

Clearly, barriers that community members face in accessing food stamps need to be addressed at national, state and local levels. In San Francisco the Coalition on Homelessness has started a Food Stamp Outreach Program which aims to work with members of the San Francisco Food Stamp Access and Participation Group, and hopefully the Food Security Task Force, to fight food stamp applicant barriers locally, and to get some of San Francisco’s undistributed 61 million dollars in food stamps distributed to the hungry people who need them!

Some of the many outreach ideas that the Coalition on Homelessness is bringing to the table include assisting people being released from jail with accessing food stamps and outreaching food stamp application information to non-traditional community services such as needle exchange sites.

The Coalition on Homelessness Food Stamp Outreach Project was created and is driven by a current food stamp recipient. Currently, San Francisco food stamp applicants are facing longer processing periods for food stamp applications and longer waits for appointments when applying for food stamps, a situation created by the current typical understaffing and under-funding of all social service programs. This situation is only going to worsen through October of 2005, as staff at the San Francisco Human Services Agency trains on a new computer program which will go into effect across California in November called “CALWINS.” The STREET SHEET hopes to provide our readers with more information on this new computer system which will impact social service recipients statewide in our October issue.

The good news is that the director of San Francisco’s Human Services Agency’s food stamp program, Leo O’Farrell, and HSA director of food stamp outreach Linda Lito have been proactively working with the greater community to address the problems of food stamp distribution and outreach, and there is hope that the coalition building which has started to address this issue will only continue to grow.

Daisy

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 1st, 2005 at 12:08 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.