|
|
Food Stamp Program to Help Working Poor
By Judith R. Tackett, The City Paper
August 8, 2005
Nashville will soon be taking part in a pilot Department of Human Services program to reach low-income people who may not realize they are eligible for food stamps.
Tennessee is among six states - including Arizona, Maryland, Minnesota, Michigan, and New York - that received a total of $5 million in Food Stamp Participation grants from the federal government.
The Tennessee Department of Human Services (DHS) announced last week that it was awarded $800,000 to increase access to the Food Stamp program, and DHS plans to launch pilot projects in Shelby and Davidson counties in January.
The pilot sites will target elderly people, working parents and pregnant women, and DHS caseworkers will seek out potential Food Stamp recipients at their homes or places of work and community events.
"The Food Stamp Program is critical in providing needed nutritional assistance to so many working-poor families in Tennessee," DHS Commissioner Gina Lodge said. "This grant will enable our staff to reach out to families who might not think they are eligible, or who cannot come to our county offices during regular office hours."
Davidson and Shelby counties were selected as pilot sites because a large number of families in those two counties are eligible for Food Stamps. An estimated 30 percent of Tennessee households are eligible for Food Stamps but do not apply for the program.
The $40.7-billion Food Stamp program is funded entirely by the federal government through the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and administered statewide by the Tennessee Department of Human Services (DHS). The program provides nutritional assistance benefits to low-income children and families.
Benefits under the Food Stamp program average about $1 per person per meal and are provided in form of an electronic debit car that can be used only to purchase food.
Dorothy Rosenbaum with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, wrote in a recently published research paper that the Food Stamp program has relatively high participation rates for very low-income individuals who are elderly or disable and who are already connected to other benefits such as Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Medicaid.
However, "the program does a much poorer job reaching out to eligible individuals who do not receive these other programs' benefits," Rosenbaum wrote,
USDA estimates that only about 30 percent of eligible elderly people and about 50 percent of eligible disabled adults apply for Food Stamps.
CBPP reports that as Congress works through its budget appropriations process, there is dissension between lobbyists representing agricultural trade and commodity groups and those promoting low-income programs as to where Congress should make the proposed $3 billion cuts in the USDA.
Agricultural commodity groups want cuts to be proportional to the amount different programs receive. However, that would mean the Food Stamp program would be cut by close to $5 billion over five years as opposed to the 7 percent cut, or $200 million over five years, that low-income advocates propose.
The appropriations bill is still in the House and Senate appropriations committees, which decide the actual amount of funding for each federal program under the FY 2006 budget.
Tennessee had 374,000 households enrolled in the program in January, 36,000 of which are in Davidson County.
In July, DHS distributed more than $78.5 million in Food Stamp benefits statewide.
For more information and to view a county-by-county breakdown of Food Stamp participation visit www.state.tn.us/humanserv/fs-participation.htm.
Food Stamp participation rates in Tennessee increased 67 percent from January 2001 (224,000 cases) to January 2005 (374,000 cases), DHS' Director of Communications Michelle Mowery Johnson said in an interview last month.
Tennessee's 67 percent caseload increase compares to a nationwide increase of 47 percent.
"We have one of the highest participation rates in the nation," Mowery Johnson said. "However, we are now beginning to see a decrease in participation."
In May DHS registered 351,000 cases, down from the 374,000 in January.
|
|
