By Emilie Munson
Washington
Nearly 300,000 people have applied for food stamps in the past 10 weeks in New York.
A hotline telling people where they can find food assistance has seen a tenfold increase in calls since the coronavirus pandemic struck upstate New York. Lines to receive food and meals have stretched to hundreds of cars long in Albany. Many food pantries have doubled the number of people they serve, especially those that deliver groceries to homes.
As more Americans lose their jobs during the crisis, hunger is increasing in America. Democrats and Republicans are at odds over what to do about it.
Democrats are pushing legislation to make federal food assistance benefits more generous and expand who can get them. Republicans have expressed that current levels of food assistance benefits are sufficient, but supported other ways of getting more food into the hands of needy Americans, including a $3 billion plan for the U.S. government to buy unsold meat, produce and dairy from farmers and distribute it to communities in 25 pound boxes.
“It helps the small farmers and of course it helps those in need,” said Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and advisor who has championed the Food Box Program.
Taking a similar approach, members of the New York congressional delegation including, Reps. Paul Tonko, D-Amsterdam, Antonio Delgado, D-Rhinebeck and Elise Stefanik, R-Schuylerville, sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture in April urging the agency to match farmers with unsold milk to food donation programs.
“I have spoken with dairy farmers from across the district who have had to dump milk,” Stefanik said. “I have also heard from local community leaders that food banks have seen an increase in the number of families they are serving. This bill helps to bridge that gap.”
U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., on Tuesday applauded the food distribution efforts, but stressed that they should be a supplement to expanding food stamp benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the nation’s largest and oldest food assistance program.
“It’s estimated that every dollar distributed through SNAP would put $1.50 back into the economy,” Gillibrand said. “That’s one of the most powerful force multipliers the government has. As the world faces the worst economic emergency we’ve seen since the Great Depression, those benefits and the growth they create are urgently needed.”
Gillibrand sent a letter to Senate leaders proposing increasing the maximum SNAP benefits by 15 percent during the pandemic. She wants to add children whose daycares are closed to a program that feeds low-income children whose schools are closed and extend the program through the summer. In addition, she wants to waive the time limit and other eligibility requirements, increase support for pregnant women, and allow more flexibility on where the benefits can be used.
Democrats pressed to include some of these changes in earlier coronavirus bills but could not reach bipartisan agreement.
The SNAP program is automatically funded so it does not need Congress to appropriate more money for it as demand balloons. Some Republicans think that alleviates the need for legislative changes, which they worry might become permanent expansions of food stamps.
During the pandemic, the Trump administration has allowed people in many states to use their SNAP benefits to buy food online, following a pilot program that started in New York in April 2019. But in other ways, the administration has prioritized decreasing the use of food stamps, including by issuing more stringent regulations regarding work requirements and eligibility for the program.
In 2019, 35.7 million Americans used food stamps and the program cost the government $60.3 billion, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In February 2020, the number of Americans using the program rose to 36.8 million.
The USDA and New York Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance do not have data publicly available on SNAP usage in New York from March or April, when the crisis worsened. The most recent data available indicates that 2.5 million New Yorkers were using SNAP food assistance in February 2020, a slight decrease from the month prior and a nearly 5 percent decrease from the year prior.
Since February demand for food stamps in New York has skyrocketed. For the first two weeks of March, there was an average of approximately 15,000 SNAP applications per week, an official from the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance said. For the next four weeks, applications spiked to an average of about 38,000 per week. Then, in the past month, the application rate has gradually diminished, but was still 25,000 per week.
“We run a food access resource line and since the crisis started, our phone referral line volume has increased to nearly 10 times the calls we were receiving before,” Natasha Pernicka, executive director of the Food Pantries of the Capital Region, said Tuesday. “What that tells us is that there is a significant number of people who are new.”
The organization, a coalition of 68 food pantries in Albany, Rensselaer, Saratoga and Schenectady counties, has seen an increase in food demands at 46 percent of its food pantries, increases sometimes as high as 200 percent, Pernicka said. The increases were highest at food pantries that provided home delivery for vulnerable individuals.
Many unemployed individuals do not qualify for SNAP if they are receiving unemployment benefits including an extra $600 per week from the federal government during the pandemic; with the extra $600 benefit, they have too much income to qualify. But those pandemic unemployment supplements are scheduled to cease at the end of July. Social service workers predict another spike in food stamp applications at that time.
“We are concerned about seeing a crush of people who become eligible for SNAP when federal unemployment benefits end,” said Sherry Tomasky, director of communications for Hunger Solutions New York, which subcontracts across the state to help people apply for food assistance. “It is a dynamic that we want to keep our eye on very closely so we are prepared to meet a demand that could possibly come at that time.”