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Hunger in plain sight: SNAP food benefits help low-income people, families

Bismarck Tribune - 6/19/2021

Jun. 19—As their meal simmered on the stove in their mobile home in northeast Bismarck one late afternoon in April, Gary Ellison and his wife, Violet, watched an episode of the old TV Western series "Bonanza."

The show's patriarch character, Ben Cartwright, is sitting at a lavish Virginia City restaurant table with his two grown sons, Hoss and Little Joe. Violet speculates that the beefy Hoss could eat a plate of chicken by himself, and later in the scene he cuts into a large six-layered cake, only to be distracted away from the table.

"Aren't they going to eat the cake?" Gary asks his wife.

Before long the couple sit down with their own two grown sons to eat a simple meal of fried fish, pasta and cucumber salad served on paper plates. It's not chicken and cake, but Gary still appreciates it.

"She's a good cook," he says of his wife. "You can't make stuff good like she does. She knows how to make it."

Any leftovers will become part of a mulligan stew.

Gary, 79, and Violet, 80, have been married more than half a century, and they've worked hard their entire lives to make a living. They don't expect or ask for much, but they do wish at this point in their lives that it was just a little bit more.

The couple get a small combined monthly payment from Social Security and live well below the poverty line. They've gotten used to making food purchases "nip and tuck," including taking advantage of Adopt-a-Block food donation sites once a week.

For the past five years the couple have been receiving monthly benefits from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, formerly known as food stamps.

"(It) seems like it doesn't last very long, but it helps," Gary said. "We manage, I guess. We're still here."

Food insecurity

The Ellisons are among those who deal with "food insecurity" — a lack of consistent access to adequate food. The problem has worsened amid the coronavirus pandemic, with food prices more than 3% higher now than they were a year ago, and restaurant prices expected to increase as much as 3.5% this year, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report released in April.

"The pandemic has just amplified the inequities in our society," said Karen Ehrens, a Bismarck health nutrition consultant and registered dietitian.

Ehrens also is coordinator of the Creating a Hunger Free North Dakota Coalition, a statewide network of organizations, agencies and people focusing on unmet food needs.

"What I have been learning is just how many hands and hearts and wallets have pitched in, in so many ways to help people access food," she said. "And 2020 has really showed us the importance of access to food and responding to help people access food."

Ehrens believes society and also governments have stepped up to the challenge. She cites how the federal government reduced red tape and implemented waivers so programs — including SNAP — could adapt and respond to the harsh circumstances of the pandemic.

Relief acts

The SNAP program, which dates to the Great Depression, serves children, seniors, people with disabilities and low-income workers. The Families First Coronavirus Response Act passed by Congress in March increased funding for the program by more than 50%, to nearly $85.6 billion for the 2020 fiscal year.

But only about 42% of eligible seniors nationwide are enrolled in SNAP; in North Dakota it's 30%. The National Council on Aging says several factors may contribute to the low rates, including lack of mobility or technology, stigma and misinformation about the program's workings or eligibility requirements. Enrolled North Dakota seniors on average receive $139 a month in benefits.

"In North Dakota we have a lot of people that feel like other people need (food) more than they do," said Michele Gee, director of the state Department of Human Services Economic Assistance Division, which manages SNAP in the state. "And our program is here to help for those times when they do have a reduced income, whether it be temporary or long term."

About 520 retailers accept SNAP benefits in North Dakota.

"For every dollar of SNAP benefits, economists estimate it increases our economic activity by $1.54," Gee said. "I think that's important for people to understand. It's available for people that need this, but it's also supporting our local economy and our local businesses."

The relief act also established the Pandemic Electronic Benefits Transfer (P-EBT) program, which helps families who have school-age children buy food to replace meals the students would have received at schools that were closed to on-site classes during the pandemic.

USDA in April announced it was expanding the P-EBT program over the summer, through the American Rescue Plan. That's expected to help about 30 million children.

Under fire

But programs such as SNAP and the Emergency Food and Shelter Program run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency have come under fire from conservatives.

Then-President Donald Trump in 2018 proposed to cut SNAP's budget by $17 billion and tighten work requirements for some 700,000 unemployed workers. A coalition of 19 states and private groups sued the administration and won.

Trump in his 2021 budget proposal sought to cut $230 billion from the program over the next 10 years. The cuts would have meant losses in benefits to millions of low-income workers and senior citizens and would have cost 500,000 school children access to free and reduced lunch meals, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan research institute. Then-U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said the proposed changes in the program were "about restoring the original intent of food stamps ... moving more able-bodied Americans to self-sufficiency."

The Agriculture Department in the Biden administration said it was abandoning the previous administration's planned cuts and restrictions to the program.

During this year's state legislative session, a group of Republican lawmakers unsuccessfully sought to terminate Gov. Doug Burgum's pandemic state of emergency declaration, citing in part a rebounding economy.

Doing so might might have cost the state $2.8 million a month in emergency SNAP benefits — a 25% loss — impacting 15,400 households, according to the state Human Services Department.

Rep. Rick Becker, R-Bismarck, said during House floor debate in February that "This is an interesting topic, because it's emergency SNAP funding. It's food stamps emergency on top of food stamps. What we have is an opportunity to say enough is enough. We are at the new normal — we are not currently at the state of emergency."

The resolution failed by a 28-65 vote.

Still struggling

A late-February report from the Center for the Study of Public and Private Enterprise at North Dakota State University showed the economic outlook for the state as moderately improving. Wage and salaries were expected to grow in the first two quarters of the year but then level off, and unemployment was forecast to grow even as the labor force expanded.

The state's unemployment rate for April was 4.2%, with more than 16,838 unemployed, compared to 8.7% and 35,580 unemployed in the same month last year, according to North Dakota Job Service.

Many North Dakota families continue to struggle to make ends meet — 45% of households with at least one child have said they experienced a loss of income during the pandemic, according to NDSU's Center for Social Research. Nearly 12% of state households expected a loss of income in May, according to a Household Pulse Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau in April.

USDA on April 1 authorized another round of food assistance totaling $1 billion per month to aid millions of low-income households participating in SNAP. The monthly allotment for North Dakota will be at least $1.3 million.

In 2019 the statewide distribution of SNAP funds hovered around $5.6 million a month, but as the COVID-19 pandemic spread in 2020 the amount of benefits rose to nearly $11.3 million in April of last year, dropping to just over $9 million late last fall. But by December the number of households eligible for SNAP rose again.

"In North Dakota we like to sometimes focus on the positive, or when a lot of people are doing well such as during the oil boom, 'Well if I'm doing well everyone must be doing well,'" said Ehrens, the nutrition consultant and dietitian. "I believe that hunger and food insecurity get overlooked or forgotten, or some people don't even like to believe that it does exist here, and it does."

The temporary increase in SNAP benefits has since been extended through September with the latest $1.9 trillion economic relief package passed by Congress. It also will give needed funding to senior nutritional programs and to the Women, Infants and Children program, which provides supplemental food, health care referrals, and nutrition education for low-income pregnant women and for children up to the age of 5.

"Because many charitable feeding organizations, state agencies, federal nutrition programs and volunteers, because so many of them have stepped up in new, flexible and adaptable ways, we've been able to keep even higher rates not as high as they could be," Ehrens said.

Reach Mike McCleary at 701-250-8206 or mike.mccleary@bismarcktribune.com.

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