Even though the state has increased the number of families receiving food stamps (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP) by more than 70 percent since 2005, there is still real hunger in Georgia.
In many of the state’s poorest counties, the number of families needing assistance to buy enough food for a healthy life far outstrips the number getting such aid. Indeed, the Atlanta Community Food Bank reports that 646,000 households in Georgia have low or very low “food security,” which means those families can only afford low-quality food and may have reduced food intake. In other words, they are hungry.
Some members of the state Legislature have voiced the opinion that if state sales taxes were reinstated on groceries, the impact on the poor would be minimal because “they all get food stamps.” Nothing could be further from the truth.
Georgia ranks 35th among the states in terms of how many families who are eligible to receive SNAP actually receive it. Just 63 percent of eligible families receive aid. Only 10 percent of eligible senior citizens do. And despite efforts to make food aid more available to poor families, the aid is getting harder to get because of reduced numbers of caseworkers available to work with families. The number of cases per eligibility worker in 2004 was 379. By 2009, it had grown to 652.
Lawyers at Georgia Legal Services Program represent hundreds of low-income families around the state who are trying to get and keep food stamps because plowing through the bureaucratic maze is daunting. But we only have enough lawyers to help a tiny percentage of those who need it.
You shouldn’t need a lawyer to get food stamps if you are eligible for them, yet quite often, it takes professional help to get through a several-page form that asks for complicated income verifications and uses a complex formula for eligibility. For applicants who don’t speak English, that process is almost impossible. Overworked caseworkers are rarely able to help clients with the detailed forms, and quite often bureaucratic mistakes or lost documents prevent families from getting the aid they need.
Beyond the travesty of thousands of hungry families going unfed, the state’s economy is harmed each time an eligible food stamp applicant is denied. The average monthly benefit per household is $313. That’s more than $300 to spend at the local grocery store. All that money comes from the federal government, not out of state coffers. In dozens of Georgia counties, nearly one in four people receive SNAP. In Jenkins County in east Georgia, for example, 28 percent of all residents receive food stamps. That includes 51 percent of the children there.
Federal food aid is a huge chunk of the economy in those poor counties. Indeed, the original intent of federal food aid back in the 1930s when it began was to pair hungry families with farmers who needed to sell their crops. The SNAP program is still run by the Department of Agriculture. The program is, to this day, a tremendous boon to farmers and grocers across the country. And as for the rest of the economy, every dollar of food aid frees up a dollar that can be spent on something else, like rent or gasoline or day care or health care.
It would be more helpful to the state’s economy to make food aid easier to get and leave the sales taxes off groceries.
Phyllis J. Holmen is executive director of the Georgia Legal Services Program.
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