DETROIT – Kinda Makini-Anderson has provided hot meals to households on the east side of Detroit throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. According to her count, Makini-Anderson’s non-profit Inner City Youth Group has provided more than 150,000 meals over the past ten months.
“We’ve always been there to help the community since 2009,” she said on a recent snowy morning after delivering breakfast to a local family. “But since the pandemic, it’s been an overload.”
However, for the vast majority of the families she helps feed, these meals are not the only support on which they can float. Makini-Anderson estimates that 98 percent of the households she serves already receive benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) – the government assistance program formerly known as food stamps. But the benefits offered by the country’s main hunger program are simply not enough.
Experts and lawyers say the pandemic has exposed a system that is outdated and inadequate.
Joseph Llobrera, director of research for the food aid team at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities Brainstorming in Washington, said research shows that SNAP does not do work – feeding the hungry. “People’s benefits are up two to three weeks a month,” he said.
Food aid organizations – from small churches and large local food banks to organizations like Makini-Anderson’s have had a double burden since the beginning of the pandemic. Supporting the millions of Americans who are just having food insecurity, who are not participating in or do not qualify for SNAP, while also serving those who are already receiving help they are not getting through the month.
Before the pandemic, the average SNAP benefit was about $ 1.40 per person per meal. During the pandemic, everyone was stopped at SNAP to the maximum benefit of $ 2 per meal, but the families who were already maximum, those who were most in need, received no extra funds.
Last month, the Biden government challenged the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which runs SNAP, to rectify this, but also to investigate the basis for the benefit itself earlier than planned. Maximum benefits for SNAP are determined by something called the ‘Thrifty Food Plan’, which is supposed to reflect the minimum cost of a nutritious diet.
But the Thrifty Food Plan has not been revised since 2006 and has not been dramatically re-evaluated since the 1970s, but has only increased over the years in line with inflation. The plan would not be reconsidered for two years.
“The Thrifty Food Plan is based on the assumption that people have a lot of time to praise and prepare meals in advance, but the reality is that many families work with different jobs,” Llobera said. “Drawing up a food plan that assumes you’re going to soak beans overnight instead of canned beans – how realistic is that?” Llobrera notes that the plan is also based on an outdated assumption that people spend most of their income on food, while in fact most people spend most of their salaries on housing.
Meanwhile, food banks have filled the void.
“We’ve done it already, huh? Ten, 11 months? And unfortunately we did not see a light at the end of the tunnel,” said Brian Barks, president and CEO of Food Bank for the Heartland, which serves 93 , said. provinces across Nebraska and Iowa.
When the pandemic began, NBC News reported that Barks’ food bank was so overwhelmed by requests for help with the application for SNAP benefits, that they were behind. Eventually, the food bank had to remove its ads about their SNAP assistance program because they were simply getting too many calls to handle.
“We will get such a large volume of calls that we have no ability to keep up with our limited staff,” Barks explained.
But the amount of food they had to buy to meet the need went up, up and up. It went from $ 80,000 a month before the pandemic to a staggering $ 1.5 million that the food bank now spends every month feeding the pantry – and the people – who rely on it.
“There are some serious questions that Americans ask themselves every day. ‘Do I get the medicine I need, or do I buy food? Do I pay the electric bill or do I buy food?’ “The people in the gap who do not qualify for SNAP benefits, and those who need and still need food aid, are a big gap,” he said.
Barks’ food bank is not unique in this regard. Across the country at Feeding San Diego, which serves San Diego County and surrounding areas, 700,000 meals are distributed each month compared to the same time last year.
Barks said the changes to SNAP that the Biden government announced last month feel hopeful.
“SNAP is a political football. It has always been so,” he said, “but it is an important, essential tool that every food bank needs to do the job we do. We need help from the federal government. “The state and local governments, to do this work. People who are waiting on food banks to solve the food insecurity problem in our country are not going to do us.”
In fact, the Feeding America nationwide network of food banks, of which both Food Bank for the Heartland and Feeding San Diego are members, conducted a study showing that SNAP can deliver nine for every meal offered by one of their food banks.
This is of concern to people like Makini-Anderson in Detroit, who often see family members who are not eligible for the boost that SNAP offers.
Families like Barry Chambliss and Melissa Michaux’s. With five children under the age of ten and dramatic losses to their income during the pandemic, Chambliss and Michaux scrapped. But when they applied for SNAP in the spring, they were denied.
“On the last denial I got, it said I should end the credentials for the end of service that Barry had not had for years,” Michaux said.
Attempts to challenge the decision and get in touch with a business worker have led to unanswered calls and frustration, the couple said.
“People used to be able to go into the office and complete the actual application, and they can get help with that,” Makini-Anderson notes.[Now] it is difficult for them to even navigate through their phone to complete this application. ‘
This is what Stacy Dean, the new Deputy Secretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services at the USDA, is well aware of.
“This is what keeps me on my guard at night. Who are we missing?” said Dean. “The process of applying for SNAP benefits is difficult. It’s incredibly rigorous. When I try to do it in a remote environment, I’ve made it harder for the states that run the program, as well as the people who run it. need. the benefits. “
The cost of administering SNAP is shared between states and the federal government, but since 6 million more people in America were added to the SNAP roles last year, many states have essentially been asked to do more with the same or fewer resources and to do it all remotely.
“One of the things we want to do is facilitate some of the rules to make it easier for states to run the program,” Dean said.
She acknowledged that food banks were on the rise. “They can meet an emergency need very quickly,” Dean said. “Unfortunately, they have been asked in this area to do so much more. It is to provide food for longer periods of time and supplement the federal food programs.”
For those who help meet the need, this is a bias. After the Great Recession in 2008, it took a decade before food insecurity fell back to previous levels.
“It takes every ounce of energy we have to try to help people who have been added to the roles that are now food insecure,” Barks said. “Anything, anything that can be done to put pressure on food banks to buy and distribute food will benefit hunger relief organizations in a positive way.”
Back in Detroit, things look like Chambliss and Michaux. When a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services in Michigan was reached, the agency could not comment on the details of the Chambliss and Michaux case due to confidentiality requirements. But since a Nightly News story aired earlier this month focusing on the couple and their children, Makini-Anderson says the agency has issued the family offer to help.
Kenzi Abou-Sabe and Kevin Monahan reported from New York. Cynthia McFadden reported from Connecticut.