Food Stamps Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Unwinding Medicaid: Changes To SNAP Worry Food Security Advocates

Advocates and officials are warning that upcoming changes to SNAP benefits could put West Virginia households and food banks in jeopardy.

Starting March 1, some struggling families may have less government support for food as COVID-19 pandemic-era emergency allotments come to a close.

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programs (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps, provide temporary help for people going through hard times by providing supplemental money to buy food until they can get back on their feet.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), 37.3 percent of West Virginia households receiving SNAP benefits have children.

Since April 2020, the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources has issued SNAP emergency allotments, increasing each household’s monthly benefit.

Now, those monthly SNAP benefits have returned to the pre-COVID-19 Public Health Emergency level based on the household’s income, assets, household size, and other non-financial factors. About 170,000 households will be affected.

“Early on in the pandemic, Congress and the USDA, allowed states to increase everyone’s SNAP benefits up to the maximum level, regardless of what they would normally be qualified for based on their household income, assets and expenses,” said Kent Nowviskie, deputy commissioner of the DHHR’s Bureau for Family Assistance. “As a result of the omnibus spending bill, the Consolidated Appropriations Act that was passed in December, Congress brought that portion of the snap or that option for states to an end.”

According to Nowviskie, Congress plans to repurpose the funding of emergency allotments to allow states to set up a permanent ongoing summer EBT program for children who are eligible for free and reduced lunch in schools.

“SNAP benefits come directly from the federal government, and we disperse those to the clients in West Virginia. So essentially, those are federal monies, we determine eligibility according to a state plan that is essentially like a contract between the state and the USDA, for how will determine that eligibility. And then on a monthly basis, we draw down those funds from the federal government and push them out to eligible SNAP clients,” Nowviskie said. “We do have other sources of funding that support some nutritional efforts. One of the big ones is our TANF funding, which we have used to vastly expand some of the supports that we have available across the state.”

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, is also known as WV Works, a program assisting families near the poverty level to remain self-sufficient.

Advocates and officials are warning that upcoming changes to SNAP benefits could put West Virginia households and food banks in jeopardy.

“So, according to the DHHR, all households will see at least a $95 reduction, statewide, the average per household is going to be around $120 reduction,” said Josh Lohnes, a research assistant professor at WVU who directs the work of the food justice lab and the center for resilient communities. “And again, that’s based on size and income. So for some households, it may be hundreds of dollars reduced, and for others, it might be less, but every single household is at least gonna see a $95 cut in March.”

These changes will not only affect West Virginia families directly but food banks across the state as well.

“Food insecurity is pretty much a poverty problem and a low wage problem, the vast majority of those receiving SNAP benefits are working families that are simply not earning enough wages to be above 130 percent of the poverty line,” Lohnes said. “So that drives food insecurity, and low wages, as do increasing food prices.”

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a one-person household that earns $14,580 or less annually is considered to be in poverty. A three-person household is considered in poverty if they earn $24,860 or less annually.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index, food inflation rates rose an average of 11 percent in December 2022 alone.

Cyndi Kirkhart is the CEO of Facing Hunger Food Bank, based in Huntington. It is one of only two food banks in West Virginia. The other is Mountaineer Food Bank, based in Gassaway.

Food insecurity will only increase along with inflation costs, Kirkhart said she budgeted $2.5 million to purchase food for the Facing Hunger Food Bank in 2022. The bank actually expended $4 million to feed its community.

“That’s not sustainable for our work. We’re having to really kind of scale back and rather than prepackaged boxes, that we’ve distributed, our mobile pantries and stuff, now we’re getting down to staple items that will benefit a family,” Kirkhart said. “So at a time when the communities at the center of our work need us most, we actually are having to scale back in what we can provide to them as well as our pantries.”

According to advocates for food security, charitable programs are unable to support those facing hunger fully. A combination of charity and government assistance programs are necessary to help bridge the meal gap, especially in a post-COVID economy with record-breaking inflation rates.

“I can’t underscore enough, while the rhetoric may be that folks receive all kinds of money with SNAP benefits, that is patently not true,” Kirkhart said. “It is not enough for any family, to be able to live alone. It takes other financial resources to support a family and their food needs. All you have to do is try the SNAP challenge one time and try and live on what is about $4.20 a day.”

To mitigate food insecurity for West Virginia families, Nowviskie said the DHHR was able to use TANF funding to increase the number of family support centers throughout West Virginia. He said 37 centers were added to the grant cycle in 2022.

“And those are physical locations that offer a variety of services from respite for caregivers, to parenting classes, some of them do cooking, education, financial education, those sorts of things,” Nowviskie said. “They all also are required by the grant agreement with us to maintain a food pantry, a baby pantry, and a hygiene pantry.”

Furthermore, Nowviskie said any West Virginia family struggling with food insecurity after this rollback of SNAP benefits can contact their local county DHHR office and speak with a caseworker about options or visit the agency’s website for a list of resources.

May 29, 1961: Elderson Muncie Receives First Food Stamps in Nation

On May 29, 1961, Alderson Muncy of Bradshaw in McDowell County received the first food stamps in the nation. Muncy, an unemployed miner and father of 15, took his stamps to John Henderson’s supermarket in Welch and bought two watermelons.

The new federal program was intended to provide supplemental income for welfare recipients and families below certain income levels. Because of high unemployment and poverty rates, West Virginia has been a focus of the program since its inception.

In his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1960, Senator John F. Kennedy had visited West Virginia several times and was moved by the malnutrition and poverty he saw. As president, Kennedy established a pilot food-stamp program for low-income families. West Virginia was the first of eight states to issue stamps. The Food Stamp Act of 1964 made the program permanent, and West Virginia became the first state to implement it statewide.

The number of food-stamp recipients has always been high in West Virginia. As of 2015, nearly one in five West Virginians received food stamps—the sixth highest per capita total in the nation.

Bill to Let Drug Felons Get Food Stamps Passes W.Va. Senate

A bill to allow drug felons to receive food stamps has passed the West Virginia Senate.

The Senate unanimously approved the bill Tuesday. The House of Delegates has already passed the bill but now must concur on a Senate amendment that would exclude felons whose crimes involved death or injury.

The American Civil Liberties Union’s West Virginia chapter says West Virginia is one of three states with a food stamp ban for drug felons.

ACLU West Virginia executive director Joseph Cohen says in a statement West Virginians who have served their time for drug-related crimes “should not be perpetually punished.”

“We cannot expect anyone to successfully reintegrate into society and avoid recidivism when they’re exiting the criminal justice system with both hands tied behind their back,” Cohen stated.

State Advocates for The Poor Oppose Food Stamp Bill

Advocates for low-income West Virginians are urging the House of Delegates to defeat a Senate-passed bill to establish a computerized system to verify whether 176,000 households getting food stamps are eligible.

Following pilot programs in nine counties, opponents say the state will spend $15 million for an outside contractor, find little fraud in the federally funded program whose benefit is about $74 a month and set reporting requirements that will knock people off.

Jean Simpson, executive director of Manna Meal, a nonprofit soup kitchen in Charleston, says they feed 400 people daily and taking benefits from the people they see is “shameful.”

The bill would require able-bodied adults without dependents getting the federal benefits to work at least 20 hours a week and limit benefits based on household assets.

Flood Victims Can Get Disaster-Related Food Stamps

Residents who lived or worked in a dozen West Virginia counties during last month’s devastating floods may be eligible for disaster-related food stamps.

The Department of Health and Human Resources says in a news release that residents who aren’t normally eligible for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program may qualify for the benefits due to life-changing issues. Those include inability to access money in checking or savings accounts, unreimbursed disaster-related expenses and lost or reduced in income as a result of the floods.

Eligibility for the Disaster-SNAP benefits is based on net household income. People in Clay, Fayette, Greenbrier, Jackson, Kanawha, Lincoln, Monroe, Nicholas, Pocahontas, Roane, Summers and Webster counties are eligible.

Applications are being accepted from July 25 to 31 at DHHR offices in each county.

One in five West Virginians seeing reduction in food assistance benefits

An automatic reduction to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, will begin taking effect today, cutting benefits for more than 47 million people across the country.

West Virginians rely heavily on this assistance program, with about 20 percent of the population enrolled.

A Kanawha County man who is already struggling to provide for his family said this national cut means he will have to make even harder choices in the near future.

Rick Hodges is a single dad raising his 7-year-old daughter in Cabin Creek. Hodges was a subcontractor for a cable company for 17 years, but was hurt on the job in 2001. Now, he relies on disability and food stamps to provide for his family.

“I don’t eat a lot of times. I just make her food,” said Hodges. ” I might eat what she don’t eat. In fact, I just did that this week one day.”

This week, Hodges received notice from the state Department of Health and Human Resources that his benefits were being cut from $79 to $59 a month.

“That’s $20 less food I can buy for my daughter. That’s $20 I’ll somehow have to come up with out of my check and that means not paying the sewer bill,” said Hodges. “If you don’t pay your sewer bill, they want to cut your water off so that really puts you in a bind. That’s a large cut. That’s a very large cut.”

But he’s not alone. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, nationwide will be cut by more than $5 billion Friday, affecting more than 14 percent of U.S. households, as a temporary boost when 2009 federal stimulus package automatically expires.

For West Virginia, that means the average family of three’s benefits will be cut by 29 dollars or 16 meals a month based on numbers from the U.S. Agriculture Department.

Executive Director of the Healthy Kids and Families Coalition Stephen Smith says about 350 thousand working West Virginians will feel the impact first hand.

“Poverty doesn’t look like someone who is not working and relying on government,” said Smith.

“Poverty looks like, especially in West Virginia, a majority are people who are working sometimes two or three jobs and making minimum wage which everyone knows isn’t enough money to get by on and those are a lot of the people who are receiving SNAP benefits to try to fill the gap at the end of every month.”

In West Virginia, the program is funded exclusively through federal monies. SNAP Senior Policy Specialist Marsha Stowers said the budget will shrink by nearly $2.7 million this month.

“The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and it was temporary. It increased net benefits across the board in efforts to stimulate the economy and the law was set to expire November 1, 2013. So, as of right now, the state doesn’t have anything they’re going to add,” she said.

Communities, however, are working to fill the gap left by federal funding. Smith said over the past few decades, as the economy has worsened, charities and food banks have started to step up to help families make ends meet.

Even with the 40 to 50 thousand new programs created across the country in the past few years, the number of people who are food insecure has only increased, showing that what they can do is not enough.

“It is absolutely clear that those cannot fill the gap and we’ve seen that in West Virginia,” said Smith. “Talk to anyone who is running a backpack program or a feeding program, they see increasingly more and more working families showing up and they’re still not making the difference they need to.”

Hodges said he’s had that experience, traveling from food bank to food bank in southern West Virginia just to make it through the month.

As for what he thinks lawmakers should be doing when it comes to SNAP benefits:

“I would tell them thanks for the stimulus that we did have, but there’s going to be children that go hungry because of this cut. They have to look themselves in the mirror and know that there are kids going to bed because of cuts that are going to be hungry and crying and sick for school the next morning,” said Hodges.

Hodges said the reduction in the program will be a challenge for him, but he isn’t giving up.

“No matter what they throw at us, we have to make it. We can’t just blink our eyes and disappear from the world. We have to somehow find a way.”