As the need for food stamps rises, Florida could soon reimpose restrictions

When Osvaldo Martinez lost his job in mid-March, the 42-year-old mechanic had to scramble to put food on the table.

The Miami auto repair shop that employed him had closed its doors due to the pandemic. And Martinez, an immigrant from Cuba, is the main caretaker for his mother, 67, with whom he shares an apartment.

“It got to the point where I was running out of money to buy food for us,” he said.

When Martinez applied for food stamps — formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP — the benefits arrived within a week. That turnaround time stands in sharp contrast with his still-pending application for unemployment benefits.

“I felt really happy,” Martinez said, recalling his relief. “The food stamps have helped out a lot … it’s the only support I’ve been able to get from the government.”

Stories like Martinez’s help account for SNAP’s explosive growth during the coronavirus pandemic in South Florida, a region that has emerged as a food insecurity epicenter.

According to data from the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF), the agency responsible for administering SNAP in the state, there were 760,315 Miami-Dade residents enrolled in the food-stamps program in July. That’s up from 519,938 in March, a 46% increase. To the north, SNAP enrollment during that same period swelled by 62% in Broward and by 53% in Palm Beach.

Statewide, Florida has added over a million new SNAP recipients since the start of the pandemic. No other state has recorded a higher increase.

The rapid expansion of the state’s SNAP rolls reflects a greater need for food assistance at a time of rising unemployment, but it also signals the effectiveness of recent bureaucratic decisions that made it easier for people to obtain, and continue receiving, food stamps.

Since March, DCF has waived the requirement that SNAP applicants be employed or searching for work, and it has automatically extended food stamp users’ “recertifications,” allowing recipients to continue receiving benefits without going through the time-consuming re-application process that’s typically required every six or 12 months.

But those temporarily lowered barriers to SNAP access could spring back next month.

DCF is slated to reimpose both work and recertification requirements after Aug. 31, potentially complicating folks’ ability to get food assistance even as other parts of the pandemic safety net — including enhanced unemployment benefits — also come to an end.

“Reverting to narrower eligibility standards means you are going to see fewer families having access to the resources that they need to get food,” said Gretchen Beesing, chief executive officer of Catalyst Miami, a local nonprofit that has been helping Miami-Dade residents apply for SNAP benefits.

Restricting food stamp access could also generate additional demand for already overburdened food banks.

During the July 2018-June 2019 fiscal year, Feeding South Florida distributed 62 million pounds of food. During the most recent fiscal year, which ended this past June, the food bank distributed almost double that amount: 118 million pounds.

“We are concerned that if [SNAP] restrictions are put back in place … our families are really going to struggle. And I don’t know if we have the supply to meet that need,” said Paco Vélez, president and CEO of Feeding South Florida.

“Every time we place an order for additional food, it takes anywhere from four to six weeks before we actually get it,” Vélez added. “We can’t turn this ship on a dime.”

A DCF spokesperson did not immediately respond to request for comment.

WORK AND RECERTIFICATION RULES FOR SNAP

In normal circumstances, Florida’s SNAP program requires “able-bodied adults” ages 18 to 49 to show that they’re either spending at least 80 hours per month working, participating in a work-training program, or volunteering. Exempted from work requirements are residents who are pregnant or homeless, or those responsible for the care of an incapacitated individual or a dependent child. Those rules were suspended in March.

Reimposing work requirements next month could derail Floridians who need food stamps but can’t find work, given the still far-from-recovered jobs landscape. The state’s unemployment rate dropped in June but increased in July, reaching 11.3%, a higher rate than the national average.

“With the unemployment rate for July on the rise again, it is unrealistic to impose work requirements on SNAP participants anytime soon,” said Cindy Huddleston, a senior policy analyst at the Florida Policy Institute, an independent research nonprofit. “At a minimum, before work requirement policies are reimposed, the state should look at the COVID-19 threat in a participant’s particular community as well as the unemployment rate of [that participant’s community] … and not just the overall unemployment rate. Otherwise, mandatory work requirements during the pandemic doom many participants to failure despite their desire and best attempts to comply.”

Reimposing the requirement that applicants “recertify” to remain eligible for assistance could further imperil individuals’ access to food stamps.

Recertification, as Huddleston explained, is “in many ways just a bureaucratic red tape hurdle that people have to overcome.” Requiring families to once again face that hurdle could “trip up eligible families and get them kicked out of the program,” she said. “We see a lot of data that shows us that during recertification we lose a lot of families who really should be eligible.”

Older, less technologically savvy people, or those with limited internet access, are the SNAP recipients most likely to run into snags during the recertification process. Also, because of the pandemic, those recipients may be less able to travel to public libraries or to the offices of community partners for in-person help with the process.

FAMILIES, ADVOCATES SAY MORE SNAP BENEFITS NEEDED

In March, Congress allowed states to give all SNAP recipients the maximum benefit based on household size, irrespective of recipients’ actual income levels. DCF has so far been disbursing maximum benefits to Floridians every month since March, though it’s unclear if it will continue doing so starting in September. The maximum allotment for a single person is $194 per month. For a family of four, it’s $646.

Although hunger advocates have welcomed that policy change, they maintain that a further expansion in benefits is warranted. Feeding America — the national association of food banks to which Feeding South Florida belongs — is lobbying lawmakers to increase SNAP benefits across the board by 15%.

Nationwide, only about 40% of SNAP recipients actually benefited from monthly maximum allotments. That’s because families on the lowest end of the income scale were already qualifying for maximum benefits.

“People who had the lowest income were left out,” Huddleston said. “Those who were already receiving the maximum amount for the families got nothing added on, even though they also had additional expenses like everyone else… That’s why it’s important that Congress boost the maximum allotment across the board, so that everyone can get a higher amount of SNAP.”

Vélez, the Feeding South Florida CEO, agrees.

Food stamps benefits are “definitely not enough, even at the maximum level,” he said. “It’s still nowhere near enough to shop, especially in South Florida where you are looking at a high cost of living.”

Vélez said that before the pandemic, demand for food assistance typically surged at the end of the month as families ran out of SNAP benefits.

“Fast-forward into pandemic times, and that is exactly what we are still seeing,” he said. “We are seeing that a lot of the families that are first-timers are realizing that SNAP benefits are great … but you have to be extremely careful about what you are taking home because you can run through those SNAP benefits pretty quick… The truth is, we anticipate families running out of benefits all the time and we are here to help.”

In the meantime, Martinez, the laid-off mechanic, says he’s grateful to the SNAP program for helping him put food on the table. But he also agrees that even more help is needed.

“It hasn’t been enough,” he said. “I mean, why should I lie to you? I’ve been going to bed hungry.”