Shift From Food Stamps to Private Aid Widens
By ELIZABETH BECKER
ASHINGTON, Nov. 13 - Five years after the government scaled back its responsibility for the poor, more people get food from private charities over the course of the year than participate in the federal government's food stamp program, according to a yearlong survey to be released on Wednesday.
Emergency feeding sites around the country serve more than 7 million people in a given week, the survey found, and more than 23 million people at some point in the course of a year obtain food from food pantries, soup kitchens and shelters, most of them run by religious charities. Four years ago, a similar survey found 21.4 million Americans using private food charity.
During the same time, 17.7 million people used federal food stamps, a drop from the 21.9 million who received food stamps in 1997, according to the Agriculture Department.
The survey was conducted on behalf of America's Second Harvest, a national network of nonprofit food banks that provides 80 percent of the food distributed by private charities.
While the Agriculture Department does not keep records on a weekly basis, there is no dispute that fewer people are using food stamps and more people are turning to private food aid. But the food stamp program still provides far more food in a given year than the private food emergency network.
"People are now turning to us as an alternative, a replacement when we had considered ourselves a back- up or emergency system," said Douglas O'Brien, director of public policy and research at Second Harvest.
In New York City, the number of people who in the course of a year obtained at least some emergency food relief tripled in the last four years, to 1.5 million this year from 425,000 in 1997, surveys showed. Those figures mean one out of five New Yorkers was visiting food pantries or soup kitchens this year.
"These figures really underscore the enormity of the hunger crisis that existed well before Sept. 11," said Lucy Cabrera, president of Food for Survival Inc., a New York food bank.
Since then, Dr. Cabrera said her group had seen a decrease in individual contributions, while demand had grown to 6.4 million pounds of food in October from 4 million pounds a month.
The report presents this portrait of hunger in the nation: Instead of homeless people dying of starvation on the streets, hungry Americans are working families, skimping on food to meet their monthly bills. They are children whose parents eat the family leftovers. They are the elderly poor, rural and suburban Americans, and the permanently unemployed who scrape together government payments like Social Security and food stamps.
And it includes people who have been dropped from federal social services since the 1996 welfare overhaul and are finding their sole support in the lines at food pantries and hot meals served in churches.
By coincidence, the survey is being released as Congress debates the $171 billion farm bill, which includes reauthorization of the food stamp program.
The food stamp program was cut by $26 billion over six years in the last farm bill as part of the welfare overhaul. Congress also instituted more stringent rules to reduce fraud in the program. That led many states to increase the paperwork required to receive food stamps, which helped discourage as many as 12 million eligible people from applying for food stamps.
Even before this survey, lawmakers said the food stamp program needed to be strengthened to help the poor deal with the recent economic downturn.
The question is whether to increase financing by $3.6 billion over 10 years, as recommended by the House, or by $6.2 billion or $10 billion, proposals that are under consideration in the Senate this week. Congress is also trying to simplify the rules for receiving food stamps so more people will take advantage of the program.
The survey by Mathematica Policy Research of more than 32,700 people receiving private food aid and 24,000 local agencies providing it nationwide painted this picture of the people receiving private food aid:
*Women account for nearly two- thirds of the adults receiving emergency food aid.
*Nearly half of the households receiving aid included children.
*People receiving food stamps made up nearly one-third of those seeking emergency food aid. They said their food stamps covered only half their monthly need, on average.
*Half the people receiving food aid said they were regularly forced to choose between buying food or paying for utilities or heat.
*Working families made up 40 percent of people receiving food aid.
Further propelling the shift toward private relief aid was the Bush administration's initiative to encourage religious charities to provide more social services.
Not surprisingly, religious groups, which run most of the food pantries and kitchens, strongly support increasing money for food stamps.
"We think there is no substitute for a strong food stamp program," said the Rev. David Beckman, president of Bread for the World, a group made up of Protestant and Roman Catholic churches. "It is much better for kids to have their Mom and Dad serve them food around the table rather than drag them into a food kitchen. And I'm not sure we churches, synagogues and mosques can keep up with the demand."
Doug Besharov, an expert on welfare at the American Enterprise Institute, said private food programs were unfairly burdened because they were often the only help available for the poor. He argued that in some instances, particularly the elderly, they might need money to pay utility bills, rather than more food stamps.
"I'm uncomfortable about anyone being hungry, but the question now is how do we fix it without making it worse," he said. "Sometimes the food program is the wrong program to look for the fix."