What good is a can of soup, asks David Cox, if you don’t have a
can opener?
Food stamps can be traded for breads, cereals, canned goods and
produce
– but not readymade foods. That limit frustrates advocates for
the homeless, who say the restrictions aren’t practical for people
without kitchens.
Gilroy – What good is a can of soup, asks David Cox, if you don’t have a can opener?
Food stamps can be traded for breads, cereals, canned goods and produce – but not readymade foods. That limit frustrates advocates for the homeless, who say the restrictions aren’t practical for people without kitchens.
“There are delis in our area that provide healthy, pre-prepared foods that they could access – but they can’t,” said Cox, executive director of St. Joseph’s Family Center in Gilroy, which helps the chronically homeless apply for food stamps under a new countywide program.
County officials are piloting a program to link homeless people with food stamps, and are planning programs to allow the homeless to use stamps on hot food from grocery delis and inexpensive restaurants, said Maureen O’Malley-Moore, a policy analyst for county supervisor Don Gage. To make it work, county staff are looking at how to get scanners for Electronic Benefit cards into the eateries the homeless are most likely to use. Only the chronically homeless will be eligible.
“Restaurants will have to pay a fee to allow their machines to do this for us,” said Denise Boland, interim CalWORKs administrator for the county Social Service Agency. “It’ll probably be chains that see enough profit to make this profitable for them. But they’ll also have to meet certain criteria. It’s got to be nutritional, and it’s got to be a good value.”
Strict restrictions on food stamps date back several decades, and stem from worries about fraud, Cox said.
“There was a time when it was loose and unregulated,” he said, “and some portion of people were abusing the funds.”
Food stamps can’t be spent on tobacco or alcohol – and rightly so, said Cox. But other restrictions are less reasonable, he said. Household supplies such as soap or laundry detergent, for instance, are off-limits.
“Instead, you’ve got to use cash – or cash grants – to get commonplace things,” said Boland. “They’re still necessities.”
