Want Food Assistance? Go Broke First

If someone is experiencing hunger, they must be completely broke, right?

The idea that people seeking emergency food assistance have no money is a perspective I regularly encounter in the world of food banking and social services and amongst the public. If you have any money at all, society deems you undeserving of food assistance.  

Fueled by a collective conviction that people experiencing hunger aspire to exploit the system, anti-hunger policies reinforce assumptions with restrictions that prevent us from effectively fighting hunger.

Emergency food assistance resources such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) require participants to declare income and financial assets below a certain threshold determined by federal and state policies.

Benefits are reduced or halted when recipients exceed these limitations, intending to prevent people from taking advantage of resources they don’t need, assuming they should deplete their own resources first. These policies perpetuate the idea that people must be completely broke to deserve food assistance. (Most states have implemented a policy workaround to these limitations called Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility, but the paradigm in favor of restrictions remains.)

A serious consequence of setting limits is that it prevents individuals living in poverty from preparing for financial emergencies. As studies repeatedly demonstrate, most Americans do not have the resources to weather an unexpected $1,000 expense without hardship.

All it takes is one unforeseen medical bill, car accident, or housing transition to deplete one’s savings. Limitations on assets ensure that families who have the capacity to save a little every month are disincentivized from doing so, because it’s unlikely that savings can sustain them as effectively as SNAP or TEFAP.

For those who have the capacity to save, the federal asset limit for SNAP is $2,750, beyond which a household may lose their food assistance. It is usually far safer in the short term for a household struggling with food security to stop building savings than to relinquish SNAP benefits.

Some of my readers may react with disgust at the idea that an individual can have nearly $3,000 and still receive food assistance. That seems like far too much money to need help. Most Americans have far less.

Our society believes that people must be utterly broke, without a penny to their name, to deserve social assistance. We demand that they deplete their own resources before utilizing any others. But this is an incredibly destructive attitude that perpetuates hunger.

Fears of abuse are internalized by the people receiving assistance as well as those implementing it.

At my food pantry, I used to regularly encounter first-time clients who confessed that their cupboards were empty, or that they hadn’t eaten that day, or had been subsisting on a single daily meal. “I didn’t want to take resources away from someone who needed it more” was a constant rationalization for postponing seeking help.

When we require that people are empty before we fill them up, we deliberately increase their barriers to achieving stability and security.

It also breeds a perverse sense of competition. If there is always someone hungrier than you out there, do you ever really deserve help?

Demanding that people living in poverty burn through their savings before receiving SNAP or shopping at a food pantry leaves them in a vulnerable position, while providing our neighbors with abundant and dignified food resources before they spend their last dollar is far more likely to ensure that they remain food secure, housed, and healthy.

The opinions expressed here are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.

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