Home-Free Living

I would like to relate my experience of going on the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP. This is a federal program that is still colloquially referred to as “food stamps,” though technically this is incorrect. While the ability to buy food used to be administered via stamps that could be exchanged for food, they migrated more recently to a credit card-like system: the bearer is given a card that has a balance on it. The money on the card can be swiped like a credit card at the supermarket, but it can only pay for food.

The first step in the process is actually going down to the Social Services Administration and applying. I could have done this months ago, when I was unemployed, but I had no idea then what the process was like, or even that I was eligible. However, I discovered shortly after attaining my job that as an Americorps volunteer I qualified for the program automatically.

I waited until September 14 to apply, since I have Mondays off. (I have no idea how you apply if you can’t go sometime during the work week.) I went down to the Mountain View Social Services office, which is the closest one to my house in Palo Alto. There are only three offices in all of Santa Clara County, a county of 1.6 million.

After waiting for a while in the lobby, I was called up to the counter. I had brought with me a variety of documents pertaining to my status as an American taxpayer. They didn’t need many of them, though. After being there for an hour, they informed me that I would have an appointment with a social worker in the office, and then that he or she would work with me to see if I qualified. Furthermore, I would be notified of when this date would occur in the mail. I asked if I could just meet someone now, or if they could tell me my appointment time now; they said no.

Obviously this was alarmingly stupid and Kafkaesque from a bureaucratic standpoint but I accepted it because I had no choice. About ten days later, just as planned, I got a letter in the mail from the County of Santa Clara informing me that my appointment date would be October 31. Yes, that’s a full month and a half after applying.

What if I had been starving at the time of the appointment? I actually asked the bureaucrat at the office this question on September 14. He told me that there was an “emergency” process that took only three days, max. Did I qualify for that? Probably not, he told me.

So think about that, first. There’s a pretty big gap between three days and 45 days. I was unable to avoid making comparisons to the state of public health in this country–-it’s near impossible, for us subaltern at least, to make an appointment with a doctor within a few weeks, but if it’s an “emergency” you can go to one of our country’s overcrowded, underfunded ERs. There is no inbetween–-something that is pretty unsettling. ERs are also absurdly expensive, as we know. So what state am I in? I’m either fine or in a crisis. Two poles. That’s what our health/assistance culture has evolved into. No empathy from bureaucrats otherwise, either honor an appointment or wait till you’re on the verge of death/starvation.

So, on October 31, early in the morning (I had an 8:30 appointment) I delayed work and went down to the office. My case worker was a very empathetic though necessarily rule-oriented bureaucrat named Maria.

I brought a slew of documents with me-–my California state ID (which was still registered in SF, posing a small problem), my sublet tenant agreement (which didn’t actually say the address, another problem), my bank statement, and about 5 pay stubs. I also brought my passport.

But I was almost immediately rebuffed because I didn’t have my Social Security Card. For non-American readers, this is a flimsy piece of paper that is issued to you, usually shortly after birth, that has your Social Security number on it and your name. It doesn’t have the holder’s picture. It is probably the most easily reproducible document ever made–-I could fake one with a scanner, an ink color printer and a pirated copy of Photoshop. (You could probably do it in MSPaint, really.) It’s also something no one carries around in their wallet because it’s a really bad idea to carry around your social security number, for obvious reasons. Most people when asked for their Social Security number just write it down from memory. I have never been asked for this document before. I haven’t seen my Social Security card in maybe five years. It might be at my parents house, though I called them and they don’t know where it is either.

This was a very big problem, Maria let me know immediately. Even though I’d brought my passport, something that is difficult to acquire and near-impossible to forge, I couldn’t get food stamps (she said) without my flimsy Social Security card.

Maria gave me a map to the Social Security office a few miles away (it’s different from the county Social Services office, where I was–-Soc. Sec is a federal thing). She continued with the eligibility procedure anyway. This involved her typing on the computer a bunch of numerical values related to my income, rent and assets. After crunching the numbers she had some bad news: evidently I did NOT qualify for food stamps.

I was stunned, only because I knew this wasn’t true. I explained to her what little bureaucratese I understood about my situation. I told her that many of my co-workers were on food stamps, that there was no doubt in my mind that they, getting paid the same amount of money as me, qualified so I must qualify. I knew it had something to do with the federal Americorps program. I argued with her about this for some time. I didn’t try to speak in bureaucratese because I didn’t really understand the nitty-gritty details of why I was eligible, but I knew from work that there was some federal rule or statute or something that allowed me to get on food stamps.

I want to take a break here to explain the oddity of this situation. I make minimum wage. I work full-time. In America, in northern California, if you make minimum-wage and work full-time, you do NOT qualify for food stamps. Even more stupidly, when considering income in order to see if one is eligible for food stamps, the income considered is pre-tax. $55 of each of my paychecks goes to taxes. But because I make $625 (every 2 weeks) pre-tax, which averages to $1354 per month (which is actually $1235 after taxes) I did not qualify for food stamps. If I had made $1300 per month I would have qualified by their standards.

So, to clarify: you have to make either LESS than minimum wage (supposedly impossible) or be working less than full-time at minimum wage. (So really, you either have to be working part-time at minimum wage or unemployed) Furthermore, in order to qualify for food stamps, you have to have less than $2000 in assets.

I want to repeat this for effect. If you make less than $15600 a year, even in northern California, AND have $2000 or less in assets (including cars) you qualify for food stamps. This is a tiny amount of money. Try living on $1300 a month and paying for gas and car maintenance (a necessity in San Jose, where public transit is shit), as well as covering food, rent and utilities. $2000 in assets is NOTHING. Most people retire with tens of thousands, more often hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets, in addition to a pension and any property or cars they’ve acquired throughout their life. If you are over 40 and on food stamps, chances are you will never retire. You have to be in dire, dire straits to qualify, or be too young to have any property, or homeless and unemployed.

Also, interestingly, there’s not much of a grey area in there when it comes to income limits. I was supposedly $54 above the monthly limit–-yet food stamps provides $200 a month in benefits to unmarried, childless persons.  That means someone who makes 1300 a month actually makes 1500 including food assistance, and someone who makes 1301 a month makes just that. That math seems a bit odd, doesn’t it? Again, the thin line between “crisis” and relaxed is exemplified in this model. Apparently making $1300 a month constitutes an emergency but $1301 does not.

So, back to my story. I argued with Maria as calmly as I could, but I was definitely a bit upset. She was the bureaucrat, not me, and she was supposed to sort these things out, because clearly I make no claims on understanding the Byzantine system of organization that governs these things. There were many points during our conversation where I could’ve walked out and said, okay, well, thanks anyway, and I just wouldn’t have had food stamps. I think at one point I said, “What am I supposed to do now? Just leave?” Maria shrugged and said I didn’t qualify. I said I would go to the San Jose Social Services center and try again, because they’d given my co-workers stamps. She laughed and said it wouldn’t work because I didn’t qualify.

Maria’s boss was out of the office so she couldn’t consult with her. She went to a co-worker to ask about my case, and her co-worker said the same thing. She fiddled with the computer (which was really the all-knowing portal in the room, it seems) for a while and then confirmed that I didn’t qualify. Finally, she went and asked one more co-worker, because I was adamant. This co-worker had dealt with a case like mine once before (no one else in the office knew what Americorps was–-Maria pronounced it “Ameri-Corpse.”) I couldn’t see what they were doing on the computer screen, but I inferred from their conversation that they changed some option box from “non-exempt” to “exempt,” regarding my income. Changing this meant that I qualified.

So, to clarify again: I was only able to get on food stamps because I was knowledgeable and forward enough to sort out the bureaucratic mess. I am lucky to have this privilege. Many are not afforded this, because of language barriers or education level or access to information or otherwise. But because I had an inkling of the inane regulatory arcana regarding my case, I was able to eventually affirm that I qualified for food stamps. I can only shudder to think how many Americans are denied benefits simply because they aren’t privileged enough to communicate some banal detail about their income or situation.

Things got a lot easier all of a sudden. My social security card was no longer a necessity, as she found me in the database and affirmed my social security number was indeed what I reported it as. She gave me the EBT card (Electronic Benefits Transfer) and I picked out a pin number, as if it were a debit card. She said the card would be activated the next day.

One of the cool things about the EBT card is that it was loaded with all the money I would have received back to the date I applied, September 14. So I started with $350 on the card, and since the benefits renew monthly, I had $550 on November 1.

However, this turns out not to be as convenient as one might think. The reason is that food stamp money can only be applied to quote-unquote food-–no alcohol, no prepared deli foods, but just about everything else in the grocery store. I didn’t really need that kind of money on my card, though. I would have much rather been reimbursed for all the food I’d bought over the past month and a half. It didn’t really make sense to load up on food for the future, since I get more money each month and I can’t eat only non-perishables. So this wasn’t quite as ideal as it seemed.

Yet EBT is admittedly a very cool thing. Americans being obsessed with the illusory freedom of consumer choice, there is almost no limit to what food I can buy with my card. I could spend it all at pricey Whole Foods or at Safeway. (Not all grocers take it, but most large supermarkets, some farmer’s markets and some convenience stores do.) I could buy 100 avocadoes or a hundred Kit-Kat bars or blow it all on soda. And the taxpayers would cover it. Of course, alcohol and certain energy drinks are prohibited, being deemed non-nutritive. But even things like exotic spices, tea and coffee beans are paid for, which are similarly calorie-free, so I wonder at their logic.

This is very different than the food welfare system in other countries, many of which offer their people staples–Brazil, for instance, gives out five staple foods and grains to the impoverished, including dry rice and beans. But the SNAP food stamp program is very prototypically American–-it reflects our inane obsession with the illusion of personal choice and individualism. If you want to spend the taxpayer’s money on soda and Twizzlers, hey, that’s your choice, buddy. Because this is America, and we have “freedom.” Of course, if you don’t have a social security number, or you’re not able to comprehend how to deal with all the red tape, or you lack certain documentation regarding your life, or you’re an immigrant (legal or illegal) and you’re hungry, well, you’re just kind of fucked, huh? You can thank the “compassionate conservatives” for that one.

I had to sign all kinds of alarming documents in order to get food stamps. They fingerprinted me, which was kind of ominous, and doesn’t really give the impression that the government regards the poor with any sort of dignity. I also had to affirm that I wasn’t lying about anything and that if my financial or career situation changed I would affirm within ten days or else risk losing my benefits. Also if I was convicted of a crime I’d have to tell them. Finally, if I was indeed lying, I was alerted that I would be required to pay back the government as well as prosecuted formally.

So now, all I have to do to keep the food stamps is submit a report every three months. The county sends me an envelope and I have to put all my pay stubs from that month in the envelope and send it back (postage paid, conveniently). This is how they check up on me and know to continue giving me the $200/month benefits.

It’s pretty easy to lapse on this program. The homeless Palo Altan to whom I spoke with in an earlier entry said that she was once on food stamps, and had simply been unable to deal with all the paperwork required to keep them after she got out of the hospital and went homeless and no longer had a permanent address. This is alarmingly common. We’ve made the food stamp system so difficult to get on–-trying to ward off so-called fraud–-that America is actually preventing some of the poorest of the poor from receiving SNAP benefits. This woman begged on the streets for money every day so she could buy some nutritious produce, rather than eat the free church food which she called “very bad” (which I don’t fault her for).

I can’t even articulate how monumentally fucked-up this is. I wish that poor homeless persons, like this Palo Alto woman, could somehow join league with other subaltern foot soldiers and go punch every member of the Senate in the face. They could call it the Senatorial much-Needed Ass-kicking Program (SNAP). I bet there’d be alot less paperwork.