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In a historic budget agreement signed by the Governor on June 27th, the state of California is finally easing hunger for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) recipients. This 2018-19 budget deal will allow Californians on SSI to qualify for CalFresh nutrition assistance beginning in mid-2019.

SSI is a safety net program that provides a minimal basic income to older adults and people with disabilities who have little-to-no other income and resources. Although the maximum income grant for an individual is just $910.72 a month, SSI recipients have been ineligible for CalFresh, formerly known as food stamps, since the 1970s.

During the Great Recession in 2009 and 2010, the state of California cut its contribution to SSI grants down to the minimum amount allowed by the federal government and stopped automatically adjusting for inflation. The maximum individual benefit now stands at less than 90% of the federal poverty line.

After nearly a decade without meaningful restorations to this program, the 2018-19 budget finally lifts the ban on CalFresh and reinstates annual cost-of-living adjustments. Although the base grants still need to be brought up above the poverty line, the addition of CalFresh benefits will have an enormous impact for the 1.3 million Californians on SSI.

 “So many SSI recipients try to apply for CalFresh because they just can’t afford food on their fixed incomes,” says Lidia Gutierrez, CalFresh Outreach Coordinator at the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano. “But I always have to tell them, ‘no you aren’t eligible.’ These are our elders and people with disabilities and they are hungry.”

The state estimates that a single adult on SSI will likely qualify for $171 a month in CalFresh benefits.

“To get CalFresh means that I would have enough to actually make it through the month,” says Edward Williams, a 77-year-old Richmond resident who receives SSI. “I would have more money to buy simple things, like laundry detergent, that I normally wouldn’t have enough money for because I would need to use that money for food.”

With the current CalFresh ban still in place, most SSI recipients turn to community-based organizations like food banks just to survive. Nearly 1 in 4 households served by the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano includes an SSI recipient.

Janet Ternes, a 70-year-old SSI recipient from San Pablo, relies on the Food Bank’s Senior Food Program to stretch her limited budget. “They give me vegetables and canned foods and dried foods [at the Food Bank,] and I can only afford to go to Grocery Outlet for the rest. If it wasn’t for the Food Bank, I don’t know what I’d do,” she says.

The new state budget also provides food banks with $8 million to purchase California-grown foods and another $5.5 million to support distribution capacity by investing in trucks, refrigerators, and other infrastructure. Because CalFresh benefits won’t be available to SSI recipients for about a year, due to necessary administrative preparations, the $13.5 million designated for California food banks will help meet SSI recipients’ food needs in the meantime. Food bank distributions are open to anyone in need, but SSI recipients in particular will benefit from this investment since so many rely on food banks as their primary source of food.

Finally, because a monthly income of $910.72 doesn’t even come close to the cost of a market-rate studio apartment in the Bay Area, this budget will provide additional relief to some SSI recipients through $500 million in grants for California cities to address homelessness.

On the whole, this budget takes significant steps to address the urgent poverty SSI recipients experience in California. The state still needs to restore the cuts to the base grant so people can meet their basic needs, like housing and medicine, but at least hunger will be less of a constant threat. We commend the legislature and Governor Brown for passing a budget that both saves for a future rainy day and offers an umbrella to those for whom it is already raining.

The president released his proposed FY 2018 budget this month that calls for $193 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) over the next decade. These deep cuts represent a 25 percent reduction in funding, a move that would increase hunger and deepen poverty for millions of Americans already struggling to make ends meet.  About 67,000 individuals in Contra Costa County and 40,000 in Solano County relied on federally-funded SNAP benefits each month of 2016 – about half of whom were children.

In an effort to reduce federal spending on SNAP, the budget both cuts vital nutrition funding and pushes costs onto states—an historic shift that would permanently alter SNAP’s entitlement structure and abandon our nation’s long-standing bi-partisan commitment to combat hunger. The current structure of SNAP allows the program to flexibly expand and contract its caseload based on need, ensuring that benefits are available to anyone who qualifies. The proposed changes, however, would require states to pay for 25 percent of benefits that are currently fully funded by the federal government.

Restructuring SNAP’s program structure would require California to absorb $1.8 billion annually in SNAP benefit costs. Such cost-shifting measures would undermine SNAP’s efficiency, flexibility, and reach—particularly in times of economic recession.

The budget proposal also targets low-income seniors and the working poor by proposing to eliminate the minimum monthly SNAP benefit of $16. This would result in 110,000 individuals in California being kicked off the program, the vast majority of whom are seniors living on Social Security and low-income workers who use SNAP to supplement their earnings. Eliminating the minimum benefit would also cause the state to lose $14 million each month in SNAP benefits that currently flow into local economies and support food retailers and farmers.

The president’s budget contains a number of other harmful proposals that would increase hunger, restrict eligibility and reduce benefits for California’s low-income families. These threats including time limiting SNAP benefits for childless workers in areas of high unemployment, benefit caps for large SNAP households, and prohibiting California and other states with high costs of living from assisting families with incomes over 130 percent of the federal poverty line.

These proposed cuts to SNAP would force even more Americans to rely on emergency food assistance providers like food banks, but the president’s budget proposes $27 million in cuts to these charitable organizations. The federal Temporary Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) provides local organizations with dried and canned food items, representing more than 13% of all pounds distributed by the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano last year.

“There is no way that food banks and other charities could replace the proposed billions in cuts to SNAP benefits,” says Caitlin Sly, Program Director at the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano. “Food banks are a complement, not a substitute, to the safety net.” Only 1 in 20 emergency assistance meals are provided by nonprofits, the rest flow through federal nutrition programs like SNAP.

The budget proposal also includes cuts of $627 billion from Medicaid, $21 billion from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF, also known as Welfare-to-Work), and $72 billion from Social Security programs like Supplemental Security Income (SSI) that support low-income seniors and people with disabilities.

The president’s budget sends the message that hunger is an acceptable outcome in America. The Food Bank is urging Congress to oppose any budget proposal that goes back on our decades-long commitment to eradicate hunger and support a bi-partisan budget deal that invests in the health and nutrition of nation’s most vulnerable residents. 

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On Tuesday Governor Brown revealed a conservative 2016-17 Budget Proposal that maintains recession-era cuts to the vital Supplemental Security Income (SSI) Program. SSI is a very basic income available to blind, disabled, and aged individuals who have limited or no income and resources. The maximum grant for an individual is just 90% of the federal poverty line.

Despite steady economic growth and a healthy state budget reserve, the Governor’s proposal fails to make desperately-needed investments in SSI to allow seniors and people with disabilities to share in the state’s prosperity.

The maximum SSI benefit for an individual is only $895/month, which is barely enough to afford rent – let alone food – in the Bay Area. Because SSI recipients are ineligible to receive CalFresh nutrition assistance benefits, most rely heavily on food banks, sometimes as their only source of nutrition.

“There are days when I only have bread to eat,” says Toni, an SSI recipient from Concord.

Toni says she wouldn’t have even that if it weren’t for the groceries and hot meals she receives from the Food Bank distribution at her local church. She receives just $909 each month in SSI and Social Security Disability Insurance. After paying $870 in rent for her small apartment, Toni must choose whether to spend her remaining $39 on medication, transportation, or toiletries. “You have to pay all the other bills first. Food has to be last.”

After 10 years without a state-funded increase to SSI, advocates successfully negotiated a one-time cost of living adjustment through last year’s state budget process. The 2.67% increase to the state’s contribution is an important step towards restoring benefits, but it is nowhere near enough to lift California’s 1.3 million SSI recipients out of poverty.

Lisa, an SSI recipient from Bay Point, saw her income rise just $5 this year. “Five dollars means that I can maybe afford to do two loads of laundry,” she says. “I still don’t have enough money to survive. We have gone without food for days… I can’t afford even the minimum.”

The 2016-17 state budget can and must reinstate SSI benefits to their pre-recession levels and add a meaningful cost-of-living adjustment so that no one has to suffer the indignity of hunger.

“I wish there was a way for me to talk to Governor Brown myself,” says Lisa. “Do you think he knows what it’s like to worry about a bill so much it gives you a stomachache first thing when you wake up every morning?”

President Obama’s Advisory Council for Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships released a report last week that provides recommendations to the incoming President on combatting economic inequality in America. This report, Strengthening Efforts to Increase Opportunity and End Poverty, argues that we must go beyond service provision to address past and present systems of structural racism and discrimination.

The factors have given rise to current levels of extreme inequality and financial insecurity are numerous and complex. The report’s authors assert that “efforts to substantially alleviate poverty must address underlying economic, social, and racial justice issues” if they are to be effective and sustainable. In addition to historic and present structural discrimination, the report points to a weakening of the social safety net, declining wages, concentrated poverty and wealth, mass incarceration, and a broken immigration system as underlying causes of economic inequality.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as CalFresh, was cited as a fundamental and proven tool to fight poverty and inequality. These grocery benefits lifted as many as 10 million people out of poverty in 2014, including 5 million children. Research shows that children who receive food assistance have lifelong improvements in their educational, health, and economic outcomes. The Food Bank works diligently to increase access and strengthen the CalFresh program through our policy advocacy, direct outreach, and partnerships with county CalFresh departments.

The authors’ primary anti-hunger recommendation is to expand the use of food insecurity screenings in health care settings. They call for federal guidance to health care providers on screening their patients’ access to food, integrating patient responses into their medical record, and providing referrals to nutrition-assistance programs like CalFresh. These practices could combat hunger, improve health outcomes for low-income individuals and families, and reduce health care costs. The Food Bank is very supportive of this recommendation and is currently looking at how we can partner with local health care providers to systematize food insecurity screening and referrals.

Although screening for food insecurity and prescribing programs like CalFresh are moral imperatives in the fight to end hunger, the report issues in-depth recommendations to prevent that need from arising in the first place. The authors argue that in order to fulfill our national commitment to end extreme poverty and hunger in America by 2030, we must shift our understanding of poverty away from individualized instances of “personal responsibility” to work toward economic, social, and racial justice.

To learn more about the Council for Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships’ analysis of poverty and solutions to inequality, we encourage you to read the full report.