Food bank workers are helping Texas ease its backlog of food stamp applications, By Robert T. Garrett, April 25, 2010, Dallas Morning News: “Last year, food banks had to step up to help hundreds of families when the recession and a meltdown of Texas’ food stamp application process caused them to miss out on months’ worth of benefits. Now, food banks and pantries in Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio are doing it again as the state works, under federal orders, to reduce backlogs and improve service at the offices where it determines if Texans are eligible for aid. The need is still evident. Hungry, desperate people are flocking daily to Metrocrest Social Services, a food pantry in Carrollton’s central business district…”
Tag: Food pantries
Increasing Need for Assistance – Colorado, Ohio
- As demand for state aid grows, counties’ human services toil, By Allison Sherry, March 29, 2010, Denver Post: “Cindy Flores cupped her face in her hands and started talking about her problems to the one person required to listen. Her sister had been helping her buy food, and she was running low. She had an eviction notice in her purse. Child care would be helpful as she looks for work. Adams County Human Services worker Alicia Mascarenas met Flores’ eyes and then shifted her attention to the computer screen. ‘So you don’t have a job now?’ she said. Flores shook her head and looked at the floor. ‘My company went bankrupt,’ she said. As Colorado nears 17 straight months of year-over-year job losses, county human services workers continue to cope with growing caseloads – and the hard tales that accompany each one. In most metro area counties, and even some rural ones, workers have caseloads of more than 500 people. Statewide, food-stamp cases jumped to 173,361 in February from almost 165,000 in November. Those on Medicaid jumped to 501,000 from 487,000 between October and February…”
- Report: Pantries, soup kitchens faced hunger spike in 2009, By Catherine Candisky, March 31, 2010, Columbus Dispatch: “If you gathered everyone in the state who got help at a soup kitchen or food pantry in any given week last year, they would fill Ohio Stadium more than twice. Every week in 2009, 225,700 Ohioans sought emergency food assistance, a jump of 18 percent from three years earlier. A report released yesterday by the Ohio Association of Second Harvest Foodbanks shows the recession’s devastating impact on Ohio families. In all, more than 1.4 million people statewide received food assistance at least once last year, and often more frequently. The spike seems to be attributed to those seeking help for the first time, usually after losing a job and running through any money they might have set aside…”
State Cuts to Programs for the Poor – New Jersey
Budget cuts could hit low-income NJ residents, By Geoff Mulvihill (AP), March 15, 2010, Philadelphia Inquirer: “New Jersey’s days as a place where the government is unusually generous to the needy may be numbered as a new governor pushes wide-ranging spending cuts to solve a deep budget crisis. Gov. Chris Christie is set to unveil his first spending plan Tuesday after months of preaching shared sacrifice. From what he’s done so far, it’s clear that applies to lower-income people, too, in a state that’s among the most generous in the nation when it comes to unemployment benefits and taxpayer-funded health care for the working poor. Already, he has cut the state’s mass-transit subsidy and stopped enrolling some lower-income adults in a subsidized health insurance program. He’s also proposed reducing weekly unemployment checks and, even before he was sworn in, hinted that food banks could see their state aid cut and told hospitals their reimbursements for treating the indigent will be cut in June…”