I intern at Street Sense, Washington, D.C.'s homeless newspaper. We rarely break news. But we did on September 26, when we wrote about the federal government's plans to cut food stamps, the program commonly known as SNAP, across the board.
"In the District, more than 144,000 people participate in the program, up 3,353 beneficiaries (or 2.4 percent) from the previous year," reported Ramanda Lazaris, my friend and coworker.
More than a month later, the Washington Post picked up the idea that we first broke, in Brad Plumer's article:
First up is a big automatic cut to SNAP scheduled for Nov. 1. This is happening because the food-stamp program was temporarily expanded in 2009 as part of the Recovery Act. That bill spent $45.2 billion to increase monthly benefit levels to around $133, on average.
Homeless advocates (many of the people I work with at Street Sense) and the urban poor are quick to blame the GOP for these cuts, painting the political right as haters of the homeless and the poor.
I didn't really know how to deal with this as a defiant of political stereotypes. I'm a Christian, who was homeschooled--stereotypical of a Republican. I'm also half-black, lower-middle class (just a half step above receiving food stamps), and was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area--stereotypical of a Democrat.
I don't align myself with either political party, but I'm wary of hasty blame tossing. My skepticism was confirmed by the news that Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" campaign may be a reason that food stamps are being cut.
Andrea Peyser reported November 11, on the New York Post:
The great food grab began in 2010, when President Obama, with Michelle and US Department of Agriculture honchos at his side, signed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. At the time, he admitted taking cash from one pocket to feed the other. "Some of the funding [for the lunch program] comes from rolling back temporary increases in food-stamp benefits," he said, starting in the fall of 2013.
The kids who qualify for lunch programs in schools are usually from families who receive SNAP discounts. Essentially, children's dinners are being taken away so as to give them a "healthy" lunch.
This might be justifiable if the overall health of American kids were improving as a result, and Michelle's "Let's Move" campaign was achieving its desired goals. But one report from Bizpac Review indicates otherwise:
Students complain they are still starving after the small lunches and say the food is just downright disgusting. "They say it tastes like vomit," one board member, Myra Mosley, said, according to the Enterprise. "Kids can't learn when they're hungry!" parents reportedly shouted to the assembled board (from Janeen Capizola's article "School kids to Michelle Obama: Our lunches 'taste like vomit'").
So let's keep this straight...families now have less money to spend on groceries, and healthy foods are being wasted in schools because kids can't stand them. No matter where I turn, I see evidence that the government cannot fix all the problems of our nation or make choices for its citizens--we need the freedom to make those choices for ourselves.
Advocates will point to the heartbreaking stories of people who are going hungry because of the SNAP cuts, instead of the abusers using food stamps to purchase contraband and commit fraud.
There are two sides of the coin, and I don't claim to have an answer to the question: how do we feed people without wasting millions of taxpayer dollars?
It's complicated. Is this a Republican problem? Is this a Democrat problem? No, but it is an American problem. And all voting Americans need to put some thought into the food stamp dilemma before passing more legislation or electing someone who makes big promises with hidden drawbacks.
Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, I never lacked fresh fruits and vegetables. My mom is a fantastic cook and although we struggled to make rent many times, we never went hungry or lacked a range of healthy foods.
As I transitioned into college, I figured out that what my mom had made look so seamless was actually quite hard - eating healthy on a tight budget. It's especially difficult when there are no supermarkets nearby. I never had to face the reality of food deserts until I came to Washington, D.C. for the semester. From my apartment on the Hill, the nearest supermarket is 0.8 miles away, which means that I am not in a food desert. However, residents of Wards 7 and 8 have very limited access to healthy food and many struggle with food hardship on a regular basis, according to DC Hunger Solutions:
In 2009-2010, 37.4 percent of households with children in the District of Columbia said they were unable to afford enough food. This is the worst rate in the nation. The food hardship rate for households without children drops to 14.9 percent.
Why would average people - the broke college students like me, the single moms with two jobs, the recently unemployed, etc. - take the pains to pay for and prepare healthy meals when it's so much easier to buy fast food? When I come home exhausted from classes or work, I have no desire to walk a mile to buy lettuce and then walk a mile home to prepare a decent salad. Half of the time I don't even have money for that. All I want to do is grab a cheeseburger and kick back on my couch watching The Walking Dead.
What the District could really use is a convenient, close, nonprofit grocery store, like Fare & Square in Chester, Pa. - the first of its kind in the United States.
The Huffington Post reported about this:
The store is the brainchild of Bill Clark, the executive director of Philabundance, a nonprofit hunger relief organization. Chester has a 36 percent poverty rate and unemployment is 13 percent. Clark said at one time Chester had five grocery stores, but they all closed when the city fell on hard times after manufacturing virtually disappeared.
About half of the city's residents don't own a car making it difficult and costly to travel to a supermarket. As Clark put it: "To bring a gallon of milk is a hardship if you have to use two buses to get home."
As a nonprofit, Fare & Square offers lower prices for a healthy range of fruits and vegetables. Time will tell if this model is sustainable and can be used in food deserts across the United States.
Unlike a drought, the weather doesn't control the District's access to healthy foods - we do. I could go on a rant about how "we the people" have the power, but I'll spare you the cliche. On top of that, the District isn't even represented in the federal government. I don't trust the government to fix the mess that we're in anyway. It'll take some enterprising individuals and some start up funding, but if it can happen anywhere, D.C. is the place.
Steps are already being taken to increase the increase the inner city's access to healthy foods. One nonprofit organization is using land in Alexandria, Va. to grow food to be sold in food desert areas of Washington, D.C. There are plans in the works to build a massive urban greenhouse in Ward 8 by 2014, as reported by The Washington Post:
And while Ward 8 is desperately in need of jobs, as the average unemployment rate in Ward 8 in 2012 was over 22 percent (one of the highest in the country), this greenhouse isn’t really about jobs, despite how the event was spun. Yes, the 25 full-time jobs and 100 short-term construction jobs that BrightFarms is bringing is beneficial. There is no question there.
The real gift to the community, however, is the one million pounds of GMO-free produce that the greenhouse will generate – provided it actually gets into the homes of Ward 7 and Ward 8 residents living in chronic food insecurity. This is the real test.
None of these initiatives in and of themselves will cure the District's food dessert. But combined, there's hope. Healthier foods with competitive prices will make the people of the District healthier. Because proper nutrition is so essential to health, the effects of this will be far reaching. I can't predict the future, but I can imagine how much brighter our Nation's capital will shine if its people, all of its people, have the power to take care of themselves.
To see how prevalent food deserts are in the United States, check out this interactive map from the USDA Economic Research Service!
