Hunger

Of all the petty things we fight over in this world gaining victory over our most tragic and avoidable problems seems to be at the bottom of our priority list.  The following article is a New York Times (May 13)  piece on hunger and food stamps.  It's printed here because I've focused several articles in May on hunger.  I list it here because members of congress are trying to live on the $21 dollars a week allowance of Food Stamps.  Most of us know that $21 dollars a week will not meet the our needs much less the needs of our families.  Rather than pity, I emplore us all to contact our local representatives to increase the amount of money given to food stamps and to include the poor in our prayers.  They are small steps that can and will lead to greater results for the least in this world.  Here is the article:

If you think people do not go hungry in America, you’re wrong. At last count in 2005, 35 million low-income Americans — about a third of them children — lived in households that cannot consistently afford enough to eat. Since 2005, the situation has most likely become worse. Last year, real wages for low-income workers were still below 2001 levels. This year, job growth is slowing and prices are rising.

And each year, the federal food stamp program — the bulwark against hunger for 26 million Americans — does less to help. In large part, that is because a key component of the formula for computing most families’ food stamps has not been adjusted for inflation since 1996. Over all, food stamps now average a meager $1.05 per person per meal.

Bolstering food stamps must be Congress’s top priority in this year’s farm bill, the mammoth legislation that covers the food stamp program.

Most important, lawmakers must stop the erosion in the purchasing power of food stamps, either by pegging the benefit formula to inflation or by making a big increase in the formula’s standard deduction. In 2002, when the last farm bill was passed, Congress improved the benefit formula for households with four or more people. But nearly 80 percent of all food stamp households have three or fewer members. It is unacceptable that their food stamps buy less food each year.

Congress should also repeal the provision that imposes a five-year residency requirement on otherwise eligible adult legal immigrants. (Illegal immigrants are not eligible for food stamps.) The children of such immigrants — 80 percent of whom are citizens — can receive food stamps without waiting. But confusion over the rules keeps many of them out of the program. The Department of Agriculture reports that of the children of immigrant parents who are citizens and eligible for food stamps, only 52 percent got them in 2004, compared with 82 percent of eligible children over all.

Taken together, those two reforms would cost roughly $3 billion over the next five years. In the competitive frenzy of a farm bill, that is money lawmakers would be inclined to fight over. But Democrats and Republicans alike must realize that improving food stamps is a moral and economic necessity. Food stamp allotments were cut in 1996 to free up money to ease the transition from welfare to work. But since then, food stamps themselves have become a crucial support for working families. Among food stamp households with children, twice as many work as rely solely on welfare.

Inadequate aid affects not only the amount of food a family can buy, but also the types of purchases. With too few dollars to spend, junk food becomes the best value because it is calorie dense, cheap and imperishable.

Adjustments around the edges of the food stamp program will not be enough. President Bush has proposed exempting families’ meager retirement savings when calculating whether they are poor enough for food stamps. He also wants to allow families to deduct their full child care costs from the benefit calculation. Both changes would be helpful and Congress should embrace them. But Congress also needs to make much bigger changes, now.

Gaia

By Nancy Von Pein

In 2006, Open Heart Kitchen served 130,557 meals.  59,059 of these meals were hot meals at our Livermore and Pleasanton locations; 59,150 were weekend box lunches to low-income children in Livermore and families in Dublin; and 12,348 were hot meals served to seniors at Ridgeview Commons in Pleasanton.  Donations from a generous Tri-Valley community helped us to increase our meal service to seniors by 44 percent and allowed us to open a fourth boxed lunch distribution program at Michell Elementary School.

Who are our guests?  For the Livermore Hot Meals program, 92 percent of guests reside in Livermore, and almost all earn less than $30,000 a year, with 88 percent earning less than $25,000 a year.  Fully 36 percent of guests that visit our Livermore sites are single mothers and their children.  Almost of a quarter of our guests are picking up food for others.  At our Pleasanton location at Trinity Lutheran Church, over half the guests reside in Pleasanton, and another third come from Livermore.  Wages earned by guests at the Pleasanton site mirror those in Livermore but there are more single mothers.  Meal counts at the Pleasanton location from grown substantially since a year ago:  In December, OHK prepared 867 meals for guests in Pleasanton.

In addition to the box lunches that Open Heart Kitchen distributes to low-income children in Livermore, we added a box lunch distribution program to a residential neighborhood in Dublin last year.  Seventy-six percent of the residents we serve there earn less than $25,000 a year, and almost an equal percent are single mothers.