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April 25, 2010

Dallas-Fort Worth food banks help Texas ease food stamp application backlog

By ROBERT T. GARRETT / The Dallas Morning News rtgarrett@dallasnews.com

CARROLLTON – 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.

"It's embarrassing to be here," Mike R. of Addison told Dallas-area food bank outreach worker Tina-Marie Sigler earlier this month, during one of her weekly visits to Metrocrest.

"There's nothing worse than having to ask for food," said the out-of-work carpenter and home remodeler, who asked that his full name not be used.

Mike, 55, said he'd never had to turn to the government for help.

"It's nice when somebody's not looking down at you," he said, signing papers after a 50-minute food stamp interview. "Some places, they ... look at you as dirt – 'well, you should have had this under control in your life.' But it's like sometimes, you get slapped and you don't know it's coming."

Rapid expansion of the food banks' role in helping people apply for food stamps is part of a pilot program, launched March 1. Three other states have experimented with using food bank workers to assist certain food stamp applicants, such as the homeless, but Texas is having them help all comers in big urban areas.

The effort, which is drawing positive early reviews, fused opportunity with dire necessity.

One of every eight Texans is receiving food stamps. The onslaught of need walloped a state food stamp application process already listing from hurricanes, a failed privatization effort and cuts to the state eligibility workforce five years ago.

Texas Health and Human Services Commissioner Tom Suehs took over last fall, when rapid turnover and chaos at state offices thwarted thousands of eligible Texans from getting benefits, often for months at a time. He seized on a 4-year-old arrangement, under which the food banks take applications. The initial case work being done by food banks' outreach workers was pretty good, Suehs said, so why not pay them to do more?

He needed quick fixes.

According to the federal Food and Nutrition Service, Texas processed only 69 percent of food stamp applications within the required 30 days during the year ending Sept. 30. The national average was 84 percent.

Texas' neighbors met the deadline far more often: Arkansas, 81 percent of the time; Oklahoma, 92 percent; New Mexico, 95 percent; and Louisiana, 96 percent. Only Rhode Island, at 64 percent, did worse than Texas, according to the federal analysis.

The federal government pays for the benefits, and states pay half of the administrative cost. They can be docked part of their federal grants for administration if fewer than 95 percent of applications receive timely processing.

Kevin Concannon, the federal service's top official, has said he doesn't want to do that because it would hurt the needy. But by falling below the national average, Texas causes its grocery stores to forfeit nearly $1 billion a year in sales to food stamp recipients, Concannon said. He said the state was to blame for relying too much on for-profit companies to screen welfare applications.

Texas officials dispute that, but they acknowledge shortcomings. Last fall, Suehs persuaded Gov. Rick Perry and key legislative leaders to let him hire 250 additional state eligibility workers.

Since Sept. 1, the commission has filled those slots and several hundred more that were vacant. It added even more, in a "hire ahead" program. And Suehs temporarily reassigned 100 administrative and support workers to the state's 311 field offices.

The moves probably are most responsible for pulling the state out of its nosedive. The backlog of tardy, unprocessed applications, which in October topped 42,000, is down to about 6,000 – though almost two-thirds of them last month were in North Texas.

"We've ... moved out of the crisis stage," said state spokeswoman Stephanie Goodman, noting that 76 percent of applications in March were processed on time.

Federal funds

The food bank pilot program is being paid for with some federal money that Texas and other states received last fall to prop up their hard-pressed food stamp eligibility systems. In Dallas and Fort Worth, at least, the private food bank networks have doubled their cadres of specially trained outreach workers such as Sigler, who go out into the community and help people apply.

The pilot is "a great partnership" and "going very well," said veteran state eligibility worker Amy Cuellar, now the commission's statewide outreach coordinator.

Rep. Ken Legler, R-Pasadena, praised the food banks' deeper involvement after Suehs and San Antonio food bank executive Eric Cooper recently explained the effort at a legislative hearing.

"This is a great way to ... help the ones that are needy, and that's fantastic," Legler said.

Others, such as nutrition policy expert Celia Hagert, say a permanent solution is still needed.

"It's privatization – you're just doing it through nonprofits," said Hagert, a former state Department of Human Services policy specialist now with the Center for Public Policy Priorities, which advocates for low-income Texans. "In the long run, we shouldn't assume we don't need more state workers because we have these food bank workers."

Suehs told a House panel last month that he understands the pilot program "will not substitute" for a request for more state funds and employees.

Since 2006, the commission has awarded grants to all Texas food banks so they could hire and train food stamp outreach workers. At the North Texas Food Bank in southern Dallas, six workers were hired, with the state grant paying for just over half their salaries. With the latest hires, there are a total of 13.

Last fall, Suehs added more federal money to the effort, and he persuaded Concannon to count the interviews performed by food banks' outreach workers as the questioning required by federal rules, eliminating duplicated work. State workers still make final determinations of eligibility, though, after reviewing the information collected by food-bank workers.

Gaye Lynn Bailey, state coordinator for the Texas Food Bank Network, said the outreach workers conducted 1,244 interviews in the pilot's first five weeks. Although that's equivalent to only 2 percent of all applications the state receives each month, it will increase as food banks train their new hires.

Earlier this month, the Dallas food bank's seven rookie outreach workers were deep into a four-day training session with veteran state worker Donnie McDonald.

"This is an acquired skill, I've got to tell you," McDonald said.

One of the most difficult parts of food stamp interviews is the portion called "management," she said. Applicants are coaxed to describe in detail how they manage their money and cover household expenses.

"You cannot be judgmental about them based on your history or your upbringing," McDonald said.

New employee Brenda Martinez nodded in agreement.

"If their lives are in a state of confusion, things are going to look confused," said Martinez, a former state eligibility worker in McKinney.

A nose for incomplete answers is also vitally important, McDonald said.

"They're frustrated and they need help," she said of applicants. "They come in and say, 'If she doesn't ask me that question, I'm not going to bring it up.' "

At food pantries, though, clamming up seems less of a problem. Sigler said many seekers of help, especially from the middle class, are "talkers."

In Carrollton recently, her colleague Julia Marquez listened for 45 minutes to former insurance agent Charles Thorn, who was applying to renew his $150 a month of food stamps.

Thorn, 51, said that over the past year, he has lived in shelters, even slept in his 1993 Lincoln Town Car. He now shares a small rented room in Carrollton but can't pay the rent because he recently was laid off from a job as a waiter. If he can't find work or help, Thorn told Marquez, he faces another plunge into homelessness.

"It has been a blessing to me to have this here in this area," he said of the outreach workers. Most places, he said, "there is such a stigma attached" to poverty that "they're going to make a moral judgment on you. But here, they really do treat people the way they want to be treated."

AT A GLANCE: FOOD STAMP RULES

What it takes to qualify for food stamps in Texas:

• A gross income of less than 165 percent of the federal poverty level – or $36,384 for a family of four.
• In most cases, after certain deductions, net income can't exceed the poverty level – or $22,050 for a family of four. Federal law also limits food stamps for able-bodied, childless adults between 18 and 50 to three months out of every three years.
• Families that lack money for shelter and food can apply for emergency benefits.
• Most benefit periods last for six months but some can be as short as one month or as long as three years.

SHORTENING THE FOOD STAMP PROCESS