Changing laws could improve senior poverty, hunger
(This story is a sidebar, or a related piece, to a story of senior hunger and food insecurity.)
Monica De Leon spends her 9-to-5 day at the Imperial Valley Food Bank signing up some of Imperial County’s neediest for CalFRESH, the state’s answer to food stamps.
Not senior citizens and the disabled, though, arguably some of the neediest and most vulnerable among us.
In her off hours, De Leon has become a vocal advocate for getting seniors CalFRESH, or at least adjusting state payments to get those on fixed incomes a bump in their finances.
“The reason I got into this is because I see a lot of seniors coming to me and saying, ‘I’m hungry. I only have enough to pay for my medicines or my rent. What am I supposed to do?’”
The growing population of seniors living in poverty — 18.8 percent of the 20,400 elder population in Imperial County as of 2012 — are barred from CalFRESH, even though many seniors run out of money to buy food by the third week of every month.
The rule makes addressing senior hunger even more difficult, said Sara Griffen, executive director of the Imperial Valley Food Bank. “Annually that helps people to have more money to purchase food,” she explained.
Completely changing the rules isn’t on anyone’s radar right now, according to local legislator, Assemblyman Eduardo Garcia, D-Indio, but he said attempts are being made to take a smaller bite out of the problem.
Each month, senior citizens age 65 and older and the disabled get an average of $889 in Supplemental Security Income payments from the Social Security Administration.
Since 1972, California has piggybacked that federal payment with a program called the State Supplementary Payment, or SSP, which augments seniors’ and the disableds’ checks.
Yet in 2009, as the state was trying to recover from the recession, SSP payments were reduced from $233 a month to $156. Now that the recovery is complete for the state, SSP levels have not been restored, De Leon said.
Garcia and advocates like De Leon and Griffen are attempting to change that. A bill now in the Assembly’s Committee for Human Services aims to restore SSP and add to it, bringing the payment to $356 a month in addition to SSI.
The bill, AB 474, was authored by Assemblywoman Cheryl Brown, D-San Bernardino, with Garcia listed among the co-authors.
He credits Griffen’s outreach and making him aware of the problem in only his first month in office as sparking his support.
“We believe it’s a good start so seniors don’t have to choose between buying their food, their medicine or paying their rent,” Garcia said Friday.
He said a second bill, AB 215, introduced by Assemblywoman Susan Eggman, D-Stockton, which Garcia also supports, is attempting to increase tax incentives to farmers as an enticement to donate more produce to California food banks.
Steve Sharp of Holtville thinks anything that helps farmers help the hungry is a good thing. Sharp is a produce solicitor for Farm to Family, an organization that negotiates the purchase of produce for food banks.
He said farmers in California provide 200 million pounds of produce a year to food banks.
Griffen certainly knows the fruits — and veggies — of that labor. Local farmers provided 1.25 million pounds to the Imperial Valley Food Bank in 2014.
Meanwhile, De Leon said through efforts with state and local senior and hunger advocacy groups, legislators are being asked to not only address the SSP issue, but senior hunger in general.
“We’re seeing the hunger and the need,” she said. “I can see the frustration, and unfortunately, I have to turn them away.”
This story originally appeared in the Imperial Valley Press, April 26, 2015.