Attorneys: Food Stamp Delays Abating, But New Problems Develop
By Jeremy Roebuchk | The Monitor
June 13, 2010
As Texas works to eliminate a record backlog of food stamp applications, new problems have emerged for those living on the edge of hunger.
Efforts to approve or deny applications for state assistance in a timely manner have further complicated an already understaffed, often perplexing and inconvenient bureaucracy, said David Hall, executive director of Texas RioGrande Legal Aid.
Now, too many applicants become entangled in red tape more complicated than simple delays, the organization said in court filings this week.
Of the 50 individuals named as plaintiffs in its lawsuit filed in a state district court in Austin, many find themselves trapped in a “Kafkaesque bureaucracy” and are denied food assistance for allegedly failing to submit documentation they say they provided or for purportedly missing appointments they say they didn’t miss.
The result: An estimated 3 million people eligible for food assistance in the state don’t participate in the program.
“The way (the state) has been catching up on their backlog is by cutting a lot of corners and causing a lot of pain for people,” Hall said. “We end up with thousands of people with a bona fide claim to food stamps, but procedural issues are standing in their way.”
FIGHTING BACKLOG
In court filings last week, Legal Aid asked a state district judge in Austin to acknowledge that the state’s food stamp application procedures violate Texas law and discourage many would-be beneficiaries from applying even though they qualify.
Legal Aid first sued the Texas Health and Human Services Commission in December on behalf of seven families and two Rio Grande Valley nonprofit groups. The commission administers the food stamp program, formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
The plaintiffs claimed that a systemic agency delay in determining eligibility violated state and federal laws and denied tens of thousands of Texans access to a basic human need.
And at the time, even the commission’s own statistics appeared to back up their allegations. Less than 58 percent of new food stamp applications statewide were approved within the 30-day window outlined by law, prompting the federal government to threaten earlier that year to pull Texas’ food stamp funding if the agency did not work quickly to solve the problem.
But since then, the commission has hired nearly 850 workers statewide and devoted a team to eliminate the field offices experiencing the worst delays. Many of the original plaintiffs named in the Legal Aid lawsuit have since received eligibility decisions.
As of last month, just less than 90 percent of applications statewide were approved or denied within a month, proving the commission’s seriousness about eliminating that backlog, said spokeswoman Stephanie Goodman.
‘KAFKAESQUE BUREAUCRACY’
In Hidalgo County — where a larger percentage of the population receives government-subsidized food assistance than in any other urban county in the nation — the situation never became as bad as in the state’s other metro areas. But faulty denials became an issue, said Hall, the Legal Aid executive director.
And getting the government to address and acknowledge them can be a monumental task.
“We’re still seeing similar numbers of people coming in with complaints about the food stamp program,” Hall said. “They’ve just changed the nature of complaints.”
Juanita Valdez-Cox heads La Union del Pueblo Entero, a nonprofit immigrant advocacy group based in San Juan. She used to hear horror stories from poor families who had to play endless rounds of phone tag, make multiple trips to food stamp offices or spend all day waiting in line just to alert their caseworkers to problems with their applications.
At one point, LUPE — which is named as a plaintiff in the Legal Aid lawsuit — even opened a small food pantry for those who had been denied assistance.
“If the issue is mistakes in the process, they could be hurting even more families than they were with delays,” Valdez-Cox said.
India Bloom, a Harris County resident who first applied for assistance in September, is still wading through a bureaucratic maze, as detailed in this account included in the lawsuit.
After she waited two months longer than the 30-day window outlined by law, caseworkers told her in December that she would be certified for food stamps through March on the condition that she find at least part-time work or participate in a state-run job training program.
She received notice to report to a Texas Workforce Solutions program in January but didn’t receive the letter until the deadline had passed. The state cut off her benefits later that month for missing her enrollment date, but that decision was eventually overturned on appeal.
When it was time to apply for recertification, she went back in April and received notice of a telephone interview with a caseworker on April 13. The office never called.
She returned a week later to report the missed appointment and was told she was ineligible for assistance because she hadn’t found part-time work. Once she explained her enrollment in the Workforce Solutions program, she was told she would qualify but that she needed to re-apply.
Last month, Bloom received two letters from the Health and Human Services Commission: one telling her she had been approved for food stamps through September this year and another saying she had been denied for not providing enough information.
Seeking clarification, Bloom returned to commission offices one more time and was reportedly told to re-apply for benefits and let someone else deal with it, according to the lawsuit.
Her case is still pending an appeal.
“Ms. Bloom has been absolutely frustrated at every step of the food stamp process,” Legal Aid lawyers wrote in court filings.
‘BUILDING A BETTER MOUSETRAP’
Goodman, the Health and Human Services Commission spokeswoman, acknowledged mistakes do occur in the eligibility verification process but said the commission’s error rate has actually decreased from 6.8 percent in the last fiscal year to 1.8 percent so far this fiscal year.
Now that the worst of the backlog has been eliminated, the agency is analyzing how to make the application process more user-friendly, she said.
“We’re out of that crisis situation, so a lot of our efforts now are focused on how to build a better mousetrap,” she said. “But we do have to comply with state and federal law.”
Hall, the Legal Aid executive director, argues the state could go further.
The commission could take immediate steps by eliminating some of the confusing paperwork from the process like asset verification checks, he said. Meant to weed out those who don’t meet income criteria because of their property holdings, the checks bog down the overall process and disqualify less than 0.5 percent of applicants, according to state statistics.
The more hurdles the state puts in the way of applicants, the more people will continue to go hungry, Hall said.
“You have people who try to comply with the rules and try to be patient with the agency, but they still get wrongly denied,” he said. “You have a lot of frustration with the agency, and Texas just doesn’t seem to care.”
© 2010 The Monitor