In 2014, fewer than half of all Santa Barbara County residents eligible for CalFresh, the state’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), were enrolled in the program. The county’s participation rate of 42 percent was one of the lowest rates of all counties in the state at the time.
After three years and some program changes, the county’s rate topped out at 62 percent in 2017, the most recent year data is available. However, a recent federal policy proposal could undo some of the county’s progress. On July 23, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which oversees SNAP, announced its intentions to revise a policy that allows states to broaden the range of people who can sign up for the assistance program.
These changes could reduce the number of residents eligible for CalFresh throughout the state, which has one of the lowest statewide participation rates in the country at 72 percent. According to a report released by California Food Policy Advocates this year, the average participation rate nationwide is 85 percent, with some states providing SNAP benefits to all eligible residents. If California were to do the same for CalFresh, the state would receive an extra $1.8 billion for the program annually, said Jared Call, a managing policy advocate with California Food Policy Advocates.
“We have a persistent problem in California with signing people up for federal food assistance,” Call said. “Right now … we are the fifth worst. We are slowly but steadily improving, but still not even keeping pace with the other states that are improving access.”
For years, the state struggled with reaching eligible CalFresh recipients because of arduous policies that made the process time consuming and complex, Call said. For example, the state used to require clients to visit a county office to have their fingerprints scanned before signing up for the program. California was one of the last states to abandon this policy.
Despite removing the fingerprint requirement and other potential barriers, the state could still be suffering from a perception problem that’s negatively affecting its participation rate, Call said.
Additionally, the state relies on a decentralized, county-based system, which makes implementing new policies difficult. This also creates differences in how some counties administer CalFresh. For example, the program’s application process requires an interview, which some counties allow to take place over the phone, while others require it take place in person.
In Santa Barbara County, the interview process can be completed over the phone; however, until recently, after completing the interview clients were required to sign and then mail paperwork to the county. Now, through technology the county acquired last year, the client can provide a telephonic signature, said Maria Gardner, deputy director of the county’s Department of Social Services.
In addition to introducing this signature option, the county has made other improvements since it began its CalFresh Utilization Project in 2014 to increase its program participation rate.
Some of these changes have been administrative, such as making phone calls to remind clients of upcoming appointments. Other changes focus on making the program more accessible to clients, such as creating an online portal that allows clients to submit documents outside of office hours.
“We’re really just trying to leverage technology in as many beneficial ways as possible, without bombarding our clients,” Gardner said.
While the county is trying to enroll more people in CalFresh, the USDA is proposing to do the opposite through changes to its categorical eligibility option. This option—which has been adopted by 43 states, including California in 2008—allows people who receive assistance from other federal programs to automatically be eligible for SNAP, as long as they make less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level.
Normally, applicants must make less than 130 percent of the federal poverty level to be eligible for SNAP. Either way, applicants’ income must still be below the federal poverty level after taking out basic need expenses such as housing and health care costs, Gardner said.
Through this type of eligibility, applicants also aren’t required to submit to an asset test, which prevents clients from enrolling in SNAP if the value of their car or savings account exceeds a certain amount. Call said this categorical eligibility is especially important for low-wage working residents who are trying to save money and move out of poverty.
“That helps [people] climb the economic ladder a little bit and get a better paying job and eventually to the point that [they] won’t need to be on SNAP,” Call said.
In a July 22 conference call with reporters, Brandon Lipps, the USDA’s acting deputy under secretary for Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services, said the federal agency isn’t proposing to eliminate categorical eligibility completely. The revisions proposed would reinstate the asset test and specify how much federal assistance residents are receiving from other programs before becoming automatically eligible for SNAP.
According to the USDA, these changes would remove about 3.1 million people from the federal assistance program. The County Welfare Directors Association of California, along with other groups, released a joint statement claiming that the changes would remove 120,000 households from CalFresh. According to that estimate, Gardner said, an estimated 1,200 households in Santa Barbara County would be affected.
In the conference call, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue said the USDA plans to implement these changes to close a “loophole” that states use to provide federal assistance to residents who would otherwise not qualify for help.
U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara) told the Sun that last December, when Republicans still controlled the House of Representatives, they tried to include something similar to the USDA’s proposal in their version of the farm bill. This bill was rejected, and Congress instead passed the Senate’s farm bill, which didn’t include these changes.
“When you consider that the initial bill had language that would be consistent with what this rule would be,” Carbajal said, “again it’s trying to do something that Congress came to consensus that it was a bad idea.”
Carbajal said he and a number of his colleagues have signed a letter urging the USDA to rescind this rule, which hasn’t gone into effect yet. Before the USDA can enact the proposal, the revision must undergo a public comment period where residents can submit their input online at regulations.gov by Sept. 23.
Staff Writer Zac Ezzone can be reached at zezzone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Aug 1-8, 2019.