The federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), called FoodShare in Wisconsin, provides food benefits to low-income families to supplement their grocery budget so they can afford the nutritious food essential to health and well-being. The program is administered jointly by federal, state, and local governments.
Under the federal Food and Nutrition Act of 2008, customers are prohibited from purchasing hot or prepared foods. This creates the counterintuitive experience in which consumers can purchase food items like chicken that is raw or frozen, but not rotisserie chicken.
Cooking and eating are essential for daily living. People who are disabled, elderly, or homeless are often unable to prepare meals for themselves or don’t have permanent housing to store and prepare food.
Food insecurity is hardly a new problem. Last fall the Urban Institute launched a data dashboard showing more than 150,000 Milwaukee County residents, or 16.5%, are food insecure – a somewhat abstract term describing people whose empty cupboards are more than a momentary irritation. Some of these people only eat nutritionally poor food because they lack access to better options. In the worst cases, some are physically hungry and malnourished.
The project mapped rates in every American country, and then grouped counties by the similarity of risk factors. Milwaukee County shares much more in common with Los Angeles and Miami-Dade counties when it comes to food insecurity than it does with neighboring Waukesha. Though the once ambitious project is now badly limited by pre-pandemic predictions, it remains a vital accounting of systemic problems that are likely to persist after the pandemic recedes.
Follow-up research by Feeding America, conducted specifically to access COVID-19’s impact, bumps Milwaukee County’s food insecurity rate up to 17.5% or roughly 1 in 6 residents, as of June. This despite enhanced unemployment payments, a cash stimulus and an eviction moratorium, most of which were short-term fixes. Statewide figures are trending in the same direction. The Household Pulse Survey launched by the U.S. Census Bureau in response to the pandemic found the rate of respondents reporting food insecurity grew from 7.7% to 9.3% from late spring to midsummer.
The prohibition on purchasing hot, prepared meals also harms single parents, who might be short on time to prepare a meal for their kids after working a full day. Instead of limiting the type of food people can buy, SNAP should provide autonomy so recipients can decide what food they want to purchase.
As such, we are requesting that the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) seek authorization from the Wisconsin State Legislature to submit a federal waiver to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to become a part of the SNAP Restaurant Meals Program (RMP).
The Restaurant Meals Program is a state option that allows certain SNAP recipients, who might not be able to prepare meals for themselves or who do not have permanent housing for storing and preparing food, to be able to buy prepared meals at restaurants with their SNAP benefits. Moreover, in some instances, the program allows beneficiaries to purchase hot, prepared food in the deli sections of participating grocery stores.
To be eligible for the RMP, SNAP clients must be certified for SNAP in a state that has an RMP and all members of the household must be either:
- Elderly (60 years of age or older);
- disabled (receives disability or blindness payments or receives disability retirement benefits from a governmental agency because of a disability considered permanent);
- homeless; or
- a spouse of a SNAP client who is eligible for the RMP.
Although this program would only benefit those who are eligible, we believe that this will bring us one step closer to ensuring that all SNAP recipients in Wisconsin are able to purchase hot food with their benefits.
By adding your signature to this petition you confirm your support for Wisconsin becoming a part of the federal Restaurant Meals Program.
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