Parents express frustration over delayed pandemic food assistance

By BRENDAN KIRBY

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    MOBILE, Alabama (WALA) — With inflation rising and the holidays approaching, hundreds of thousands of low-income Alabamians still have not received pandemic food assistance they expected in September.

Mobile resident Catheryn Neese, a single mother of five, is one of them.

“I really want to have a Thanksgiving, but the way it’s looking …” she said.

Neese’s children are among 470,000 in Alabama who qualified for a program that provided money to low-income parents whose kids qualify for free or subsidized school lunches. With schools closed during the pandemic, the federally funded program loaded cash on to Electronic Benefits Transfer cards.

Congress extended that program to the summer. The Alabama Department of Human Resources, which administers the program in the state, had told parents it hoped to load the summer money in September.

“But September came. They put it off to October,” Neese said.

Now the app Neese has updating her on the program states that the benefits should arrive “sometime in fall 2021.”

Dominic Binkley, a spokesman for DHR, told FOX10 News that September was the target for delivering the benefits, but he added that was before the agency realized that the enrollment period would be extended until Aug. 31. He said parents will receive the benefits “soon.”

Neese said she is frustrated.

“Soon is not soon enough,” she said. “You know, Thanksgiving is coming, and the food stamps that we get aren’t enough to even feed our family. We’re spending cash that we really don’t have and then, they just keep putting it off.”

Neese is not alone. A Facebook page dedicated to the issue in Alabama has generated a great deal of chatter.

“I’m starting to think we are never getting the pebt,” wrote on woman, referring to the program by its acronym – P-EBT.

Neese said she makes $9 an hour working at a gas station convenience store. She said the crunch is particularly painful given inflation – prices are rising at the fastest rate in three decades.

“Food prices are way up,” she said. “A 16-pound turkey is almost $86. You know, that’s more than some of us get in food stamps.”

Neese said the $375-per-child benefit would be enormously helpful. With four school-age children, that totals $1,500.

“The inflation issue for groceries is huge,” said Carol Gundlach, a policy analyst with Alabama Arise. “I know that a lot of parents are looking for, you know, for this EBT to put Thanksgiving dinner on the table.”

Gundlach, whose organization advocates for the needy, said the program has been hugely beneficial. But she said its design made it difficult to states to implement. Before DHR can send the money, the Department of Education must verify that the recipients are eligible.

“It requires state departments that don’t normally work together to share data. … This is one of those issues with state computers systems are not always adequate to meet the need,” she said.

Gundlach said she believes both agencies have worked hard to process the payments.

“I really feel for the parents, but I also really understand that both the Department of Ed and the Department of Human Resources are doing the very best they can with a difficult situation,” she said.

The program is set to expire, but President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” proposal would convert P-EBT to a summer EBT program and make it permanent. Gundlach said Alabama Arise strongly supports that.

Neese said her primary concern is the money that the state promised two months ago. She said it could not come at a better time.

“That’ll help us out a lot, if they gave it to us,” she said. “You know, ’cause, teenagers – they eat, and they eat a lot.”

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