Living on Nothing but Food Stamps
PakistanPal
Published: January 2, 2010
CAPE CORAL, Fla. - After an improbable rise from the Bronx projects to
a job selling Gulf Coast homes, Isabel Bermudez lost it all to an epic
housing bust - the six-figure income, the house with the pool and the
investment property.
"Without food stamps we'd probably be starving," said Rex Britton, who
has had trouble finding paving work and lives with his girlfriend, Amy
Freeman. (Stephen Crowley/The New York Times)
Now, as she papers the county with résumés and girds herself for
rejection, she is supporting two daughters on an income that inspires
a double take: zero dollars in monthly cash and a few hundred dollars
in food stamps.
With food-stamp use at a record high and surging by the day, Ms.
Bermudez belongs to an overlooked subgroup that is growing especially
fast: recipients with no cash income.
About six million Americans receiving food stamps report they have no
other income, according to an analysis of state data collected by The
New York Times. In declarations that states verify and the federal
government audits, they described themselves as unemployed and
receiving no cash aid - no welfare, no unemployment insurance, and no
pensions, child support or disability pay.
Their numbers were rising before the recession as tougher welfare laws
made it harder for poor people to get cash aid, but they have soared
by about 50 percent over the past two years. About one in 50 Americans
now lives in a household with a reported income that consists of
nothing but a food-stamp card.
"It's the one thing I can count on every month - I know the children
are going to have food," Ms. Bermudez, 42, said with the forced good
cheer she mastered selling rows of new stucco homes.
Members of this straitened group range from displaced strivers like
Ms. Bermudez to weathered men who sleep in shelters and barter
cigarettes. Some draw on savings or sporadic under-the-table jobs.
Some move in with relatives. Some get noncash help, like subsidized
apartments. While some go without cash incomes only briefly before
securing jobs or aid, others rely on food stamps alone for many
months.
The surge in this precarious way of life has been so swift that few
policy makers have noticed. But it attests to the growing role of food
stamps within the safety net. One in eight Americans now receives food
stamps, including one in four children.
Here in Florida, the number of people with no income beyond food
stamps has doubled in two years and has more than tripled along once-
thriving parts of the southwest coast. The building frenzy that lured
Ms. Bermudez to Fort Myers and neighboring Cape Coral has left a
wasteland of foreclosed homes and written new tales of descent into
star-crossed indigence.
A skinny fellow in saggy clothes who spent his childhood in foster
care, Rex Britton, 22, hopped a bus from Syracuse two years ago for a
job painting parking lots. Now, with unemployment at nearly 14 percent
and paving work scarce, he receives $200 a month in food stamps and
stays with a girlfriend who survives on a rent subsidy and a
government check to help her care for her disabled toddler.
"Without food stamps we'd probably be starving," Mr. Britton said.
A strapping man who once made a living throwing fastballs, William
Trapani, 53, left his dreams on the minor league mound and his front
teeth in prison, where he spent nine years for selling cocaine. Now he
sleeps at a rescue mission, repairs bicycles for small change, and
counts $200 in food stamps as his only secure support.
"I've been out looking for work every day - there's absolutely
nothing," he said.
A grandmother whose voice mail message urges callers to "have a
blessed good day," Wanda Debnam, 53, once drove 18-wheelers and
dreamed of selling real estate. But she lost her job at Starbucks this
year and moved in with her son in nearby Lehigh Acres. Now she sleeps
with her 8-year-old granddaughter under a poster of the Jonas Brothers
and uses her food stamps to avoid her daughter-in-law's cooking.
"I'm climbing the walls," Ms. Debnam said.
Florida officials have done a better job than most in monitoring the
rise of people with no cash income. They say the access to food stamps
shows the safety net is working.
"The program is doing what it was designed to do: help very needy
people get through a very difficult time," said Don Winstead, deputy
secretary for the Department of Children and Families. "But for this
program they would be in even more dire straits."
But others say the lack of cash support shows the safety net is torn.
The main cash welfare program, Temporary Assistance for Needy
Families, has scarcely expanded during the recession; the rolls are
still down about 75 percent from their 1990s peak. A different
program, unemployment insurance, has rapidly grown, but still omits
nearly half the unemployed. Food stamps, easier to get, have become
the safety net of last resort.
"The food-stamp program is being asked to do too much," said James
Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, a Washington
advocacy group. "People need income support."
Food stamps, officially the called Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program, have taken on a greater role in the safety net for several
reasons. Since the benefit buys only food, it draws less suspicion of
abuse than cash aid and more political support. And the federal
government pays for the whole benefit, giving states reason to
maximize enrollment. States typically share in other programs' costs.
The Times collected income data on food-stamp recipients in 31 states,
which account for about 60 percent of the national caseload. On
average, 18 percent listed cash income of zero in their most recent
monthly filings. Projected over the entire caseload, that suggests six
million people in households with no income. About 1.2 million are
children.
The numbers have nearly tripled in Nevada over the past two years,
doubled in Florida and New York, and grown nearly 90 percent in
Minnesota and Utah. In Wayne County, Mich., which includes Detroit,
one of every 25 residents reports an income of only food stamps. In
Yakima County, Wash., the figure is about one of every 17.
Experts caution that these numbers are estimates. Recipients typically
report a small rise in earnings just once every six months, so some
people listed as jobless may have recently found some work. New York
officials say their numbers include some households with earnings from
illegal immigrants, who cannot get food stamps but sometimes live with
relatives who do.
Still, there is little doubt that millions of people are relying on
incomes of food stamps alone, and their numbers are rapidly growing.
"This is a reflection of the hardship that a lot of people in our
state are facing; I think that is without question," said Mr.
Winstead, the Florida official.
With their condition mostly overlooked, there is little data on how
long these households go without cash incomes or what other resources
they have. But they appear an eclectic lot. Florida data shows the
population about evenly split between families with children and
households with just adults, with the latter group growing fastest
during the recession. They are racially mixed as well - about 42
percent white, 32 percent black, and 22 percent Latino - with the
growth fastest among whites during the recession.
The expansion of the food-stamp program, which will spend more than
$60 billion this year, has so far enjoyed bipartisan support. But it
does have conservative critics who worry about the costs and the rise
in dependency.
"This is craziness," said Representative John Linder, a Georgia
Republican who is the ranking minority member of a House panel on
welfare policy. "We're at risk of creating an entire class of people,
a subset of people, just comfortable getting by living off the
government."
Mr. Linder added: "You don't improve the economy by paying people to
sit around and not work. You improve the economy by lowering taxes" so
small businesses will create more jobs.
With nearly 15,000 people in Lee County, Fla., reporting no income but
food stamps, the Fort Myers area is a laboratory of inventive
survival. When Rhonda Navarro, a cancer patient with a young son, lost
running water, she ran a hose from an outdoor spigot that was still
working into the shower stall. Mr. Britton, the jobless parking lot
painter, sold his blood.
Kevin Zirulo and Diane Marshall, brother and sister, have more
unlikely stories than a reality television show. With a third sibling
paying their rent, they are living on a food-stamp benefit of $300 a
month. A gun collector covered in patriotic tattoos, Mr. Zirulo, 31,
has sold off two semiautomatic rifles and a revolver. Ms. Marshall,
who has a 7-year-old daughter, scavenges discarded furniture to sell
on the Internet.
They said they dropped out of community college and diverted student
aid to household expenses. They received $150 from the Nielsen
Company, which monitors their television. They grew so desperate this
month, they put the breeding services of the family Chihuahua up for
bid on Craigslist.
"We look at each other all the time and say we don't know how we get
through," Ms. Marshall said.
Ms. Bermudez, by contrast, tells what until the recession seemed a
storybook tale. Raised in the Bronx by a drug-addicted mother, she
landed a clerical job at a Manhattan real estate firm and heard that
Fort Myers was booming. On a quick scouting trip in 2002, she got a
mortgage on easy terms for a $120,000 home with three bedrooms and a
two-car garage. The developer called the floor plan Camelot.
"I screamed, I cried," she said. "I took so much pride in that house."
Jobs were as plentiful as credit. Working for two large builders, she
quickly moved from clerical jobs to sales and bought an investment
home. Her income soared to $180,000, and she kept the pay stubs to
prove it. By the time the glut set in and she lost her job, the teaser
rates on her mortgages had expired and her monthly payments soared.
She landed a few short-lived jobs as the industry imploded, exhausted
her unemployment insurance and spent all her savings. But without
steady work in nearly three years, she could not stay afloat. In
January, the bank foreclosed on Camelot.
One morning as the eviction deadline approached, Ms. Bermudez woke up
without enough food to get through the day. She got emergency supplies
at a food pantry for her daughters, Tiffany, now 17, and Ashley, 4,
and signed up for food stamps. "My mother lived off the government,"
she said. "It wasn't something as a proud working woman I wanted to
do."
For most of the year, she did have a $600 government check to help her
care for Ashley, who has a developmental disability. But she lost it
after she was hospitalized and missed an appointment to verify the
child's continued eligibility. While she is trying to get it restored,
her sole income now is $320 in food stamps.
Ms. Bermudez recently answered the door in her best business clothes
and handed a reporter her résumé, which she distributes by the ream.
It notes she was once a "million-dollar producer" and "deals well with
the unexpected."
"I went from making $180,000 to relying on food stamps," she said.
"Without that government program, I wouldn't be able to feed my
children."
Matthew Ericson contributed research.
Article Source : http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/us/03foodstamps.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=all