FRAC Chat

Food insecurity, and its root cause, poverty, do not discriminate: they harm individuals, families, and communities across the U.S., regardless of demographics. One group that rarely receives attention for its alarmingly high levels of food insecurity and poverty is APA. This oversight is detrimental for APA people and the nation as a whole. In a deep dive into the divide between APA and the U.S. overall, Prosperity Now, with the help of Pew Research Center’s data, found that APA is the fastest-growing racial group in the U.S., with the fastest-growing — and widest — wealth gap, making APA the most economically divided racial group.

In this #FRACTurns50 blog, FRAC’s Founding Executive Director, Ron Pollack, shares the organization’s critical role in the expansion of the Food Stamp Program, known today as the Supplemental Nutrition Program (SNAP). Millions of households rely on SNAP as the first line of defense against hunger. As the fallout of COVID continues to deepen, the number of SNAP applications is skyrocketing. It is crucial to protect and strengthen SNAP during this time.

The Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer (P-EBT) program, authorized through the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, provides states a critical opportunity to provide support, efficiently and comprehensively, to families relying on free or reduced-price school meals when school is open. Through P-EBT, states can issue eligible households an EBT card with the value of the free school breakfast and lunch reimbursement rates for the number of weekdays that schools are closed due to COVID-19 (estimated to be around $5.70 per day).

A new research brief from Healthy Eating Research (HER), A National Program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, underscores why it is urgent for policymakers to enact SNAP benefit increases in the next COVID-19 emergency relief package. Steps taken in prior packages are providing a modest measure of help, but, given the magnitude of the crisis, are insufficient to provide adequate nutrition assistance to meet overall need and to spur economic recovery. Now is the time to strengthen SNAP benefits.

The anti-hunger community’s work is more critical than ever as the COVID-19 pandemic presents a twin threat to public health and the economy. Even before the crisis, 37 million people across the country lived in food-insecure households, and an untold number more are expected to struggle to put food on the table as the pandemic continues to unfold.