SNAP decision
THE CLOCK STARTED TICKING on Jan. 1 for about 50,000 food stamp recipients in Cook County who are now limited to three months of benefits over three years, unless they work, volunteer or participate in job training for at least 20 hours a week.
Richard Butler’s life hasn’t unfolded as he once imagined it would. As a child he dreamed of being a cartoonist, or maybe a singer or entrepreneur. Instead, he spent time in prison for burglarizing a car, experienced bouts of homelessness and has struggled with mental health issues he says make it difficult to hold down a job. The government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — formerly known as food stamps — provides Butler with $194 per month to put toward groceries. It helps him get by. So Butler, 25, was shocked when he learned work requirements now in effect in Cook County could threaten those benefits.
“I’m in a situation where I don’t have anything,” said Butler, who is jobless and sleeps on an air mattress at a friend’s home in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood. “The least the government can do is help me eat.”
The clock started ticking Jan. 1 for about 50,000 food stamp recipients in Cook County who are now limited to three months of benefits over three years, unless they meet certain work requirements. Part of federal law since the 1990s, the work rules have been waived in Cook County for more than a decade, but as of this year, must be imposed because of the county’s low unemployment rate.
The work requirements apply only to adults aged 18 to 49
who are considered ablebodied and don’t have dependents; the majority of the county’s 826,000 food stamp recipients won’t be affected.
But there are grave concerns that the state’s workforce development system isn’t equipped to help such a large number of people find jobs, and that many individuals might not learn the rules exist until their benefits are cut off.
The state Department of Human Services mailed notices in December alerting people to the change, but many are homeless or change addresses frequently, and won’t know that they need to meet the requirements or seek exemptions for qualifying disabilities, said Mary Frances Charlton, youth health attorney at the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.
Social service organizations that work with the poor have been training front-line staff on the rules so they can spread the word and navigate the paperwork, but the fear is the system is unprepared, and people will fall through the cracks.
There are not enough slots in the state’s workforce training system to help people who struggle to find jobs on their own, said Mari Castaldi, director of policy and advocacy at the Chicago Jobs Council. SNAP recipients who aren’t working tend to have reasons for it — limited education, criminal records or lack of access to transportation that make it difficult to land or keep jobs — and supportive services are lacking, she said.
“We’re talking about a system that is notorious for being bad at serving people who face barriers to employment,” Castaldi said. “To deal with this sudden policy change, we don’t have the resources, period, and specifically don’t have the resources to provide the types of wraparound services these people need.”
Basic processes to help with the administrative burden have yet to be put in place, state caseworkers say. For example, there is no efficient way to report volunteer or training hours completed outside of statesanctioned programs, so people will have to do so monthly in person at benefits offices, where waits can stretch longer than two hours, said John Mitchell, an officer with AFSCME Local 2858, which represents caseworkers in northeast Cook County.
Understaffed benefits offices also haven’t prioritized connecting people with employment services as they’ve dealt with a backlog for processing SNAP applications that was so bad that the federal government threatened to suspend funding, Mitchell said.
He is nervous a rush of confused SNAP recipients who unwittingly hit their three-month time limit April 1 will take frustrations out on front-line staff.
“I’m concerned about the safety of our workers,” said Mitchell, an employment and training coordinator at a benefits office in Skokie.
The state, which under Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker opposes the work requirements, said it is acting with urgency to minimize the number of people who might lose food assistance.
The Department of Human Services has hired 500 caseworkers in 2019 and is opening statewide centers to process SNAP and medical benefits. The agency also has established an email address — dhs.fcs.abawds@illinois.gov — dedicated to fielding communication regarding work requirements.
It is expanding the number of job training slots available to SNAP recipients by partnering with more nonprofits and seeking private funding that, through a match program, will give it access to more federal dollars, said Dan Lyonsmith, the department’s associate director of workforce development. It also is setting up a fund that people who lose benefits can use for emergencies, such as paying utility bills.
“I do believe we have capacity in the system,” Lyonsmith said.
Still, he said there is widespread concern within the department that many SNAP recipients won’t have the education or relevant skills for the jobs that are available.
“The fear is that there is a disconnect between the (low employment rate) and the ability of these individuals to step into these roles,” Lyonsmith said.
Work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents have been part of federal law for more than 20 years, but states can request annual waivers for areas where jobs are scarce.
Illinois received statewide waivers for years as it struggled to recover after the Great Recession. That changed in 2018, when DuPage County’s unemployment rate fell too low to qualify for a waiver.
Now Cook County is in the same situation. The state in October requested a 2020 waiver for every county except Cook and DuPage, where unemployment rates averaged 3.9% over a 24month period. The national average was 4% during that time.
About 2,000 people lost food stamp benefits in DuPage County in 2018 as a result of the work requirements, which is about half of those who were subject to the rules. If Cook County follows a similar path, 25,000 people will lose food assistance this year.
Supporters of the work rules say they will prompt unemployed people to get off the sidelines and into the thousands of job openings posted by Illinois employers.
“Work isn’t a punishment,” said Jonathan Ingram, an Illinois native and Springfield resident who is vice president of policy and research at the Foundation for Government Accountability. “We are trying to get folks into the red-hot economy.”
Ingram has tracked five states that imposed work requirements and found that 75% to 90% of affected individuals lost SNAP within a year, but their incomes also grew as they found jobs.
DuPage County’s work requirement ended up helping David Freedom, 28, of Downers Grove. He applied for SNAP in June after losing his $33,000-a-year job in pest control, and was instructed to attend a mandatory employment information session.
There he learned about a three-month information technology course run by the National Able Network, a job training nonprofit, that provided him with a laptop and gas money and certified him to do help desk and networking support. After successfully completing the course in December, he landed a $50,000-a-year job at Litera Microsystems in Chicago.
“For me it turned out to be a great thing because it introduced me to an opportunity,” said Freedom, an Army reservist who had done IT in the military.
But he worries that many SNAP recipients don’t know those programs exist. “They’re not really informing people about them until the last minute when they are about to lose benefits,” Freedom said.
While the change in Cook County happened under existing federal guidelines, the Trump administration recently finalized a new rule that makes it more difficult for states to obtain waivers from the work requirements, a move it says restores the intent of the law at a time of record-low unemployment.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which funds the SNAP program, expects 688,000 of the 1.1 million affected SNAP recipients across the country to lose food stamps as a result of the change, saving the federal government $5.5 billion over five years.
Most, if not all, of Illinois soon will be subject to work requirements under the new federal rule. About 140,000 of the state’s 1.8 million food stamp recipients are able-bodied adults without children.
Food stamps have helped sustain Butler since his release from prison in 2016, and though he wants to work and has tried factory and restaurant jobs, nothing has stuck.
Charlton, the attorney for homeless youth, said she believes Butler qualifies for a mental health exemption from the work requirements and is helping him file that paperwork. But social service providers worry many SNAP recipients with qualifying disabilities will be cut off from benefits before they realize they need to seek a waiver.
“The people I have informed are completely surprised,” said Laura Craig, a psychiatrist who works at Howard Brown Health clinics.
Inspiration Kitchens, which trains about 100 people annually in its free culinary program in East Garfield Park, is one of the nonprofits partnering with the state to offer additional training slots — 45, up from 35 — for SNAP recipients. The 12-week program gives participants on-the-job experience as prep or line cooks, said Shannon Stewart, executive director and CEO of Inspiration Corp.
Getting people into work is positive, Stewart said, but she is concerned the threat of losing benefits might cause some to rush into programs that don’t interest them.
People need space to figure out what is personally gratifying or they are likely to drop out, she said.
“Job training isn’t the only answer, it’s also about helping people find out what they want to do,” she said.
Sherita Cresswell, 34, who lives in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood, was nervous when she learned she could lose benefits if she didn’t find work. Creswell, who has a 3-yearold daughter, receives SNAP as well as cash assistance available to families with children, a separate program that also has work requirements.
But Cresswell, who worked at a home daycare before her daughter was born, got excited when a caseworker learned of her interest in cooking and referred her to Inspiration’s culinary program, which she started this month.
“My biggest dream is to become a chef,” said Cresswell, who commutes to the program with a bus card provided by Inspiration.
Cresswell prides herself on her seafood gumbo and aspires to open a soul food restaurant. The training program has made her dream feel possible.
“I’m definitely going to get myself a job after this,” she said.
Darneice Cooper, a state caseworker and president of AFSCME Local 2806, which represents southern Cook County benefits offices, said that she, as a taxpayer, would prefer people work than depend on the government. But she thinks the system fails to offer holistic support to help them succeed, and worries losing benefits could make people desperate.
“That is going to affect every community across the state of Illinois,” Cooper said. “Because these people are going to find a way to eat. If they’ve got to resort to stealing, hurting people, taking from others — they are going to find a way.”
State officials say the experience in DuPage provided valuable lessons. Social services providers there were proactive about getting the word out.
Food pantries expected to see a rise in demand. But that didn’t happen, perhaps because SNAP recipients already were frequenting food pantries to supplement their benefits, said Teresa Schryver, advocacy and awareness specialist at the Northern Illinois Food Bank.
Still, pantries can’t be relied upon to fill SNAP’s void, as their limited hours and locations may be inconvenient for some people, and there is still a stigma, she said.
Schryver warns against using DuPage to predict the potential fallout of work requirements in muchlarger Cook County. About 6.7% of DuPage County’s population is food insecure, which is when a lack of money or other resources disrupts food intake, compared to 12% in Cook County, where some neighborhoods have double-digit unemployment rates.
“It’s not even trying to compare apples to oranges,” Schryver said. “It’s comparing asparagus to oranges.”