Food aid lines powerfully show county’s economic gap
Like the way that winds can blow off a roof to expose the contents of a house, a disaster like Hurricane Irma can rip through a community and show us what’s within.
We got such a peeled-back view over the last few days as thousands upon thousands of people lined up at three designated parks in Palm Beach County to receive short-term food assistance for losses from Hurricane Irma — standing or sitting in cars for hours, jamming traffic to a standstill for miles around.
The attention on this massive outpouring has been — justifiably — on the confusion and disorganization that many people endured, particularly Tuesday, the first day of the Disaster Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (D-SNAP) in Palm Beach County. The state Department of Children and Families and the federal Department of Agriculture, which has been running this distribution in 48 Florida counties, earlier had to close some overwhelmed sites in Broward County because of “health and safety concerns.”
But let’s think for a moment about the sheer numbers who jammed the sites and streets around them. It was a palpable display of need, in a county famous for its affluence — the winter home, no less, of the famous billionaire who is now president of the United States.
The density of the crowds spoke far more eloquently than any statistics that address the economic dichotomies in this county: the more than 60 percent of school children relying on free or reducedprice breakfast and lunch; the 75 percent of residents who can’t afford the $327,000 median price of a single-family home.
The thousands spending hours on line were not, as widely assumed, food-stamp recipients as is generally understood. In fact, people who already get food stamps (with incomes no more than 130 percent of the poverty level) were specifically excluded from the D-SNAP lines.
Although some may have been there to take advantage of the system, the crowds we saw in John Prince Park west of Lake Worth, Lake Ida Park in Delray Beach, and Glades Pioneer Park in Belle Glade were, by and large, working people, many taking time from their jobs to get the stipends to replenish the ruined contents of refrigerators gone useless with the loss of power after Irma.
Myrleine Jean, for example, earns a starting salary at Walmart. Ana Silva makes $9 an hour at a pet store, with no paid time off. After the hurricane, the store lost electricity for 20 days, she said, creating a steep loss of wages for a woman who also lost her supply of food when electricity failed in her home for five days.
They were joined at Lake Ida Park on Wednesday by Nico Mkombo, self-employed in telecom, who was sidelined when his home lost electricity for four days. Dan Costroff and Jolynn Johnson, co-workers at a drug and alcohol rehab center, lost power at their homes for nine and seven days, respectively. The $384 each received to replace lost groceries came as a relief.
“I have, like, an ego, and I don’t even like to ask,” Johnson said. But her significant other had been laid off just before Irma hit, making money especially tight.
All day they came, and all night, the next day’s line forming at 8 p.m. So many people, living on the edge. One disruption, and their finances were in disarray.
These folks shouldn’t have had their stresses compounded by DCF’s clumsy crowd control. By Wednesday, thankfully, the process was much smoother.
“Oh, they were very nice to us, gave us water and everything,” said Wasiline Jean, who got through the Lake Ida Park line in a tolerable three hours.
Despite the snarls and wait times, we have to salute the state for shouldering a burden this great in the first place. As of Thursday, officials said they issued $493 million to help 2.9 million Floridians in the ongoing D-SNAP program.
Perhaps you heard the sneers of those who looked down at the folks in line, casting them as the stereotypical undeserving poor. Those sneers are unjustified. These are our neighbors and taxpayers, living paycheck to paycheck, and it’s altogether proper that we help them when nature deals a sucker punch.
A palpable display of need in a county famous for its affluence.