| Contact: Julie Washburn Phone: (206) 910-7150 | FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 1 P.M. PST, December 15th, 2010 |
Seattle, Washington, December 15th, 2010: Washington Food Coalition is opposed to the elimination of State Food Assistance and believes that the trade-off of putting more money into food banks is the wrong choice. Governor Gregoire proposes providing an additional $15 million to food banks around the state to make up for the elimination of $60 million in food stamp benefits, and she suggests that nonprofits and the faith-based organizations will need to step up to be the sole safety net for people in need. However, when it comes to ending hunger, we simply cannot do it alone.
While our Coalition members fight on tirelessly, doing everything in our power to help people have nutritious food to eat, we continue to watch the problem of hunger in our communities grow. WSDA food programs have seen a 27% increase over the past 3 years.
In addition, according to the 2010 Hungry in Washington Report released by the Children’s Alliance, one in seven households (14.7%) in our state struggled to put enough food on the table—the highest rate since the USDA began recording this figure in 1995.
Local food banks and meal programs are already stretched beyond capacity as they have seen visits increasing and donations decreasing due to the recession. The charitable hunger response system alone cannot adequately provide for the increased numbers of people in need that we will see from the elimination of this and other basic safety net programs.
The services food banks provide are not a like for like replacement for the loss of food stamp dollars. Indeed, they are supplemental services, and many families rely on both to have enough to eat. When Governor Gary Locke and the legislature created the State Food Assistance Program in 1997, a variety of delivery systems were considered. The unanimous view of the emergency food system then was that reaching individuals no longer eligible for federal food stamps through the state’s emergency food network would be very difficult. Emergency food infrastructure continues to differ across the state. A food stamp look-alike program was the best choice for addressing the sudden loss of federal food stamps and spending of these food benefits in local grocery stores assures $9 in local economic impact for every $5 spent.
Food stamps are dollars that provide people with choices; important for dietary-specific or culturally relevant food they need that they may not be getting at their local food bank. Food stamps also allow the flexibility of being used at any convenient time that local stores are open, whereas food banks and meal programs are limited in their abilities for open hours. Lastly, food stamps also have a positive economic impact—for every $5 in benefits spent at local grocery stores, $9 in local economic activity is generated.
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