PROVIDENCE — President Donald Trump’s executive order Tuesday requiring stricter enforcement of a 20-hour work week for a portion of the 158,481 Rhode Islanders receiving food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program places an unfair burden on the poor in a tough job market, critics argue.
Paul Salera, president and CEO of Westbay Community Action, said that on April 4, his agency and others in Rhode Island received a letter from the U.S. Department of Food and Agriculture’s division of Food and Nutrition Services spelling out the likely requirements to be set as a result of the executive order, “Reducing Poverty in America by Promoting Opportunity and Economic Mobility.”
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In the letter, the USDA informed Salera and his colleagues that SNAP recipients who are able-bodied adults without dependents will find it more difficult to waive the three-month time limit for SNAP benefits within any three-year period unless they meet work requirements – a 20-hour work week.
Alicia Pina, spokesperson for the RI Department of Human Services, said Rhode Island had a state-wide waiver of the work requirement put in place in 2008. That was no longer applicable in Richmond due to economy improvements (lower unemployment) in 2017, Pina said. This year, under existing regulation, economy improvements have rendered the waivers unavailable in Barrington, Cumberland, Exeter, Glocester, Jamestown, Lincoln, Little Compton, Narragansett, Newport, North Kingstown, North Smithfield, and Warwick, effective Sept. 1, 2018.
Those able-bodied working adults without dependents throughout RI can still qualify for other waivers, such as for a disability, participating in education or training, or as “unfit for work,” Pina said.
The executive order calls on agencies to more strictly enforce the existing work requirements, Pina said.
“We are aware of this proposal, and if enacted, will provide even more supports to help the impacted individuals find work and provide the necessary documentation regarding work requirements to DHS,” Pina said.
“The Association is opposed to making the existing harsh regulations even more detrimental by taking away state flexibility or exposing more people to time-limited benefits. Increasing the ability of USDA to deny state waivers for deceleration of SNAP time limits and expanding it to those SNAP recipients’ through stricter rules will only increase the number of people facing hunger in this country,” wrote Joanne McGunagle, board chair of the Rhode Island Association of Community Action, in a letter to the USDA.
“I’m totally opposed to it,” said Salera, who noted that many of the people relying on SNAP food assistance wind up in that position after recently losing their job, and that three months isn’t a realistic amount of time for someone to find a reliable 20-hour-per-week job.
Salera said the situation the executive order places food-insecure households in was evident in the response to a recent job posting the agency ran for a full-time job with benefits. There were so many responses to the opportunity that they had to remove the posting before they were inundated with applications they were unable to respond to. Many of the applicants they were able to review had been looking for work for much longer than three months.
“They’ve been in the job market for six to seven months,” some of them, Salera said.
McGunagle urged the agency not to move forward with the restrictions.
“The association pays very close attention to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program because SNAP is critical to addressing hunger and food insecurity in our communities and is the first line of defense against hunger for the majority of our low-income clients. Community action agencies are concerned about the three-month time limit, as this policy would cut off food assistance to so many in our communities who are in need just because they are unable to find a reliable 20-hour-a-week job in Rhode Island,” McGunagle wrote.
Rob Borkowski is a PBN staff writer. Email him at Borkwoski@PBN.com.