More than 15,000 people across Louisiana have been kicked off of state food-stamp rolls in recent months.
The cuts date back to October 1, when federal officials reinstated work requirements that had been waived statewide for years and set aside nationally during the pandemic, according to data from the state Department of Children and Families Services (DCFS) – which administers the federally funded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) food-stamp program.
The majority of Louisianans who have lost benefits lost them in January, three months after federal waivers expired for 31 parishes, according to DCFS.
Those dropped so far represent roughly 2% of food-stamp recipients, a small but significant decline that foreshadows much steeper cuts predicted after this fall, when a new state law will result in the end of all federal work-requirement waivers for Louisiana.
“We expect to see many more people lose this essential food assistance that they rely on,” said Christina LeBlanc, a policy analyst with Invest in Louisiana. “Tens of thousands of people are going to lose their benefits.”
Under the federal waivers, the state could issue regular food-stamp benefits, regardless of employment status, to a specific subgroup of recipients: low-income able-bodied adults, without dependents, between the ages of 18 and 52, dubbed “ABAWDs” in policy jargon. During the COVID-19 Federal Public Health Emergency, ABAWD work requirements were suspended across the country for nearly three years, between April 1, 2020 and June 30, 2023.
That wasn’t a big change for Louisiana, where a lagging economy had long allowed widespread waivers. Nearly every year since 1996, DCFS has successfully requested that the feds waive federal work requirements in parts of Louisiana with high unemployment rates and few open jobs.
Almost continuously since 2010, those waivers covered the entire state, because of Louisiana’s pervasively high joblessness.
But starting in October of last year, only 33 of the Louisiana’s 64 parishes continued to qualify for ABAWD waivers, which require unemployment rates of more than 10 percent — or a 24-month average unemployment rate 20 percent above the national average for the same period.
In the state’s remaining parishes – including East Baton Rouge, Lafayette and Caddo – nondisabled people without minor children can now be cut off from monthly food stamps. They continue to be eligible only if they spend at least 20 hours a week working, volunteering, or participating in a work-training program. If not, they can only receive SNAP benefits for three months in any three-year period. There are some exemptions to the ABAWD work requirement time limit — for veterans, teens aging out of foster care, and people experiencing homelessness.
No data on whether disenrolled people found employment
Some lawmakers look at the data, which shows thousands of SNAP recipients who have been cut off since January, as an indication that people were receiving food stamps unnecessarily. But food-stamp analysts say that the problem is in the workforce, not the workers, since data shows that most SNAP recipients work, just in unstable jobs that don’t consistently provide enough money to eat.
DCFS has no information about the 15,000 people who were disenrolled since the fall and whether they have found employment, or what sort of wages they are earning if they did, a spokesperson said.
In Baton Rouge, the Rev. Alexis Anderson, executive director of PREACH, a nonprofit faith-based advocacy group, doesn’t think that people should be kicked off food stamps without an in-depth conversation. “Before I took food out of anybody’s mouth, I would ask some questions,” she said. “To start, I would ask about childcare, transportation, and health. That’s usually what it almost always is.”
(Federal law technically allows states to exempt individuals who “would have fulfilled the work requirements” but “missed some hours” for reasons including illness, illness of another household member requiring the presence of the member, a household emergency, or the unavailability of transportation. In reality, those exemptions can be hard to claim due to administrative hurdles, advocates warn.)
In Anderson’s work in the local library’s career center and within the East Baton Rouge 19th Judicial District courthouse, she has found that even people who don’t have custody of minor children often have childcare responsibilities within their families. Or maybe they don’t have transportation, or they’re being asked to work shifts during times when no buses are running, Anderson said. That hurdle is perhaps worst in what she calls “transportation deserts,” in suburban or rural areas, she said.
And because there are few mental-health providers in Louisiana, she also has long seen large numbers of people with undiagnosed mental-health disorders, she said, dating back to the days when she did trainings at state Department of Social Services offices. Because some people in this group may be particularly reluctant to speak about personal information on the telephone, there may be a need for community outreach, she said. “Oftentimes, a simple in-person conversation can yield a lot of information,” she said. “You can find out exactly what their challenges may be.”
Plus, she said, while it’s well-known that people with criminal records may struggle to get work, they also can find it hard to be accepted as a volunteer, making the food-stamp office requirements nearly impossible, she said.
Most of the state’s 900,000 total SNAP recipients have children or are disabled. So the number of people affected by these cuts are a small group, but significant because these cuts are considered a preview of what will likely happen throughout the rest of the state starting October 1, 2024, when a new state law will bar DCFS from applying for any waivers, even for parishes with high unemployment or few open jobs.
Once October hits, people without minor children across the entire state must comply with work requirements to receive monthly food stamps.
The 33 parishes that will face new work requirements in the fall, are: Assumption, Avoyelles, Bienville, Catahoula, Claiborne, Concordia, East Carroll, Evangeline, Franklin, Iberia, Iberville, Jefferson, Madison, Morehouse, Orleans, Ouachita, Plaquemines, Pointe Coupee, Richland, St. Bernard, St. Helena, St. James, St. John The Baptist, St. Landry, St. Martin, St. Mary, Tangipahoa, Tensas, Terrebonne, Union, Washington, West Carroll and Winn.
Within those parishes are more than 28,000 ABAWD food-stamp recipients – including nearly 6,000 in New Orleans alone – who will be subject to work requirements, DCFS said. Given those numbers and how many have lost SNAP benefits so far this year, analysts expect that twice as many people are in jeopardy of losing food assistance this fall.
Critics say food stamps are ‘a lifestyle’
In Louisiana, individuals without dependents who have incomes that are below 200 percent of the federal poverty line can receive up to $293 a month — or about $10 a day — in food-stamp benefits that can be used for groceries. (Food stamps cannot be used for alcohol, tobacco, or hot food.)
The new prohibition on work waivers is rooted in the notion that people are relying on food stamps instead of work. But some say that, given the erratic job market in many parts of Louisiana, food stamps are a necessary way to support workers who often are unable to work consistent hours, but still need to eat.
Louisiana has the ninth highest rate of food scarcity in the country, according to a survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, with 12.5 percent of families in the state reporting that they lack consistent access to enough food.
Those who supported the reinstatement of SNAP work requirements across Louisiana contend that food stamps can be a disincentive for people to find jobs. State Sen. Blake Miguez, R – New Iberia, who authored the bill banning DCFS from applying for waivers, said on the Senate floor that he was concerned that some people receiving SNAP benefits had accepted it as a “lifestyle.”
“The reason that they’re not working is they’re not incentivized to go back to work,” Miguez said. “I would say that they’re not motivated, and they have no incentive to see the true opportunities that this country — the greatest country on this earth — can provide for them.”
But LeBlanc, with Invest in Louisiana, said that research shows that taking away SNAP benefits has the opposite effect.
“Taking away food from people does not push them back into the workforce,” LeBlanc said. “If anything, it makes it more difficult for people to have stable family and home lives and to take that time and energy to look for work. It’s a misunderstanding of policy.”
Calling ABAWD waivers a “loophole,” Miguez said that his bill was “narrowly tailored” to only impact people who should be working.
In a email to The Lens on Monday, Miguez said he wasn’t concerned about the thousands of people who had been disenrolled already and reiterated that the goal of his bill was “to incentivize citizens on these government benefits to go back to work, break the cycle of dependency and find dignity in the workplace.” There are currently 120,000 job openings in the state, he noted.
With an eye to the tourism industry and other industries where there are bursts of work followed by periods of downtime, advocates emphasize that work hours often dip below SNAP-mandated amounts for people working in the service industry and gig economy — for no fault of their own. That could trigger food-stamp cut-offs, at a time when they most need food in the cupboard, they say.
As DCFS implements work requirements, many eligible people will be inadvertently caught up in the cuts, losing benefits, due to administrative errors and burdensome red tape, LeBlanc said.
“There are going to be people who qualify for these benefits, who should be able to receive them, who will be accidentally disenrolled,” she said. “It happens every time, in every state, when people are disenrolled from a program.”
Work requirements also drastically increase administrative burdens within an already thinly stretched DCFS, Leblanc said. Currently, according to the department, there are 544 SNAP analysts for 417,304 cases — meaning each analyst has an average caseload of 767.
A DCFS spokesperson said the department was unable to provide data on how many people have been accidentally kicked off of food stamps due to work requirements since they went into effect last fall.
“When implemented like this, work requirements are designed to say, ‘You are not doing this, so I’m going to kick you off.’ They’re not designed to address the real question – ‘Why do you not have a job?” Rev. Anderson said.
Katy Reckdahl contributed to this story.
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated how long Louisiana has been applying for work requirement waivers. The state has applied for waivers since 1996.