In just under a month, the newly hired, full-time food stamp coordinator at the Jackson Heights-Elmhurst Kehillah, a coalition of 13 Jewish community organizations, said he already has more than 100 applicants in the system.
By James DeWeese
15th in a series
In just under a month, the newly hired, full-time food stamp coordinator at the Jackson Heights-Elmhurst Kehillah, a coalition of 13 Jewish community organizations, said he already has more than 100 applicants in the system.
For all but the most dire cases, the applicants wiåll have to wait 30 days to start receiving the monthly food subsidy, coordinator Christopher Santana said.
But it could have taken a lot longer. The predominantly Hispanic group of low-income area residents who have started to take advantage of the Kehillah’s food stamp assistance program might never have found out they were eligible.
“We were finding that there are a lot of people who are entitled to food stamps but just aren’t getting them,” said Arthur Teiler, a member of the Kehillah’s board of directors.
About 95 percent of current participants in the Kehillah’s food stamp program are Hispanic, Santana said. “But within that group the nationalities are very diverse.”
They are for the most part Mexicans, Colombians and Dominicans, he said.
A recent report from the Children’s Defense Fund indicated that only one out of every two New York City residents who are eligible for food stamps is receiving them. And Santana said that last year New York state got about $750 million less from the federal government for food stamp programs because eligible people were not signed up and did not figure into the distribution equation.
Now, the Kehillah, which has been in existence for 28 years and involved in food issues for more than half a decade, is trying to connect eligible people with the government service.
In February, the Kehillah received a six-month grant of about $25,000 from the state Nutrition Consortium to cover Santana’s salary and office expenses.
Santana, a 22-year-old Corona native, will work out of the Kehillah’s Jackson Heights office through June, offering guidance to people who are interested in applying for food stamps, helping them complete the application and organizing public awareness campaigns. Then if all goes well, Teiler and Santana said, they will renew their grant application and continue to provide the service.
In the past, Teiler said, Kehillah members had also organized a direct food-distribution service out of the group’s 91st Street office, using donated stuffs from Second Harvest. But the volume of visitors — several hundred a month — became so great that the landlord asked the Kehillah to stop the program, Teiler said.
“Before you knew it we had all these people,” Teiler said. “It was really surprising and disappointing (to find) the number of people who needed food at the end of the month.”
The Kehillah is now looking for a new location to resume direct food distribution, Teiler said. Meanwhile, the group will also work to expand the food stamp assistance program to other areas of Queens, Teiler said.
Santana said one of the major problems he is seeking to address as the Kehillah’s food stamp coordinator is a lack of public awareness about eligibility, which depends on income and family size. A single person earning less than $971 a month can claim the benefit. The income threshold is $1,312 for a family of two.
Unawareness among the immigrant community is particularly high, Santana said.
He said the children of undocumented immigrants are eligible for the benefits regardless of their parents’ legal status. Food stamp benefits can be as high as $140 a month for the first member of an eligible family, plus another $106 for each additional family member.
Participants in the food stamp program, which is mostly funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, pay for food by swiping plastic cards through readers in much the same way a debit card works.
“For a supermarket it’s a hell of a convenience,” Teiler said, pointing out that while retailers often pay as much as a 7 percent commission on credit-card transactions, they actually earn an additional 5 percent when shoppers redeem food stamp money.
Santana stressed that while all welfare recipients are automatically eligible for food stamps, not all food stamp recipients are on welfare.
“This is not welfare,” Santana said.
“I really want to emphasize that because there’s a big stigma out there,” he added. “This is basically to help working families who are struggling.”
Santana provides assistance and advice during the process, but applicants must still submit their forms at one of Queens’ two Human Resources Administration offices.
Santana is at the Kehillah 33-49 91st St., Monday and Thursday from 9 a.m.-5 p.m., after 3 p.m. on Tuesday and Wednesday, and in the mornings on Friday. Spanish, Russian and other languages are spoken. For more information, call the Kehillah at 718-457-4591.
Reach reporter James DeWeese at 718-229-0300, Ext. 157, or by e-mail at news@timesledger.com.
