With the holidays around the corner, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program recipients are unsure when they will receive their full benefits. More than 42 million Americans rely on them monthly, according to CBS News.
UIndy junior psychology major Natalie Childers knows this firsthand, having grown up in Fenton, Michigan, where her family relied on SNAP benefits to pay for groceries. Childers said she also qualifies for food stamps and benefits, being on her own at UIndy, financially independent from her parents, and a first-generation college student without a college fund.
“Not to like state the obvious, but a lot of these families are going without groceries or meals,” Childers said. “They’re going without necessities. And then there are a lot of parents who are choosing to go hungry so that their children can eat…”
Growing up, Childers was the youngest of six children, all half-siblings. She said her mother had two kids with her ex-husband, her father had three kids with his ex-wife and then they had her. Since the age of six or seven years old, her father has been disabled and unable to work, according to Childers.
“…My mom was kind of single-handedly supporting all of these children,” Childers said. “At one point, my cousin was living with us under legal guardianship. She [her mother] was working to feed all of these families, to make all of the holidays happen.”
For the Childers family, many of their meals, even when they were not experiencing genuine, extreme scarcity, were going without protein, Childers said. Her family relied on eating rice, condensed soup, ramen and lentils. Through these meals, her mother, Jennifer Childers, taught her firsthand, through cooking meals and grocery shopping with her, how to make food last and money stretch within a tight budget.
“I was able to see how my mom did it,” Natalie said. “Being a student on a minimum wage salary, especially last year, I was making $8 an hour, entirely financially independent from my parents. So that was when I was applying for food stamps. It’s hard, and you have to learn how to grocery shop and how to get things that last a long time.”
The threat of SNAP recipients receiving delayed benefits, and maybe even not their full amount, has been weighing heavily on Natalie’s heart, according to her. She said she thinks about it almost every day and is anxious about how these delayed benefits are coming into effect, from what she is seeing on her social media feed on a daily basis.
Natalie said she is frustrated at those who believe “this is the best thing that’s ever happened” because their tax dollars are going to people in need. She said this issue makes her worried if it were to escalate to food stamps being cut or defunded in some way, which she said she fears may go further into affecting other things, such as Social Security benefits. Also, if the wealthy are not giving their tax dollars to those in need, Natalie said it is important to question where that money would be going.
“It seems, like in past trends, that the people in need, their voices are not heard, and the people who are speaking against them are the ones that are heard,” Natalie said.
When asked whether or not she believes there is a stigma around needing food assistance, Natalie said that in impoverished communities where using SNAP benefits is more common, people do not think twice about it. However, Natalie gave the example of her sister not being willing to have people over at her house. She said that if people were to see the meals at her sister’s house, they would think to themselves, “Oh, they don’t make a lot of money.”
There is discomfort and shame directed toward people on SNAP who need food assistance, according to Natalie. She said when someone is in a position where they need help, it is hard to ask for it.
“Being a student who’s working and looking forward to their future, and like doing everything that they can, it’s exhausting,” Natalie said. “Doing that all while holding a job, working 80 hours [a month], 20 hours a week, it’s draining and it’s difficult. Having to add on worrying about feeding yourself is so detrimental to your health, well-being and mental health…”
It is a very difficult situation right now for a lot of people, especially around Fenton, Michigan, in lower-income neighborhoods, according to Jennifer. She said people are all over Facebook asking for assistance of any kind, whether people have bottles to feed their babies or extra food to feed their kids. These people are working full-time making decent money, according to Jennifer, but the amount that everything costs in life takes all of their paycheck that they rely on to pay for groceries.
Natalie said she was unaware that her family qualified for SNAP benefits until now. Jennifer said she was not ashamed of it by any means, but she was more worried about what other people would say to her kids at school, so she did not say anything about it.
“I did what I had to do,” Jennifer said. “I would make a big dinner [for the kids], and they’re like, ‘You’re not going to eat?’ ‘No, I’m good. I ate while I was cooking.’ Well, I didn’t eat while I was cooking. But they didn’t need to know that because they’re just young kids. They just had to have what they needed to be big, strong and intelligent kids.”
There were seven kids in the house at one time, including Natalie, her five half-siblings and Jennifer’s nephew, whom she took in, according to Jennifer. She said her ex-husband had to stop working, so she was the only income to feed all the kids.
Now that the tables have turned for Jennifer, having all the kids out of the house and being better off financially than when the kids were little, she said she now tries her best to give as much back as she can to food banks and churches. It helped her so much when she needed it most, so she said it feels only right to give back.
For those currently struggling to put food on the table, Jennifer said it is best to buy food in bulk, which saves you money in the long run. Also, it is a good idea to take your kids to the grocery store with you if you can, so they can see what kinds of food you are buying and how you are best making your money stretch for you within a tight budget, according to Jennifer. Natalie would often go with Jennifer to the grocery store, which Natalie said she now uses these life lessons on her own when shopping.
Jennifer addressed the two big misconceptions about those who are on SNAP and need food assistance: (1) because some take advantage of the benefits, it is not right to assume everyone will because most do not, and (2) most people work way more than the minimum 20 hours a week to receive SNAP benefits, so it is not right to assume that SNAP users “do not work hard enough.”
Jennifer had to work the 80-hour monthly minimum to receive SNAP benefits weekly, often leaving Natalie and her siblings at home more than she liked, according to her. However, she said she had to do what she needed to do and worked 80 hours weekly, 15 to 17-hour days, for about three years. With the amount of costs in life, she said she was making decent money, but still, much of it was going out on bills.
“I would work from six in the morning till six at night, usually,” Jennifer said. “Then, I would go work a second job, and on the weekends, I would work from nine in the morning until midnight, one o’clock in the morning. It was a lot.”
The biggest qualities that people can have toward SNAP recipients are empathy and respect, according to Jennifer. She said most people have not lived in these people’s shoes, but she believes that the world would be a better place if people could take into account other people’s perspectives.
For those who may be struggling and in need of food assistance, Natalie mentioned a variety of different resources on and around the UIndy campus, including the UIndy Food Pantry at University Heights Methodist Church, the $40 Thanksgiving Meal Package at Aldi, DoorDash, GOPUFF, Walmart+ Assist, Amazon Prime, Little Free Library, Instacart and SNAP INTO ACTION. Additionally, there is the “One-Stop-Shop” in the Terry Center for Campus Connections, and SNAP food assistance and Community Compass Food Assistance through University Heights Methodist Church, according to UIndy’s Campus and Community Resources.
“It’s in times of need, where people realize that they have community and that they have the people around them,” Natalie said. “I think it’s very important to just know that people are doing their best to help.”
