If you’ve been laid off, furloughed or have lost income due to the coronavirus pandemic, you might already have filed for unemployment or requested financial assistance through the Paycheck Protection Program. But you might not yet have considered applying for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, aka “SNAP”—and, depending on your income, household and assets, you could be eligible.
Here’s what you need to know.
SNAP helps individuals and families in need via the distribution of monthly benefits that can be used to purchase certain types of food. Today benefits are typically issued via reloadable debit cards; formerly they were issued in the form of actual stamps, hence the term “food stamps.”
Generally SNAP benefits can be used to buy most of what you might consider “groceries,” including processed and snack foods; however, they cannot be used to purchase prepared or hot foods, toiletries or household goods, pet foods, vitamins, alcohol or tobacco.
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Each state has its own SNAP eligibility requirements, so to find out if you qualify, you’ll need to visit the SNAP State Directory of Resources, find your state and investigate you local bylaws. In many cases, SNAP eligibility is based on both current income and total assets—so if you’re not earning a lot of money right now but you have an emergency fund in place, you probably won’t be eligible for food assistance.
I currently live in Iowa, where the eligibility requirements are as follows:
Households with a gross monthly income less than $150 and with resources, such as cash or bank accounts of $100 or less; or
Households with rent, mortgage and utilities that are more than the household’s gross monthly income and assets; or
Households with a migrant or seasonal farm worker and with assets of $100 or less whose income is stopping or starting
Some states require certain applicants (such as those without children) to either be employed or actively looking for work before they can receive food assistance; however, the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted states to either relax or eliminate those rules. Washington State, for example, requires “able-bodied adults without dependents” to meet work or volunteer requirements prior to receiving benefits—but they are not penalizing people who don’t meet those requirements in March, April or May 2020.
The CARES Act, aka “the coronavirus-relief legislation that gave us everything from expanded unemployment benefits to those $1,200 stimulus checks,” also provides states with supplemental SNAP funding. As far as I can tell, many states are using this funding to provide all eligible households with the maximum allowable benefit for their household size, at least through April. That means if your household qualifies for food stamps, you’ll want to complete your application as soon as possible to take full advantage of the supplemental food assistance as well as any other benefits to which you are entitled.
One final note: I’ve been on food assistance before, but it’s been a very long time since I used an EBT card at the grocery store, so I can’t really speak to the relative ease or difficulty of getting SNAP benefits these days. If you have any advice about the current application process, other tips to help cash-strapped households make it through the month, or even any good news to share about increased SNAP benefits amid the pandemic, please let us know in the comments.
