It’s been more than 6 months since Alaska Division of Public Assistance first began falling behind in the processing of the federal applications for food stamps. This left thousands of Alaskans in wait for their benefits to be delivered right now.
In rural Alaska where food costs can be staggering and food pantries or food banks are not common, residents are suffering the most of the huge pile of backlogs, say advocates.
As Alaskans across the state are suffering because of the delay, officials from the Food Bank of Alaska said they’ve been contacted by people from a variety of villages located in remote Alaska — especially within Western as well as Northwest Alaska — asking urgently for help which reflected the absence of security in a lot areas.
People are waking up to the reality of searching the depths of their freezers to find a scarce game, and relying on their neighbors and friends to fill the shelves and in rare instances, requiring hospitalization due to malnutrition.
“People are starving to death,” Ron Meehan, Food Bank of Alaska’s policy and advocacy director told this week.
“They’re calling saying we don’t have anything”” Meehan said, referring to the small number of communities that have contacted to get assistance. “But the truth is that there’s likely to be many greater than those who have experienced this and they don’t know what to do to help us.”
Food Bank staff said they are able to provide food to food pantries that are struggling in certain communities however, they are constrained by the shrinking resources, increasing cost of food and less donations, even though more people require assistance due to the delays in Alaska’s processing applications for government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program also known as SNAP.
“So that many food pantries and food banks are simply not equipped with enough capacity to meet this demand,” Meehan said.
“My community is suffering”
In Stebbins in Stebbins, a Western Alaska village where nearly all residents are eligible for food stamps but only a very few have received these benefits Three elders have had to be admitted to hospitals due to malnutrition, according to city administrator the city’s administrator.Daisy Catcheak, Lockwood.
The Nome community, situated about 120 miles to the southeast of Nome and houses more than 600 people has experienced a number of catastrophic incidents in a relatively short amount of time. These events, Katcheak says have exacerbated one another in conjunction together with SNAP delays.
The significant storm affected a large portion of Western Alaska in September including Stebbins and heavily flooded several homes. In November, the town’s sole shopburned down.
“We create-shift a tiny store , which has been reduced to a third and only sells food that’s on the shelf,” Katcheak said Thursday. “On the top this, we’ve had an issue with food stamps that my folks are even more affected by that.”
In recent weeks, Stebbins officials have had to rely on donations of food through The Red Cross, the Food Bank of Alaska and the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium to ensure that residents are fed.
“I have just asked for more food items for the community as our residents aren’t receiving the nutrition value,” she explained. “My parents and grandparents are suffering. My community is in pain.”
The final bone
In Kivalina the village of Kivalina, an elderly woman of 72, Becky Norton struggled for months to provide for her nine-member family. There aren’t any pantries or food banks within the largely Inupiat village located on an island with a barrier that runs that lies along the Chukchi Sea.
Norton’s family usually receives about $1,800 as SNAP advantages for their family, which includes three of her little grandchildren. told the news station.
Norton completed her recertification application in November and , by the time she was in January, hadn’t received any response from the department of public assistance in the state’s Division of Public Assistance regarding the status of her application.
While Norton was waiting to see if the approval of her SNAP request to be approved she said she sifted through her freezer looking for remnants of caribou left from hunts in the past which was once abundant but now rare food source for her family due to the loss of herds in the local area.
“I discovered in my freezer, one leg bone, large enough sufficient to cook soup” she told me.
In the meantime, Norton said, she was waiting for benefits and planned her budget carefully to prevent their each month Social Security payments from running out. She was aware that, in the event of a crisis and needed help, she could go to the local Facebook group to seek help from her friends.
“We are a loving community,” she said. “So should we recognize that someone is struggling, we are willing to make small care packages. It’s not much, but to aid them in their struggle.”
Norton finally received help in speeding up her application through Alaska Legal Services. Within a couple of hours, SNAP funds were deposited into her account.
The sister of her, who applied for benefits at the same time as she did and hasn’t yet received news from the state concerning the application she filed four months ago.
Norton herself is waiting for her state’s applications for aid to energy. It’s one of the programs that is also suffering delays. She submitted her application in September, just before the cold weather arrived. This week, she was presented with an electric bill for $423.
Significant delays continue
The scope of this food stamp processing issue first became apparent in December, when a variety of Alaska news media reported massive delays within Public Assistance Division which handles the applications.
A swath of Alaskans have waited for months to get SNAP benefits were on hold for hours in the state’s call center, only to hear that there was nothing that could be done to accelerate the process. A lot of people who call about food stamps are experiencing delays with other forms of public assistance, like seniors advantages, Medicaid — and heating assistance.
State officials blamed the delays in processing public assistance due to a shortage of staff and an cyberattack which disrupted internet service for months as well as an increase in recertification requests at the beginning of fall, after an emergency pandemic-era plan ended in September. This program allowed for Alaskans to get the most benefits with no annual recertifications. It came to an end with the emergency declaration issued by the state that was canceled in July.
Since December directors in the Division of Public Assistance was replaced by a new director, and the Division of Public Assistance has been restructured. Alaskans are filed an action claiming that the delays are an infringement under federal law.
Last month, Heidi Hedberg, the state health department’s commissioner-designee, said the department was hiring workers via an emergency contract to focus solely on food stamps and Medicaid as a way to get the agency back up to speed.
In the month of November, department appointed 71 new employees “in different stages of their learning,” department spokeswoman Sonya Senkowsky wrote in an email from this week.
As March draws near the backlog hasn’t been removed. In an email sent this week Hedberg explained that state officials are continuing to process SNAP applications that were received in October. On the front line Advocates at the Food Bank say the majority of their clients not receiving benefits on time.
The staff at The Food Bank of Alaska this week said they’re still working with customers who’s applications were recorded as accepted in September but there has been no action since.
“We’re seeing substantial delays with processing” explained Magen James who is the group’s SNAP coordinator.
“Nothing we can do.”
As the backlog grows, Food Bank of Alaska staff say staffers are exhausted after months of working with people who are hungry throughout the state, with the limited availability of food sources.
“The additional stress of having to deal with people who suffer from hunger every day has taken a huge impact on my staff,” James said.
The Food Bank is struggling to meet the demand, Food Bank officials say. Even in areas that are on the highway system, such as Soldotna, people who are struggling not just with delays in benefits, but also inflation claim that the price of gasoline makes it difficult or impossible to travel into town to go to the food pantry according the report of Greg Meyer, with the Food Bank in that community.
The group has been going into the smaller towns to give food to help however the demand isn’t letting up and resources are dwindling: The food bank has a limited amount of resources:Meyer stated that the food bank in that area has gone through around 75percent of the stock food items since September and has witnessed an increase of 50% on the amount of households that seek help with food each day.
The effects of the increasing prices for fuel and food in addition to delayed federal benefits has been especially difficult for seniors and parents with children, according to Carey Atchak, food security coordinator at Bethel Community Services Foundation.
Atchak the person who manages City’s pantry for food said it’s been almost impossible to meet the demands.
“I buy around $1,000 worth of goods on Monday. By Wednesday, everything was gone,” she said.
The sector of charity isn’t created to take over federal benefitsfor example, Meehan stated that SNAP benefits typically supply greater than 10x the amount of food that is normally provided through food bank. In the past year The Food Bank of Alaska also saw a decrease in food items it’s been able provide the public, he added.
In remote areas, far from an emergency food pantry or a food bank such as those in Yukon River community of Mountain Village the staff reported that there is a feeling insecurity.
“We’ve noticed a substantial rise in the number of customers coming from Mountain Village specifically asking about their SNAP benefits, but they’re still not accepted, and then needing food, but there’s not a food bank or pantry or any other service in that zone,” James said. “And I was forced to explain to clients that they’ll need to wait. There was nothing we could do.”
