Everyone knows that in America, where one in five children are classified as poor, some kids go hungry. That’s true even in New Hampshire, which, at one in eight, ostensibly has the lowest child poverty rate in the nation. Exactly how many are hungry, however, is anyone’s guess.
What is known is that the problem is worse in summer, when school lunch and breakfast programs end for kids not enrolled in summer school.
Late last spring, Concord Mayor Jim Bouley put together a committee to determine the scope of the hunger problem and ways to address it. So far, the group has learned a few things.
During the school year, 1,447 public school students receive free or reduced lunches. The biggest contingent, 547, are in elementary school.
Some organizations, notably the Concord Boys and Girls Club and the YMCA, provide meals for their members in summer, and the families of some poor children utilize food pantries and the Friendly Kitchen. But few, if any, church programs, since most churches are much less active in summer, provide meals or groceries for the needy.
How many Concord children live in a household where the cupboards are bare and the refrigerator empty? We don’t know. In this day and age, an adult can no longer approach children on the street, in their yards or on a playground, and ask them if they’re hungry or have food in their homes.
Last Sunday, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote about the failure of Bill Clinton’s welfare reform, which was a necessity given that the programs had created multi-generation dependency. The problem is that the replacement program, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, or TANF, was starved nearly out of existence in conservative states, and it never succeeded in paying enough to allow recipients, most of them single-parent women, to transition to self-supporting employment.
Many poor households have essentially no cash income, no money to pay utility bills, buy bus tickets, gas up a car, buy school clothes or more food than the $5.68 per person per day maximum under what used to be called the food stamp program.
New Hampshire, by national TANF standards, is generous, with the sixth highest benefit of all the states. That sounds good, but in reality, that program, which like all the replacement welfare programs requires able-bodied participants to spend 30 hours per week at work or in training, falls far short of success.
The maximum monthly cash benefit for a mother with two children is $675, but the maximum landlords are allowed to charge as rent is $775. The program subsidizes child care but recipients must pay $75 per month for it out of pocket. Then there are utility bills, clothing costs, money for toiletries and diapers. The upshot: The food program doesn’t pay enough for food, TANF doesn’t pay enough to cover rent and utilities, and child care help doesn’t cover the cost of care. Transportation and child care costs mean many recipients can’t meet the work requirement.
There are 55 adults and 143 children in Concord receiving TANF benefits; 2,913 adults and 1,648 children get food stamps, which today means debit cards reloaded monthly.
How many of those children go hungry in summer? How many children whose parents aren’t receiving welfare of some sort also go hungry? Are they in rural areas where latchkey children can’t get to a school or a park for food or in the central city? The committee doesn’t know. If you do, please contact Ralph Jimenez at rjimenez@cmonitor.com.
Solving the failure of the TANF program, like reforming welfare so the nutrition, housing and education needs of all poor children can be met, will take federal action. In the meantime, the committee would like to do what it can to make sure the city’s kids don’t go hungry in summer.