With the economy still faltering, state welfare officials are predicting a record number of Kansas households will be on food stamps within the next 11 months.

“We expect the average monthly number of households receiving food assistance to reach 76,000 sometime in fiscal year 2004,” said Janet Schalansky, secretary of the state Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services.

The previous high was 75,749, set in 1994.

The average monthly number of households on food stamps increased 10.5 percent in fiscal 2002 and 15.6 percent in fiscal 2003. SRS expects a 10.3 percent increase in fiscal 2004, which began July 1.

Schalansky said the record-setting increase in fiscal 2003 was a mix of good news and bad news.

It’s bad, she said, because it means the state’s economy is “still down” and poor people are struggling to make ends meet.

But it’s also a sign, she said, that an SRS campaign aimed at encouraging low-income families to sign up for food stamps is working.

Impact of reform

In Kansas, thousands of low-income families — mostly single mothers with small children — dropped their food stamps when they lost their cash assistance with the onset of welfare reform in 1996.

The Henning family is one of a growing number of Kansas families who rely upon food stamps for food. From left, Tara, 5, Gary, Taylor, 1, and Tyler, 6, snacked on cheese slices Thursday in east Lawrence. State welfare officials predict a 10.3 percent increase in food stamp cases in fiscal year 2004, which began July 1.

Since then, SRS has reminded these families that while welfare reform restricted their access to cash assistance they still were eligible for food stamps, and that rather than going hungry, they should apply for them.

“We’ve had some success in that regard,” Schalansky said.

Jessica Herpel, 29, agreed with Schalansky’s assessment.

“I can’t speak for everyone,” Herpel said, “but the people I know are on food stamps because they have kids and they can’t afford food — and they can’t work because day care costs so much or they don’t have a car or they’ve been laid off and they can’t find a job.”

Herpel was standing outside the Lawrence Interdenominational Nutritional Kitchen, 221 W. 10th St., shortly before noon Thursday.

Homeless the past two weeks, Herpel said she was pregnant with her fifth child. Three of her four children, she said, have gone to live with their fathers; the fourth is up for adoption.

¢ SRS draws $1.5 million fine (7-17-03)¢Kansas SRS

“I’m on food stamps because my social workers want me to take care of the baby that’s not been born yet,” she said, wiping a tear from her eye.

Households, people

The increase in food-stamp numbers is not expected to push up SRS spending because food stamps are backed with federal rather than state dollars.

In fiscal 2003, the federal government spent $134 million on food stamps in Kansas — about $11.2 million a month.

Though the number of Kansas households receiving food stamps is expected to set a record, the number of recipients is not.

The number of people receiving food stamps peaked at 190,000 adults and children in the early 1990s; in June 2003, 163,783 were on food stamps.

Schalansky said the shift was because more one- and two-person households — the elderly and disabled adults, mostly — are signing up.

Still, the number of people on food stamps each month increased by 17,800 from July 2002 to July 2003. SRS expects a similar increase in fiscal 2004.

Paul Johnson, director of the church-sponsored Public Assistance Coalition of Kansas, said the increases pointed to welfare reform’s failure to make low-income families less needy.

“The bottom-line assumption of welfare reform was to put people to work — that the poor would be better off if they had jobs,” Johnson said. “Well, here we are six or seven years later and — guess what? — the working poor can’t make it on the jobs that are out there.”

Johnson noted that more than half of the 10 occupations expected by the state Department of Human Resources to add the most jobs between 1998 and 2008 pay minimum wage or near-minimum wage.

Though the state’s unemployment rate hovers between 4.5 percent and 5 percent, Johnson said 6.1 percent of the state’s population was on food stamps.

Shifting fortunes

At the Ballard Community Center in Lawrence, development director Chip Blaser said he’d noticed an increase in the number of low-income workers turning to the center for help.

“It used to be that the people we’d see had lower-level incomes,” Blaser said. “But now we’re seeing people who are working and who, a couple years ago, didn’t need help with the basic necessities. Now they do — food stamps is part of that.”

Carrie Lindsay, an employment specialist at the Lawrence-Douglas County Housing Authority’s Resident Services Office, pinned the food-stamp increase on recent layoffs.

“I have a couple clients who’ve been laid off from jobs they had for six and nine years — these were stable, longtime positions with good companies,” Lindsay said. “Now they can’t find work, and they’ve had to go on food stamps.”

In Kansas, a household is eligible for food stamps if its occupants’ income is less than 133 percent of the federal poverty guideline. For one person, that’s $995 a month; for a three-person household, it’s $1,271 a month.

The average household on food stamps receives about $166 a month worth of food aid. Though still widely referred to as food stamps, the once-familiar paper stamps have since been replaced by plastic charge cards.