To support New Yorkers through the COVID-19 crisis and financial fallout, about a half-billion dollars in food stamps, at $420 apiece, are being issued to every public school student in the city. Those who already receive such assistance have had this extra money added to their accounts, but in the next few weeks the funds are going to two groups who otherwise haven’t been eligible for the aid: undocumented immigrants, and higher-income earners.
That poses an interesting quandary for more well-off New Yorkers: What should they do with the Pandemic-Electronic Benefit Transfer (P-EBT) cards that will arrive in the mail with their children’s names on them? They can’t be handed to a needy neighbor -- that’d be fraud. And city officials recommend against throwing the cards out, because that’d be free federal money going unused.
So Marissa Finn, an Upper East Side food educator, had another idea: Use the card, and then donate the equivalent funds to help tackle hunger. Finn is a volunteer with Resource Generation, made up of young people working to redistribute wealth. She created a website -- Share My PEBT -- to guide charitable New Yorkers on how to donate the money.
“As somebody who comes from class privilege, I just wanted to get the word out in any way that I could,” she said. “What I really want is for people, after they've spent that $420, to go ahead and give it back to somebody in their neighborhood.”
Her website links to mutual aid groups and food pantries. “I would encourage people to give back to organizations that are alleviating hunger in New York City,” she said. “But if somebody has a different space that's really important to them -- yeah, go ahead, as long as you're redistributing that money to a place that deserves it.”
The reason why all parents of New York City public school students (and some charter, Catholic, and private schools that have free lunch programs) receive the benefit is because in 2017, the de Blasio Administration established universal free lunch, so any student, regardless of income, can access meals at school. Based on that, all city students are eligible for additional food stamp money that states received from a congressional COVID-19 stimulus measure that was intended to replace free lunches at school during the pandemic.
The state released this sample Pandemic Electronic Benefits Transfer card to help parents of school children understand its features.
Kathryn Garcia, the city’s sanitation commissioner who doubles as its COVID food czar, urged all parents, regardless of means, to spend the money, in part, because it acts as an economic boost for local stores. When the card arrives in the mail in the coming weeks, “don't assume that it's the credit card company trying to sell you something,” Garcia said. “This is actually a benefit that we think will help the overall economy of the City of New York and keep people fed.”
Garcia said about one in four New Yorkers is now thought to be food insecure. So the city is doing its own outreach -- printing 1 million fliers in 12 different languages -- to alert parents about the benefit, for which all public school students enrolled in the last academic year, including those in pre-K, are eligible. Those who already receive food stamps (formally called SNAP, or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) or Medicaid have likely already seen the money added to their accounts.
Listen to reporter Matt Katz's radio story for WNYC:
There has been exponential growth in food stamp usage during the pandemic, and it is seen as a critical part of the public safety net. “We know that there are reports that families, parents may be eating less to make sure that their children are not hungry,” Garcia said. “And so this also allows parents to purchase food that they are more accustomed to eating, that may be more appealing to some of the kids.”
For those who have never used public benefits, Finn sees a secondary benefit: removing the stigma of using food stamps, and giving wealthier New Yorkers a sense of how the system works.
“People are asking me what's eligible on food stamps, and nobody with this access to wealth needed to know those things before,” she said. “And it's about time that people get a little bit educated.”
Matt Katz reports on air at WNYC about immigration, refugees, hate, and national security. You can follow him on Twitter at @mattkatz00.
