Food stamps go where they’re needed
State finding success with outreach to Columbia County eligible food stamp recipients
When 19-year-old Madison Ryan arrived in Oregon in early September she came to stay with friends with plans to look for a job. In a tough local economy, it made sense to her to get food stamp benefits to tide her over while she looked. She went to the St. Helens DHS office and received the Oregon Trail Card that gives her access to benefits on the same day.
“It was actually a very positive experience,” she said.
When she signed up, she joined the 7,579 other Columbia County residents who also receive them. And she departed a remarkably sparse population, only about 342 people, who are eligible in the county but don’t receive them.
That’s a source of pride for Pam Ruddell, who manages the the local self-sufficiency office within the Department of Health Services. Ruddell said her team has worked to access as many people as possible who might need help and set them up with benefits. To that end, she’s hired more staffers and changed her office’s intake process.
“We get you in and out within an hour — if you’re prepared when you come in, you’ll have benefits when you leave,” Ruddell said. “You can go to the store.”
She also works with community partners including libraries,
schools and the Commun-ity Action Team to make sure that people know about the programs her agency offers. As a result, Ruddell said, only Deschutes County serves a higher proportion of its eligible population.
And that’s a lot of people. There’s been a 30 percent increase in people enrolled in food stamps in Columbia County and across Oregon since August of last year. That’s compared to statewide increases of less than 10 percent per year since 2002. And 72 more people have signed up over the last month, most of them adults of working age. Many of those adults, said Ruddell, have never accessed the program before.
To receive food stamps, applicants need to earn less than 185 percent of the official cutoff for poverty. That works out to about $1,600 for a single person per month or $3,200 for a family of four. The money comes mostly from the federal government; about 10 percent comes from the state. In March, program benefits increased 13 percent as part of the stimulus package.
Reliance on food stamp benefits may increase over the winter as unemployment benefits end for many county residents, Oregon Employment Department Workforce Analyst Shawna Sykes said. Last week, there were 3,728 active job seekers registered through the Oregon Employment Department’s St. Helens office. Ryan was among them. Of those, 3,212 were receiving unemployment benefits. By contrast, the department had just 27 job listings.
Sykes said that her agency has received additional money for work force trainings to help the large pool of prospective employees find work and avoid the end-of-unemployment-benefits crunch.
“Hopefully when they’re done, they’ll be more employable,” Sykes said.
But still, she said, the days ahead are going to be difficult.
What this means for Ryan, who has a little bit of money left over from a seasonal job at Mt. Rainier, is that she might end up relying heavily on her food benefits while taking the time to look for a job as a cook.
Meanwhile, the avid photographer is using her extra time to rise early and snap wildlife and local scenery with her digital Kodak. Once she does find a job, she said, the next step is to look into going to school to become a paramedic. The only question is how long finding that job will take.