Arizona has removed more residents from food assistance programs than other states in the wake of new work requirements approved last year by Congress.
But Yana Kunichoff says millions of dollars that are available to help Arizona families during the summer when free meals at school aren’t offered are not being used.
Kunichoff has reported on this for Arizona Luminaria. She joined The Show to talk about what she found.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: Yana, good morning.
YANA KUNICHOFF: Good morning.
MARK BRODIE: So, we’re talking about SUN Bucks here. What what are SUN Bucks?
YANA KUNICHOFF: Yeah, SUN Bucks, also called Summer EBT, is basically $120 that eligible families can get to use on food when free school meals are not available.
MARK BRODIE: And so these are generally for families who send their kids to school, they maybe get free breakfast and free lunch because of their their income, yeah?
YANA KUNICHOFF: Yeah, exactly. It’s families who get income-based free school meals, families who are homeless, and then there’s some like if they get Medicaid and also have an income meet the income level, um, then they can get this, they can get this money. So it’s families who need a little bit of help in this particularly stretched time.
MARK BRODIE: And you reported that last summer there was more than $17 million that went unused. Why is that?
YANA KUNICHOFF: Yeah, so there’s a policy analyst named David Rubel, who’s been following what actually happens to this Summer EBT money, which states around the country get, and basically families maybe didn’t know how to apply, family didn’t families didn’t know to change their address to get the card, but that meant that of the $77 million available last year, $17 million was not spent. So that’s 22%, and that money doesn’t stay around to be used for other food aid, right? That’s just no longer available for this support.
MARK BRODIE: And is this money that is coming from the federal government?
YANA KUNICHOFF: Yeah, it’s federal there’s federal funds that are distributed through state agencies.
MARK BRODIE: OK. So, you mentioned maybe people who have moved or or didn’t have a card. Like is that sort of those administrative reasons, like a a the main reason why this money didn’t get to the people who needed it?
YANA KUNICHOFF: Yeah, that’s the understanding of folks I’m talking to. I think there’s some similarities to what we’re seeing with this huge drop in SNAP, that you have to sort of be able to follow how the program works, ... know to keep the card from last summer, which maybe some families do or don’t know. Last summer families who were on SNAP also had this money automatically loaded on their cards, so as we’re seeing this huge drop in SNAP, those families might not know that they would have to apply for a different card to get this money. So, there’s sort of these bureaucratic hurdles that are impacting people’s access to the aid.
MARK BRODIE: Obviously we’re sort of toward the end of summer, and most if not all districts are are back in school now, but like are there efforts to try to prevent this from happening next year?
YANA KUNICHOFF: Yeah, so, there’s national and local nonprofits are gathering feedback from families, No Kid Hungry specifically, to be like, “What was your experience with this program?” Also, what families should know is because the money you — can use the money for 122 days after you get it, families who have applied a little or got the money applied a little later in the summer, got their money later in the summer, they could possibly use it up until November. So I think it is worth calling the SUN Bucks hotline, and that number is 1-833-648-4406, just to check.
MARK BRODIE: OK. So, Yana, you mentioned and I referenced also the decline in participants in SNAP overall. Is that having a role here as well in terms of eligibility or anything else?
YANA KUNICHOFF: Yeah, so families who get SNAP are automatically eligible, so that could impact whether kids are eligible here, though there’s obviously other factors for eligibility for Summer EBT. But the big change is whether the money would automatically ... come on someone’s EBT card. That just would have been an easy way for folks who were automatically eligible to get it, that now they might not have available if they’ve lost SNAP benefits — which we know is over 200,000 kids across the state.
MARK BRODIE: Right. So is it safe to say then that it’s potentially anyway easier for families that are already on SNAP to then get these SUN Bucks? It sounds like ... they have the card already in theory at least, and the money is is loaded onto it, as opposed to maybe having to proactively try to figure out how to get access to it?
YANA KUNICHOFF: Yeah, absolutely. I think that that’s the most direct access is families who are already have SNAP benefits, and others either have to apply, if they’ve applied and been accepted, but the state has a wrong address for them, they have to update their address with the Department of Economic Security. So I think it just kind of — there’s multiple steps, and it’s not clear, at least from numbers last year, it seems like hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands of families are not doing that.
MARK BRODIE: Is there any sense of like how these families are making sure that they and their kids have enough to eat without this money?
YANA KUNICHOFF: Yeah, some of what I’ve heard is that food bank access, or people coming to food banks for support, has gone up by quite a bit. So I think just places that have already been kind of filling the gaps in people’s access to basic nutrition are seeing a sharp rise in need.
MARK BRODIE: And you mentioned a sharp rise. I mean, as we’ve talked about with general SNAP cuts, not just people with families, like food food banks are really seeing a a pretty dramatic increase in need, right?
YANA KUNICHOFF: Yeah, no, they they are. The the folks that I talked to, I think said it’s over 20%. I think some of also just — what this is telling me is that there’s a lot of people who were struggling and now there’s even more people in the state who are struggling. You know, $120 for folks on a steady salary might not seem like a lot of money, but I think for a lot of families, it can like really really help them stretch um stretch as needed through the summer.
MARK BRODIE: Sure. All right, that is Yana Kunichoff with Arizona Luminaria. Yana, thank you.
YANA KUNICHOFF: Yeah, thanks for having me.
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