![]() The Hunger Coalition took its findings to state Assemblymember Chris Ward (D-San Diego). The department also told federal officials that it distributed tool kits to school districts containing educational materials for families and sent reminder postcards to families with children under age 6 who had not yet activated their cards. ![]() The state Department of Social Services said it made several efforts to get families to use their pandemic EBT funds, including making a dedicated website and a helpline families could call to activate cards, request replacements or report lost ones. The state sent billions of dollars to students’ families, but much of it remains unspent and some is going to families who don’t need it Other families may have received the cards but never activated them because they didn’t need the money or didn’t think they qualified for EBT benefits.Ĭards were sent not just to low-income families but also to higher-income families whose children attended schools where all students had access to free meals, regardless of income.įor subscribers Why are so many school families getting money for food in the mail? “One hundred percent of the families we were able to reach through the school who did not activate their cards, when made aware, were absolutely interested in receiving and using these benefits,” she said. The cards came in plain white envelopes that confused some families who mistook them for junk mail.Īnd some families told the Hunger Coalition they did not use the cards because of fear around using public benefits, worrying it might affect their immigration status, Mascia said. Some families also may have received the cards but never opened the envelopes they came in because they didn’t know what they were. But many students had moved amid the instability of the pandemic or were experiencing homelessness, so their addresses may have changed by the time the benefits were mailed during the second half of 2021. The main issue, the coalition found, was that many cards were sent to outdated addresses.Ĭalifornia used students’ home addresses that were on file at their schools at the start of the academic year in 2020 to mail the cards, Mascia said. “They really and truly didn’t know that these cards existed for them,” Mascia said. The Hunger Coalition conducted audits at two local schools where all children qualified for pandemic EBT to investigate why families didn’t use the cards. Many pandemic EBT cards were never activated not because families didn’t need them but because families never got them, Mascia said. Now ‘people are trying to stretch all of their limited resources as much as possible’ This spring, CalFresh allotments dropped dramatically when pandemic-era supplemental benefits ended. Local Hundreds of thousands face a ‘massive benefits cliff.’ San Diego food banks are scrambling to keep up.
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