After a lifetime of work, many seniors are living on fixed incomes that often force them to choose between paying for healthcare or prescriptions and buying groceries. Because they often need medication to stay healthy, many elderly Americans forgo food. Additionally, complicating factors, such as limited mobility and dependence on outside assistance, make seniors particularly vulnerable to hunger.
Nearly 200,000 Missourians, aged 60 or older, utilized a pantry or agency served by a Missouri food bank last year. Many of these seniors have come to rely on these pantry visits as a regular rather than an emergency source of food.
Feeding Missouri food banks go above and beyond distributing food to seniors, they also work to reduce the gaps in nutrition services for low-income, older Americans by connecting them to two key Federal food assistance programs. Those programs are the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps) and the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP).
SNAP is the nation’s largest nutrition program, providing over 44 million participants with monthly food assistance benefits. The participation rate of seniors in SNAP is just 24 percent. Of all SNAP benefit recipients, only 8 percent are age 60 or older. However, many more low-income seniors are eligible for SNAP but not enrolled in the program. Only about one-third of eligible seniors participate in the program. Because SNAP serves all who are eligible and apply, this is a significant, underutilized source of nutrition assistance for seniors. The reasons seniors aren’t applying for their benefits even when they are eligible range from lack of knowledge about the program requirements, difficulty understanding forms, stigma associated with receiving assistance, etc. SNAP outreach and providing application assistance to seniors are important roles that food banks play to help specifically address senior hunger. If you or someone you know is a senior who needs help applying for SNAP or has questions about the program, call the Missouri SNAP hotline at 1-877-653-9522.
CSFP is a commodity-based program, providing nutritionally-balanced food packages to more than 604,000 low-income people each month. Nearly 97 percent of those benefiting from this program are seniors with incomes of less than 130 percent of the federal poverty line (approximately $14,000 for a senior living alone). Unlike the SNAP program, which is an entitlement program and serves all who are eligible, CSFP must be funded each year through the annual Federal appropriations process and can only serve as many people as funding allows.
With widespread community support, the six Missouri food banks are working to ensure vulnerable seniors are provided with much-needed nutritious food. But charity alone cannot solve senior hunger in our community. In addition to generous private donations, we rely on federal programs, like the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP), to supply nutritious monthly food packages to low-income seniors, and help connect seniors to other programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), to ensure they have groceries to last them through the month.
As our elected officials make decisions about state and federal budgets, it’s important that our community know that many of our seniors in Missouri rely on both federal nutrition programs and food banks to get by each month.
Together, we can provide hope to Americans in need.
