Food Stamps

Being on food stamps is tough enough, but throw in holidays when the majority of the population goes the whole nine yards on feasts, and times get tougher. But looking at what happened at Georgia recently really rubs salt in the wound.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently reported that a vendor’s computer glitch caused renewal notices for food stamps to not be sent out. This failure for renewal notices meant that thousands of families were left a little short for Thanksgiving, one of the biggest food holidays of the year.

Each month, the state Division of Family and Children Services sends food stamps users a notification to renew for the next month, but thousands of Georgians just didn’t get new balances on their EBT cards for November.

With almost 20% of Georgians on food stamps—a number that’s higher than the national average, the computer glitch adds hurt to an already painful situation. And with the timing of the glitch—Thanksgiving is in late November and supermarkets tend to start holiday sales as well—the error carries extra weight.

While an easy response is to shrug and say that Georgians will just have to make do with a smaller turkey or a couple less sides, it’s not quite as simple as that. Children and pregnant women need a certain amount of nutrition to keep healthy and grow, and a “simple” computer mistake such as this one could have potentially devastating consequences.

Even the rest of food stamps users face problems with the technology glitch, as people who don’t eat well or often enough face an increased risk of diabetes, high blood pressure, and possibly obesity.

Renewal for food stamps only occurs every six months, with users who experienced the glitch able to re-apply, but the DFCS officials said that re-approval can take up to 30 days. However, “more dire” cases will be addressed within seven days, although it’s not clear what constitutes “more dire”, or what the average wait time for everyone else will be.

Further creating an obstacle is that mass renewals tend to clog up the system, such as the thousands who called in to the agency as well as submitted applications online. Of the callers who did get through (with hundreds of thousands left unanswered), it wasn’t atypical for callers to be on hold for hours.

Happy Thanksgiving indeed.