Options
for Able-Bodied Adults Without Dependents (ABAWDs) Facing Food Stamp Time Limits
Twenty-one
counties in California have taken a major step forward by using
ABAWD waivers to prevent hunger among adults without children.
Ø Find out if your county is eligible for an ABAWD waiver. Counties that are eligible but not using the waiver include Imperial, Riverside, Los Angeles, Mariposa, San Benito, Santa Cruz, Lake, Colusa, Sutter, Yuba, Butte, Plumas, Shasta, Lassen, and Tehama.
Ø If your county is eligible, encourage them to request the waiver with this sample letter and a step-by-step guide.
Ø If
your county isn't eligible for a waiver, encourage
them to use more 15-percent ABAWD
exemptions
Ø
Learn more about ABAWDs
Background
As
a result of the 1996 welfare reform law, ABAWDs (Able-Bodied Adults Without
Dependents between the ages of 18 and 49) are subject to strict time limits on
their food stamp benefits. If they
aren’t working at least 20 hours a week or participating in workfare, they can
only get food stamps for 3 months out of a 3-year period.
This has created a serious crisis for many hungry adults, and food
stamp participation among ABAWDs has plummeted by almost 70 percent since 1996.
After
imposing these strict time limits, Congress designed a number of protections to
prevent hunger among ABAWDs who live in high unemployment areas or face other
barriers to employment. They include:
Many
ABAWDs in California face an impossible dilemma: they have to work in order to
get food stamps, but they live in places where jobs are not available.
To address this problem, Congress offers waivers to eliminate time limits
in areas with high unemployment. These
waivers are especially critical as more and more adults exhaust their
unemployment benefits and struggle to find jobs in a slow economy.
Currently,
36 counties in California are eligible for ABAWD waivers.
Click here for a printable list of
eligible counties. As of
January 2004, twenty-one counties have waivers in effect, including Humboldt, Kern, Calaveras,
Merced, Monterey, Sierra, Siskiyou, Alpine, Modoc, Mono, Del
Norte, Tuolumne, Mendocino, San Joaquin, Kings,
Tulare, Fresno, Madera, Trinity, Stanislaus, Glenn and San Francisco (which
has a partial-county waiver for neighborhoods with especially high
unemployment). This is an incredible victory on behalf of the hungry adults who are
having trouble finding employment—and losing food stamp benefits—in counties
where there are more job seekers than there are jobs.
At the same time, a number of counties have still not made the right decision on ABAWD waivers. The 15 eligible counties that are not using the waiver include Imperial, Riverside, Los Angeles, Mariposa, San Benito, Santa Cruz, Lake, Colusa, Sutter, Yuba, Butte, Plumas, Shasta, Lassen, and Tehama.
Counties that are eligible for waivers because of high unemployment can obtain a waiver by submitting a formal request to the California Department of Social Services. CDSS will forward these requests to USDA, which will grant a waiver automatically to any county that meets its high-unemployment criteria. Our step-by-step guide on applying for waivers describes this simple process.
Once issued, ABAWD waivers last for one year, and they can be renewed if high unemployment persists in your county. With the waivers, ABAWDs are still subject to the same work requirements as other adults receiving food stamps, but they are no longer cut from food stamp rolls if they can't find a job by the end of three months. This prevents hunger among ABAWDs, and it also saves time and hassle for food stamp caseworkers.
If
your county is on the list of eligible counties but has not made a waiver
request, write or call your county social services department to urge them to
request a waiver. Click here for a sample
letter to write to your county.
Individual
ABAWD exemptions called “15-percent
exemptions” allow all counties in California to protect ABAWDs who face
significant barriers to unemployment. Under
this federal policy, states are allowed to exempt 15 percent of their ABAWD
caseload from time limits on food stamps. These exemptions are especially important for in places that
do not qualify for ABAWD waivers.
California
distributes its ABAWD exemptions to counties based on their ABAWD caseload.
Caseworkers in county food stamp offices use the exemptions to extend
benefits on a month-by-month basis for ABAWDs who do not meet the work
requirement—up to 15 percent of their ABAWD caseload.
Despite
this important opportunity to exempt adults from food stamp time limits,
counties in California have used very few of the exemptions available to them.
During FY 2001, counties in California used a total of only 5,400 out of
397,000 possible exemptions. As of
January 2002, California had almost 500,000 unused months of ABAWD exemptions.
In the
absence of any substantive guidance from the state on how these exemptions
should be used, counties have a responsibility to develop and implement policies
that reflect the needs of their local communities.
For example:
Ø
Santa Cruz
County’s policy considers seasonal unemployment, natural disasters, lay-offs
due to business closure or relocation, and the presence of severe barriers to
employment, such as homelessness, lack of education or transportation, and
substance abuse.
Ø
San Francisco
County has a written policy encouraging caseworkers to use screen their ABAWD
cases carefully and to proactively apply exemptions for ABAWDs facing
homelessness, unemployment and food insecurity.
If
your county is not using exemptions, call or write to your county’s social
services department to urge them to develop a policy that allows them to use the
exemptions more proactively.
Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. has issued a new report with findings on the results of the food stamp time limit for ABAWDs. See this issue brief or the full report.
Studies
show that ABAWDs are an important part of our nation’s workforce—even if
their jobs are seasonal or sensitive to local employment trends.
According to a recent national
study by the Urban Institute, 75 percent of ABAWDs have jobs, and an
additional 10 percent are active job seekers.
Forty percent of ABAWDs are women.
According
to the same study by the Urban Institute, low-income adults without children are
at serious risk of going hungry, which diminishes their chances of success in
the workplace. Almost 40 percent of
ABAWDs worried about or had problems affording food.