最新杏吧原创

People needing to fill out an application, and have an interview, to obtain food stamps, known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, could no longer go to a local office to see somebody in person. So, they waited on hold at the overwhelmed call center, which had technological problems long before the pandemic.

Officials at the state agency turned to Facebook to try to calm people who were hungry. Hungry and angry Missourians, some of them seeking food aid for the first time, flooded the Facebook page with complaints.

鈥淚鈥檝e been on the phone for 6 days.鈥�

鈥淚 can鈥檛 get through.鈥�

鈥淚 have probably called 200 times.鈥�

Mary Holmes was one of those people. The 最新杏吧原创 resident is 55. Her children are grown. She helps take care of some of her 14 grandchildren. She lives in the Hyde Park neighborhood. Holmes鈥� only source of income is federal disability checks because she has cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Late in 2021, Holmes moved. She filed change of address forms with the various state agencies that provide her services. She knows they went through because she started receiving mail from the state at her new home. But the SNAP program sent mail to an old address. By the time she received it, and tried to get a state official on the phone, they had canceled her federally funded food assistance.

鈥淭hey said I had to reapply,鈥� Holmes told me.

This alone is one of the fundamental problems with how Missouri鈥檚 state government treats its most vulnerable residents. Before the pandemic, the state let more than 100,000 people drop off Medicaid health coverage because of similar snafus, most of them children, disabled people or senior citizens. Thousands of people like Holmes, who clearly qualify for food aid, were dropped even while being approved in other departments of state government.

It鈥檚 a moral choice. The state has failed its poor for decades, and refuses to update antiquated computer systems or hire employees at a decent wage.

Holmes waited on hold for four hours one day. The recorded voice told her there were 692 people in front of her. Day after day she called back and had the same experience.

鈥淚t was really depressing and frustrating.鈥�

She was not alone. Katherine Holley, a lawyer with the nonprofit Legal Services of Eastern Missouri, has been working on the problem for years. 鈥淢y clients are suffering,鈥� Holley said. 鈥淚f you鈥檙e a low-income person trying to navigate these unnavigable systems, you鈥檙e incredibly beaten down.鈥�

This week, Holley and a group of lawyers from the National Center for Law and Economic Justice and the Stinson law firm filed a federal civil rights lawsuit on behalf of Holmes and others like her, alleging that the state of Missouri has systematically failed to serve people who qualify for the federally funded food programs.

鈥淭he SNAP application process in Missouri is built around the use of a dysfunctional, centralized call center. The call center was overloaded and ineffective even before the pandemic, and it has continued to be so even since DSS offices reopened to the public. Wait times are extraordinarily long, and the call center frequently deflects calls,鈥� the lawsuit alleges. 鈥淭housands of Missourians, including the individual Plaintiffs in this action, cannot meaningfully access SNAP as a result of Defendant鈥檚 policies.鈥�

The state has yet to respond to the lawsuit. A spokeswoman for DSS declined to comment.

Holmes did what most people in a similar situation would do, if they had the capability, when her food stamps got dropped: She got help from friends and family, and local food pantries. But that鈥檚 not a sustainable public policy.

Holley said she hopes the lawsuit forces the state to speed up the process by which it is trying to update its antiquated computer systems, and design a system that is effective in getting needed aid, whether it is food or health care, to people who need it.

鈥淪o many low-income Missourians are falling through the cracks,鈥� Holley says. 鈥淚f this was an issue that affected middle-class or affluent people, it would not be endured.鈥�