Texas automatically renews food stamps to ease coronavirus worries

AUSTIN — After a brief period of time in which the Trump administration sought to end automatic renewals of food stamp recipients, Texas has applied and again successfully won federal permission to extend benefits for another six months to those scheduled for renewals this month and next.

The move waives a requirement to supply financial information and undergo an interview for 276,000 Texas households. Before the COVID-19 outbreak, the 1.4 million families and individuals enrolled had to renew every six months.

In another pandemic-related development affecting Texans’ ability to obtain food, Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday announced a three-week extension of Friday’s deadline for low-income families to apply for a one-time credit at grocery stores.

The Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer program, or P-EBT, allows up to 3.6 million Texas families $285 per child to buy food to replace the value of free or discounted school meals that their children lost because of school closures caused by the coronavirus outbreak.

So far, $790 million has been issued to families of more than 2.8 million children, according to a release from Abbott’s office.

“I encourage eligible Texans to apply for these benefits so they can continue to provide food for their families during these challenging times,” he said in a written statement.

Rachel Cooper of the progressive group Every Texan praised Abbott’s move to allow families until Aug. 21 to apply.

“We were very grateful the governor extended the deadline so that families can hear that they’re eligible and still have time to apply,” said Cooper, senior analyst for food policy at the group formerly known as the Center for Public Policy Priorities.

“We think there’s a huge group of kids out there whose families haven’t heard about the program,” she said of P-EBT, a state-federal partnership that puts school meal money on a debit card similar to those issued under the food stamp program.

A key distinction, she said, is that undocumented immigrant schoolchildren who receive free or reduced-price meals at school are eligible for P-EBT, and the one-time benefit doesn’t count toward a “public charge” rule that disadvantages immigrants who apply for legal permanent status if they take government aid.

Although P-EBT was coordinated with the food stamp program — families already on food stamps were given the school meal credit on their Lone Star Cards in late May or June — families not on food stamps get “a slightly different card,” Cooper explained.

Five years of legal residency is required for adults to qualify for food stamps or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, she said. Undocumented immigrants can’t apply.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began in March, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the food stamp or SNAP program, gave states flexibility to suspend evaluating every six months whether an individual or household was still eligible “and instead focus their energies on new applications” caused by widespread layoffs, Cooper said.

On Friday, Abbott and the state Health and Human Services Commission, which administers the federally paid benefits, announced it had received a waiver from the federal department to grant another six months of eligibility to 276,000 households up for renewal in July or August.

Commission spokesman Elliott Sprehe said he did not know how many affected households are in North Texas.

“Households due for renewal in July will have their benefits automatically extended until January 2021 and August renewals are extended until February 2021,” he said. Renewal packets will be sent one month before benefits expire, he said.

In recent weeks, according to Every Texans’ Cooper, the federal department had been rejecting states’ requests for additional waivers of interview requirements and certification of continuing eligibility.

“They were trying to act like ‘Oh, the pandemic is over’ and they were turning states down,” she said. Then about 10 days ago, the Trump administration reversed course, Cooper said. Texas applied again and received another waiver, she said.