Something was very wrong with Jackie Kirks’ food stamp card.
While standing at the checkout line in a cavernous Albertsons grocery store in Long Beach, California, in December, Kirks was told that she didn’t have enough money in her account to pay for food.
“That’s impossible,” she told the cashier.
Kirks, 70, knew that she had saved up a sizable sum in monthly benefits from the federal food assistance program, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Until September, she had been homeless, bouncing between weeklong stays at motels and sleeping in her car. To eat, she would buy food through a state program that permitted adults 60 and older, people with disabilities and homeless people to buy discount meals using their food stamps. The program had cost far less than buying groceries, so most of the SNAP money had accumulated in her account.