In the ‘SNAP Gap,’ a mother struggles to feed her kids and gets some help

By Katie Shepherd   Washington Post Dec 23 2024

A cluster of nails pierced Fallon Shoemaker’s tire as she drove her pickup truck along a busy highway in Maryland — a few short, sharp inches of bad luck that threatened to throw the single mother of three into another financial crisis.

Shoemaker’s mental math immediately kicked in: What could she sacrifice to pay the $135 bill to replace it? Would she need to ask the real estate company that employed her for an advance on her paycheck? Could she afford, on an annual salary of about $65,000, to pay for the tire, make rent and buy enough food for her three children?

For more than a month, she scrimped where she could and drove, very cautiously, on a doughnut tire — typically meant for a short trip to the repair shop — until she saved enough to buy a used permanent tire.

“Luckily, it held,” said Shoemaker, 39.

Such is the life for thousands of people who fall into what poverty experts call “the SNAP Gap,” or “self-sufficiency gap,” a growing segment of the population that earns too much to qualify for the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program but not enough to avoid being thrown into crisis by an unexpected expense, such as a flat tire or a medical emergency.

Shoemaker, who was the sole provider for her kids — ages 5, 14 and 16 — until her ex-husband recently began contributing child support, is among the first participants in a program launched by Montgomery County earlier this year that seeks to help that population.

Through a partnership between the county and the Instacart food delivery company, the MC Groceries Program provides $100 per child to eligible families each month, with the county allocating $1.82 million for the program, which will eventually serve 2,000 families.

Those participants can use the Instacart benefits to buy food and have the groceries delivered to their doorstep, saving them time and transportation costs. The program also expands access to stores that are farther from home, including markets that cater to some of the county’s largest immigrant communities and increase access to foods that families know how to cook and enjoy eating.

So far, the MC Groceries Program has enrolled 498 families in Maryland’s largest county, almost all of whom reported experiencing financial challenges that made them unable to afford food. To qualify for the program, a family of four must bring in more than $39,000 — the cutoff to receive SNAP benefits — and less than $124,800, or 400 percent of the federal poverty level.

Montgomery officials say the need for such assistance is pervasive, even in one of the Washington region’s wealthiest counties, where large mansions and pristine golf courses are a short drive away from neighborhoods where going to a food shelter is a regular routine.

Across the nation, the number of food-insecure households with childrenis rising fast as pandemic-era assistance has dried up. In 2023, 1 in 6 families with kids struggled to afford food at some point, the highest number in nearly a decade.S

Montgomery County officials estimate that kids from families that may struggle to afford enough food make up about 10 percent of the overall population: Roughly 36,000 children live in households that qualify for SNAP, and another 77,000 kids live in families that make too much to qualify for food assistance but not enough to meet all of their basic needs.

Heather Bruskin, director of the county’s Office of Food Systems Resilience, said food pantries and kitchens have been reporting longer lines and increased demand in recent years. The growing need spurred county officials to experiment with new programs to catch families, like the Shoemakers, who may fall through gaps in the existing safety net.

“Layering programs is a key way to really achieve that self-sufficiency of families,” Bruskin said.

Shoemaker recently started a job at an in-home care company that serves people with disabilities, marketing those services to hospitals and other clients for a salary of $85,000 per year. That salary is about to drop, however, to $60,000 with commissions. As it is, she said, she spends just under half of her monthly paycheck on rent for her three-bedroom townhouse in Rockville.

The MC Groceries Program means an extra $300 a month to cover food purchases — enough cushion to cover about half of her grocery budget and absorb the cost of a ruined tire without sending her finances into a tailspin.

“It gives me that tiny, tiny, tiny bit of security,” she said.

Even still, her day-to-day budget balancing is a juggling act. Many days, the kids are hungry, the fridge is empty, and the bank account is low. But Shoemaker has a system.

She sits down at her kitchen table and fires up her laptop. She starts with a budget, a meal plan and a grocery list. Then she opens a browser tab for several nearby stores — Costco, Walmart, Giant — to compare prices. She notes where milk is cheapest this week — $2.42 on a recent week in November — and where a loaf of store-brand white bread is on sale for $1.42. She also considers the healthy choices encouraged by the program on a special online storefront, which highlights fresh fruits and vegetables, fish, eggs, yogurt, cheese and lean meats.

After she chooses the best deals, Instacart does the rest of the work and groceries arrive at her doorstep. When the MC Groceries money is spent, Shoemaker drives to whichever grocery store has the best deals, using her own money to finish her list of needs.

November MC Groceries order

Fallon Shoemaker gets $300 a month through MC Groceries to spend on eligible food items for her family. She scrolls between grocery stores on Instacart in search of bargains to make her budget work. In a recent order, here is what the money got her.A list of program-eligible food items ordered by Fallon Shoemaker in November 2024 through MC Groceries.

The chore is a time-consuming part of an already hectic life spent working to ensure her kids are happy and healthy.

She wakes up around 4:30 a.m. to do laundry, dishes and sweep the floors. Then she wakes her oldest kids and gets herself ready before nudging her 5-year-old, Holden, awake.

She helps him get ready and packs his lunch. Then, it’s time for school drop-off at kindergarten. By 9 a.m., she’s off to work.

Holden needs to be picked up at about 5 p.m., and then it’s time to take her daughter, 14, to volleyball practice. Shoemaker might swing by the grocery store or put in an Instacart order before cooking dinner for the family. And finally, it’s bedtime — she gives Holden a bath and tucks him in at around 9 p.m.

The next day, it’s the same routine, performed all alone.

Married at 22, Shoemaker dropped out of college to be a stay-at-home mother and homemaker while her husband pursued a career as a lawyer. When the marriage ended six years later, she was left without a degree and faced the prospect of finding a job with no prior work experience.

She moved the family from Maryland to Florida and back for jobs that often didn’t make ends meet. At times, she said she depended on friends and family. And she relied on other government programs for food and health care for her kids. The reality left her feeling like an outcast, she said, because she couldn’t afford to go to a restaurant on special occasions or shop in a grocery store without people seeing her bright orange EBT card.

“But it also gave me massive amounts of relief because at the end of the day, I will bear the weight of any shame that may come, whether warranted or not, to guarantee my kids have their needs met,” Shoemaker said.

Tens of thousands of families in Montgomery County are experiencing the same struggle in a region with a median income that surpasses $128,000 and where the median rent is $2,030.

County Executive Marc Elrich, a former public school teacher in the county, said he has seen firsthand the problem of childhood hunger in the county, where students in his class relied on school cafeteria food for nourishment while weekends often meant going without a healthy, cooked meal.

“I had hungry kids in my classroom,” Elrich said. “I had kids whose last hot meal was lunch on Friday and next one was lunch on Monday.”

Hungry kids often have a harder time keeping up with class and homework, Elrich said, and the consequences spill over into their lives as adults. But when low-income families are faced with the choice between food on the table and a roof over their heads, many parents choose tightening belts over losing a home.

Elrich said the MC Groceries aid is part of a bigger push he has championed to make life more affordable for working families who struggle to keep up with rising rents in Maryland’s largest county.

“Over the years I’ve pushed to do things like rent stabilization to make sure people aren’t taking bags of food off their table for families to pay for rent increases,” Elrich said. “For low-income people, that’s a real thing.”

Shoemaker said her mission has always been to find stable financial footing. Years of hard work have almost delivered success. She built up an eclectic résumé with nothing more than a high school diploma and determination. She worked in contracting and biodegradable manufacturing before getting a real estate license. When the pandemic upended her real estate career, Shoemaker picked herself back up and started her current job.

Shoemaker has almost reached a place where she can afford everything her family needs, but the extra help has made her family’s life better. She especially feels that around the holidays, when the pangs of financial stress become even sharper.

“I have three thriving children, and I’ve been doing it on my own,” she said. “And without those things, truly, it would have been a much more desperate picture.”

The extra help also means her family can enjoy the holidays with a little less stress over money.

On a chilly December Sunday, Shoemaker loaded her kids into the car and drove the family to the Christmas Village in Baltimore, an annual tradition for the family because of their German roots. They laughed at each others’ jokes as they waited in line for bratwursts. Shoemaker’s 5-year-old, Holden, threw his arms in the air as he rode a reindeer around the $5 carousel.

Inside the market, Shoemaker sneaked off with Holden so he could pick out one small gift for his older sister. The little boy, tucked inside his winter coat and hat, spotted a booth selling dog-themed socks and carefully selected a bright blue pair decorated with corgis.

“These are sissy’s favorite,” he said, already planning to show her the gift before it was wrapped.

In the kaleidoscope color of the Christmas market, the boy spotted many trinkets he said his sister would like, but his mom told him to put everything else back. The market was a little expensive, she said.

“Let’s just get one gift here,” Shoemaker said, calculating that a local discount store would offer cheaper options for other presents. “We’ll go to Five Below for more.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/12/23/snap-gap-montgomery-county-instacart/