NORFOLK, Va. — More than 100,000 senior citizens across Virginia who are eligible to receive SNAP benefits are not taking advantage, according to a recent report from the National Council on Aging.
Nationally, more than 9 million Americans fall under this criteria, where only 30% of eligible adults are enrolled.
Virginia's totals are better than the national average but still low, for comparison: just 37% of eligible SNAP recipients in Virginia are enrolled in those benefits, representing about 109,000 citizens.
In Coastal Virginia, there are more than 15,000 senior citizens that could receive SNAP benefits but do not across the seven cities that make up the Tidewater region. That's without counting some localities like Portsmouth and Suffolk.
Here are the percent enrollments by locality across Hampton Roads:
- Virginia Beach: 32.4%
- Chesapeake: 29.5%
- Norfolk: 35.9%
- Newport News: 47.6%
- Hampton: 37.7%
- Portsmouth: 30.5%
- Suffolk: 51.3%
For many seniors, the effort to enroll isn't worth the small amount of money they could receive.
“Seniors in this area are receiving about a quarter of the benefits families are receiving, for them it’s not worth it to apply because it doesn’t help them. It doesn’t supplement the cost the way it’s intended to," Leah Williams-Rumbley said, of the Foodbank of Southeastern Virginia and the Eastern Shore.
She adds that many seniors do not qualify for SNAP benefits beyond the federal minimum, which may be as low as $23 for some seniors. Williams-Rumbley said that their enrollment in other programs such as Medicaid or Social Security are barriers to them receiving more in food assistance.
“Some seniors get more than the minimum, but not enough do. The issue is that they didn’t index the minimum benefit to inflation, so when cost of food rose, benefits did not," she said.