The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program delivers food assistance benefits to millions of Americans who struggle to obtain their daily meals. Created in 1964 as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, the program emerged from a recognition that hunger existed even in the world’s wealthiest nation. The Food Stamp Act received bipartisan support from Congress because members understood that human dignity and economic stability depend on each other. The absence of food in people’s stomachs prevents them from working, children from learning and communities from prospering.
The SNAP program enables 42 million Americans to purchase their monthly grocery needs. The program serves a purpose which extends past its role in preventing hunger. The program enables low-income families to sustain their housing needs, medical care and utility payments so they don’t need to decide between food expenses and rent payments. Research evidence demonstrates that SNAP programs decrease food insecurity while enhancing health results and helping children escape poverty. The economic activity in local areas expands by 150% for every dollar invested in SNAP because this money moves through grocery stores, farmers and food suppliers.
The program serves two main groups of recipients who include working families, elderly people, disabled individuals and yes, the homeless population. The program operates as a protective system which prevents short-term problems from developing into permanent disasters. The SNAP program enables people to survive through medical emergencies and job losses because it provides them with essential food assistance.
Perhaps Donald Trump should spend a year homeless. Actually, make that a requirement for any politician proposing cuts to food assistance. Let them navigate the impossible mathematics of surviving on streets where a single meal costs more than a day’s efforts might bring in. Let them feel the gnawing anxiety of not knowing where tomorrow’s food will come from. Let them experience the bone deep exhaustion of never sleeping safely, never being clean, never having a moment of privacy or peace.
The politicians who have never experienced hunger in their lives demonstrate complete ignorance about how SNAP operates. The politicians label SNAP as wasteful government spending because they do not understand that providing food to people who are hungry upholds basic human rights. The politicians claim poverty stems from individual failures, yet they ignore structural problems that include wage stagnation, housing shortages and insufficient employment opportunities.
The conversation about crime and homelessness reveals similar willful blindness. Yes, some people experiencing homelessness commit minor offenses. Sleeping in parks violates ordinances. Public urination happens when there are no bathrooms. Panhandling annoys people. But let’s talk about where major crime actually lives.
Major crime flourishes in corporate boardrooms where executives commit fraud, embezzlement, and wage theft totaling between $426 billion and $1.7 trillion annually. That is not a typo. White collar crime costs this country anywhere from twenty-eight to over one hundred times more than common street crimes like burglary and theft, which total about $15 billion per year. Major crime thrives in spaces where people wear suits and ties, where insider trading and money laundering rarely result in jail time. It occurs in domestic violence that cuts across all economic classes. It happens in drug trafficking operations run by organized networks with substantial resources. Sexual assault perpetrators are far more likely to be known to their victims than random strangers on the street. Mass shootings are overwhelmingly committed by people with homes, often with legal gun access and frequently with histories of domestic violence or extremist ideologies.
The most costly crimes in America stem from activities of people who own homes, maintain bank accounts and hold positions of power.
The Republican Party demonstrates an interesting connection to mental health facilities through their current stance. The present-day Republican Party supports making homeless people with mental health issues or substance abuse problems permanent residents of institutions. Republicans support institutionalizing homeless people because they believe it will offer compassionate treatment to people living on the streets.
The current discussion fails to address an important issue which requires immediate attention. Ronald Reagan established himself as a conservative hero through his efforts to dismantle the mental health system. The Lanterman Petris Short Act which Reagan signed into law as California governor in 1967 made it more difficult to perform involuntary commitments and led to the closure of numerous state psychiatric facilities. The deinstitutionalization movement started before Reagan became president because of new psychiatric treatments, civil rights protections and budget reduction efforts from both parties. The deinstitutionalization process experienced its most rapid growth during his time as president. Through his 1981 presidential action he eliminated most of Jimmy Carter’s Mental Health Systems Act while reducing federal mental health service funding by one third to eliminate psychiatric care support.
The construction of community-based treatment facilities did not receive enough funding to build these facilities. The closure of institutional care facilities together with insufficient community-based services forced thousands of people with severe mental illness to either live on the streets, end up in jails or die. The number of homeless people in the country reached unprecedented levels. The prison system took over as the main psychiatric facility, but it failed to deliver proper care to its patients.
Now, decades later, Republicans want to re-institutionalize people. The party that spent forty years dismantling mental health infrastructure suddenly rediscovered the value of psychiatric care. Except they are not proposing the kind of well funded, voluntary, community-based treatment that actually works. They are talking about sweeps, removals, and involuntary commitment. It sounds less like healthcare and more like making uncomfortable poverty invisible.
This represents a stunning ideological reversal, though one consistent with a deeper pattern. The modern MAGA Republican Party does not operate from coherent principles or policy positions. It operates from grievance, from aesthetics, from whatever Donald Trump said most recently. Reagan and fiscal conservatives cut mental health services because of small government ideology and cost savings. Today’s Republicans want to expand institutional commitment not because they have embraced government solutions but because they want homeless people out of sight.
It is policy making as performance art, reactive rather than thoughtful, designed to appeal to emotions rather than solve problems. The cruelty seems to be the point, dressed up in language about compassion and public safety.
The problem has multiple solutions which prove effective. Strong safety nets that include SNAP, Medicaid, and housing assistance prevent homelessness better than any sweeps or institutions ever could. The solution to homelessness requires people to understand its complexities while dedicating resources to treat vulnerable populations with respect.
But solutions require acknowledging complexity, committing resources, and treating vulnerable people with dignity. That seems beyond the current Republican imagination, trapped as it is in the shallow waters of Trump’s bigotry and the party’s desperate scramble to justify whatever he says next.
Feed people. House people. Treat illness. Pay living wages. These are not radical ideas. They are basic civilization, the kind that used to enjoy bipartisan support before one party decided that cruelty and ignorance were winning strategies.
-Rory Fendsworth – Political Correspondent