Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards has a chance to get it right with disaster food stamps

This time, Gov. John Bel Edwards’ administration and Louisiana’s Department of Children and Family Services needs to get it right.

In contrast with Hurricane Katrina in 2005, state and local governments have performed admirably with rescues, evacuations, and provision of food and shelter in response to catastrophic flooding that has overtaken the Baton Rouge area. The calamity prompted Edwards to petition the federal government for assistance; to date the federal government has assented to make residents of 21 parishes eligible for certain forms of individual assistance.

This help includes Disaster Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits. Households with sufficiently low incomes and assets that do not have other means like insurance to compensate for possessions lost in flooding or whose members cannot work because of high water, may receive a cash grant from the federal government, although the state’s DCFS administers the program. The agency has started soliciting applicants in anticipation of the aid becoming available.

The federal government authorized D-SNAP assistance just some four months ago in northwest Louisiana in response to large-scale flooding there. Then, some 4,000 residences, the majority in Caddo and Bossier parishes, fell victim to flood waters. An unknown but much smaller number of households additionally could have qualified through loss of vehicle or inability to work.

Read more: http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/jeff_sadow/article_0e9ab376-6580-11e6-a2df-2708da1c8cf1.html