Food aid sign-ups flooding Mass.

Requests rise 20% in year; applicants may wait weeks

Over the past year, the number of Massachusetts residents receiving food stamps has surged 20 percent, bringing the total to more than 600,000 and taxing the state's ability to serve those in need, welfare officials say.

The state added nearly 100,000 people to the food stamp rolls in 2008, the largest increase since at least 1995 and possibly the largest in Massachusetts history, the state's welfare director said. As many as 20,000 new applications are coming in each month, along with an average of 18,000 requests for extensions.

The crush of applications comes as the state's welfare department has about 25 percent fewer caseworkers and supervisors than at the start of the decade, when the food stamp rolls were less than half what they are today. It has also resulted in a potentially dangerous delay in the processing of applications.

Six months ago, the agency handled the average application in about two weeks; today, it takes closer to a month. Federal law gives states a week to process emergency requests for food aid, which caseworkers say account for a rising percentage of applications. Less-urgent requests for assistance - for those whose income exceeds their rent - must be completed within 30 days.

The backlog may only get worse, because of provisions in the recently passed federal stimulus package that provide $20 billion for food stamps and extend the period for which healthy adults without children are eligible for such assistance. Instead of being limited to collecting food stamps for three months in a three-year period, these adults will now be eligible for food stamps continuously through Sept. 30, 2010.

To qualify, a household of one can have a gross monthly income of $1,127; a household with one child can make up to $1,805 per month. A qualifying household of eight, with children, can have a gross monthly income of $6,169.

"This is a difficult time, and it's obviously very concerning what we're seeing," said Phuoc Cao, director of the food stamps program at the state Department of Transitional Assistance. "We understand the situations people are facing. I just ask that people be a little patient with us. Just like anything else, the wait's going to be a little longer, but we're trying our best."

But some of those applying for food stamps have run out of patience - and food, they say.

After three months of calling and waiting in long lines during multiple trips to the welfare office in Brockton, Joslyn Portier said she's still waiting - and that she now survives on one meal a day. The disabled 54-year-old, who lives alone in Sharon, now relies on food pantries and family, but she has a hard time getting to the former and worries she's burdening the latter.

"I've had no choice but to cut back on eating," Portier said.

Portier, like others who have collected food stamps for years, had a problem recertifying her eligibility, which recipients must do at certain times depending on their situation.

She said the welfare office never received a form she had mailed, and in December she discovered she had been cut off from the $175 a month she had been receiving in food stamps for more than three years. Since then, she said, she has called several times a week and made at least four trips to the Brockton office, where she said the line often extends past the door.

On her most recent trip to the welfare office, she said, her caseworker apologized but said there was nothing she could do. "She just pointed to a recertification box, where there were easily 100 applications," Portier said. "She said I would just have to wait."

Neither Cao nor other state officials would comment on Portier's case, citing confidentiality.

But officials at the welfare office off Massachusetts Avenue in Boston, which processes more food stamp applications than any of the department's other 24 offices around the state, said such stories are increasingly common.

"It can be a bureaucratic nightmare for some people," said Mary Flanigan, assistant director of the Boston office and an agency employee for 32 years. "I hear from advocates all the time that more people are getting lost in the system. Unfortunately, it's no longer uncommon for me to hear from someone who says they're down to one package of Ramen noodles."

She said her office now receives about 1,700 new applications a month - an increase of more than 50 percent from a year ago. The office's 15 supervisors each oversee the distribution of benefits to about 2,800 people, up about a third from six months ago, she said.

And the office's 60 caseworkers now average more than 700 clients each - also up by a third in the last six months. An increasing number of recipients are laid-off professionals.

"We have more pending applications than ever," said Flanigan, noting that each caseworker now averages about 80 pending applications, quadruple the number of a year ago, and more of them are emergency requests. She said emergency food stamps last 30 days and applicants have to reapply when the month ends, so caseworkers often end up having to do twice the work.

Caseworker Kelley Woods said her phone never seems to stop ringing.

"It's hard to keep up," she said, noting it now routinely takes her about a month - the legal time limit - to process an application. "You want to make everyone happy, but everyone's in need . . . So you don't take breaks too often."

To speed up the process, Cao and other department officials said they have streamlined the application, lengthened the time people can collect food stamps to reduce the recertification paperwork, and are training new caseworkers to help carry the load.

But the changes were not visible this week to Maria Sunica, 50, of Hyde Park.

Like Portier, she has been waiting three months for food stamps. She said she survives on handouts from the Red Cross, but now eats just two meals a day, mainly rice and beans.

Waiting in a long line in the lobby of the Boston office, Sunica said she has grown frustrated with the delay.

"They keep telling me to wait, to be patient," said Sunica, a diabetic with kidney problems. "But how long should this take? At some point, this is negligence."

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.