When catastrophe hits the states, nutrition assistance is not far behind. D-SNAP (Disaster Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) is a federal resource that provides access to emergency nutrition aid immediately, no further legislation from Congress required. D-SNAP can quickly provide one to two months’ nutrition assistance to households in need, including those that do not normally receive assistance.
This is not the case in Puerto Rico, where the capped nutrition assistance spending program called NAP does not contemplate emergencies. The funding does not automatically expand when there is additional need because of a disaster. Instead, Congress must pass a law to fund each emergency. And, eventually, Congress does:
- After Puerto Rico was devastated by hurricanes Irma and Maria in September 2017, Congress and the President provided roughly $1.27 billion in additional NAP funding. The funding was allocated in October 2017. After Puerto Rico submitted a plan for its use, the funds were released and made available for use in March 2018.
- In June 2019, Congress provided an additional $600 million to supplement NAP funding.
- Due to COVID-19 and the associated economic disruption beginning in 2020, Congress approved two funding increases for NAP totaling roughly $297 million to help Puerto Rico supplement benefits for needy families.
This means that for the period of 2018 through 2020, Congress gave Puerto Rico $2 billion more than it had initially budgeted for, but the assistance didn’t hit until hunger was already a well established hardship.
How well did this work out?
In 2019, the USDA Office of Inspector General reviewed the USDA Food and Nutrition Services NAP Disaster Funding to help Puerto Rico as a result of Hurricanes Irma and Maria. Their primary findings:
- FNS (USDA Food and Nutrition Service) and ADSEF (Administracion de Desarrollo Socioeconomico de la Familia) were not able to distribute essential disaster nutrition grant funding to survivors in Puerto Rico until six months after the hurricanes.
- Since Puerto Rico did not have authority to implement a disaster Nutrition Assistance Program, FNS and ADSEF were unable to plan before the hurricanes. It took 174 days for all the plans to be developed and approved before any action could be taken. This lack of authority also meant that people who do not usually receive NAP benefits could not receive help on a timely basis.
- Neither FNS nor ADSEF effectively coordinated with other agencies to quickly distribute the disaster grant funding to hurricane survivors.
- ADSEF’s eligibility system did not always accurately determine benefits for households. “Of the 4,805,234 regular benefit issuances between March and September 2018, we found 8,655 overpayments totaling over $1.4 million and 8,907 underpayments totaling over $1.5 million,” the report stated. “In addition, of the 1,343,814 recipients as of August 2018, we found 6,341 recipients who were deceased, which caused us to question over $1.2 million in total monthly benefits.” It appears that poor data management and coding errors were at fault.
The OIG’s solution: “We recommend FNS document and present policy alternatives, including the potential for legislative change, to the Under Secretary to establish a permanent disaster NAP in Puerto Rico, evaluate future opportunities to coordinate with other agencies to deliver disaster nutrition assistance, and direct and monitor ADSEF in correcting its eligibility system errors.”
Implications for the future
The deficiencies of Puerto Rico’s current nutrition assistance system are now front and center as Congress takes up a renewed Farm Bill, which includes the reauthorization of nutrition assistance programs in the U.S. The Senate version of this proposal would resolve the Puerto Rico disaster assistance problem by reinstituting Puerto Rico back into the federal system, from which it was dropped in 1982. D-SNAP would then be accessible to the people of Puerto Rico just as it is to their fellow U.S. citizens in the states. The House version is silent on this proposal. The two chambers will have to come to an agreement on possible Puerto Rico reforms before the bill is signed into law.
