As a child, I often walked the short distance from my familys tenement house in Woonsocket, R.I., to the neighborhood store to buy milk and bread.
I paid with food stamps, which my family needed until we didnt just a few short years later. With four growing boys in the family, we were always running out of milk and bread.
Today, Im the president of a national financing and leasing firm. I worked hard to go from a working poor upbringing to where I am today, but I didnt do it alone. Ive been fortunate to have some people guide and lift me up over the years.
And when we needed them, my family also had food stamps.
Ive reflected on all of this in light of recent rule changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, the federal food assistance program that helps lift millions of Americans out of poverty. Come April, more than 688,000 struggling Americans will be at risk of losing their SNAP benefits, formerly known as food stamps, if they cant meet an onerous work requirement.
The changes affect able-bodied adults under 50 who dont have children or other dependents. Thats 7% of SNAP recipients nationwide; children, the elderly and people with disabilities, who are the vast majority of SNAP participants, arent affected. As of April 1, many of those affected will be limited to three months of food aid over a three-year period unless theyre working, in job training or volunteering for 80 hours a month.
I dont understand this change and not just because were approaching the holidays, a time when people are typically more tenderhearted toward their neighbors in need. Hunger is a year-round problem for millions of families. Reducing food assistance doesnt help address hunger.
TO BE CLEAR, I believe in the dignity of work. My father, a grocery store clerk, instilled in me a belief that anything could be accomplished through hard work. But Ive also seen enough to know that many people experiencing poverty and food insecurity have barriers to work that are difficult to understand unless youve been there.
Challenges such as lack of transportation, insufficient education and undiagnosed health conditions arent just difficult hurdles to clear. In many cases, theyre insurmountable.
I know because Ive been there. Growing up, we bounced from tenement to tenement. I was in second grade when Id run to the store for my family, peeling off food stamps from the booklets they had back in those days. I learned what you could use them for and what you couldnt. For example, I paid in cash, not food stamps, for my dads Winston cigarettes.
Mostly, we used the food stamps to buy the type of food that could sustain us for cheap pasta and cereal and the like. It must have been a hard time for my parents, but they sheltered my brothers and me from that reality. I had no idea that we were that poor.
Eventually, my familys situation improved, at least enough to not need food stamps. My parents qualified for a loan to buy an $18,000 house that my mother still lives in today. Working two newspaper delivery routes, I saved enough money to go study French in Paris for a year. That life-changing experience opened my eyes to what was possible.
When I returned home, my former Little League baseball coach connected me to a bank teller job that paid minimum wage. I worked in the day and went to college at night. Eventually, my superiors at the bank recommended managerial training for me. The rest, as they say, is history.
I worked extremely hard to make it out of poverty, but I was also fortunate to have helpers mentors, teachers, coaches and friends who gave me a boost. Some of my friends and family werent so lucky.
How might my life have turned out if we didnt have food stamps when we needed them?
Earlier this year, a report from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, produced at the behest of Congress, concluded that SNAP improved health outcomes for both children and adults. It also found that work requirements are at least as likely to increase child poverty in the long term as they are to reduce it.
