Grocery lifeline

Amber Barretto makes spaghetti for her two boys two or three nights a week. It's cheap, filling and has refrigerator shelf life.

"It's always good the second day," said Barretto, 30, a Larkfield single mother who is one of nearly 35,000 food stamp recipients in Sonoma County.

Barretto, who said she was laid off from a $14-an-hour job at a local tourist attraction in December, gets $330 a month in food credits from the safety net program known as CalFresh in California.

The money runs out 10 days to two weeks into the month, she said, an experience that officials say is "nearly universal" for food stamp recipients who get the equivalent of $1.40 per meal.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP and launched nationwide in 1974, faces an uncertain future as House Republicans, after failing to pass a $20 billion cut in June, two weeks ago proposed a $40 billion cut. Both proposed cuts would be spread over 10 years.

Kim Seamans, director of the Sonoma County Human Services Department's Economic Assistance Division, said the proposed reduction is unprecedented in her 29-year career at the agency.

The latest proposal is aimed primarily at unemployed and underemployed people who work 20 or fewer hours a week, age 18 to 50, who are not raising children, limiting them to three months of SNAP benefits out of every three years.

The standard would apply to as many as 4 million food stamp recipients nationwide, including an estimated 3,266 in Sonoma County.

"I think it's to society's advantage to assist them," Seamans said. "It creates a healthier society and a more productive society."

Critics object to the cost of SNAP, which has swelled to $78 billion today, more than doubling from $33 billion in 2007, when the recession officially began. The program currently serves 47.7 million low-income people, or one in seven Americans.

There are 34,749 food stamp recipients in Sonoma County. That's nearly as many as the population of Rohnert Park and 2? times as many as the 13,596 recipients in 2007.

During that time, the county's unemployment rate climbed from 4.3 percent in 2007 to a peak of 10.5 percent in 2010, and since has dropped to 6.7 percent in June.

"We see an increase when the economy weakens and we find people out of work," Seamans said.

Barretto, who is enrolled in a marketing certificate program at Santa Rosa Junior College, said she is relying on CalFresh to "get by while I can get back on my feet."

Her sons, Lawrence, 10, and Christopher, 8, have hearty appetites that consume her benefits in half a month or less. She shops at Safeway until the balance on her CalFresh electronic benefit transfer card is depleted, then heads to the Redwood Empire Food Bank for free groceries.

About one-fifth of the food bank's patrons receive CalFresh benefits, which last an average of 2.4 weeks, said Gail Atkins, director of programs at the nonprofit Santa Rosa-based food bank.

Atkins and Seamans said many eligible county residents do not apply for CalFresh, including Latinos who are wary of attention from immigration authorities and elders who don't bother because they consider the maximum benefit for a single person — $200 — too low.

Households with gross monthly income up to 130 percent of the federal poverty level — $1,211 for one person, $2,498 for four — are eligible for CalFresh.

Some legal immigrants qualify, as do children born in the United States to undocumented parents, who are ineligible.

John Hamner, 23, said he enrolled in CalFresh in July, a month after being laid off from work at a wine warehouse in Sonoma. He received $219 and thought it would feed him for a month, but his EBT card ran out with a week to go.

"Food is a huge expense," said Hamner, who has no permanent home and buys mostly microwavable food because he doesn't know how to cook.

"I appreciate what they're doing for me," Hamner said, although he noted Thursday that he has lost 10 pounds.

Sheri Holiday, 39, of Santa Rosa said CalFresh money goes further when she has a place to live and cook. She has received $190 to $200 a month from CalFresh for nearly two years.

Going hungry curbs her energy and depresses her, Holiday said, recalling times when she was homeless and without food stamps.

Holiday, who is single and unemployed, said she shops at Safeway, Grocery Outlet and the 99 Cents Only Store and has learned to "make healthier choices" on a limited budget.

In June, the House of Representatives rejected a measure that would have cut $20 billion from food stamps over 10 years and thrown nearly 2 million low-income people, mostly working families and the elderly, off the SNAP rolls.