Demand for Food Stamps Puts Bite on Supervisors : Public aid: The program saw an estimated 14,000 people added to its rolls in the past year alone, and the board will be asked to increase funds to administer it.

With Orange County’s ability to distribute food stamps being overwhelmed by the soaring number of residents who qualify for them, the Board of Supervisors will be asked this week to sharply increase money for the program.

If approved, the proposal would cost the county $23,000 for the remainder of this fiscal year, which ends in June. Another $158,000 would be set aside to cover the increased costs during the next two years, bringing the budget for distributing the stamps to $266,000 in 1992.

Those are caps on the cost and officials are hopeful, but not certain, that the county will actually end up spending less.

What seems indisputable, though, is that the number of Orange County residents seeking food stamps will continue to grow. Most of the new recipients are single women, many of them working part time or in minimum-wage jobs and struggling to pay for housing at the same time that they try make ends meet for themselves and their children.

“As housing becomes harder and harder for people to get here, they’re looking for every benefit they can find, and that’s creating quite a marked increase in our food stamp cases,” said Bob Griffith, chief deputy director of the county’s Social Service Agency.

“They’re getting more desperate,” he added. “There’s a stigma attached to food stamps, but when you’re desperate you’ll put up with the comments you get in the grocery line from people standing behind you.”

Agency figures indicate that the county’s food stamp recipients have grown from 23,800 cases in March, 1989 to 29,400 in March, 1990. Cases, which include people who only receive food stamps as well as those also receiving Aid to Families With Dependent Children, usually represent a single mother with at least two children, so that figure suggests that Orange County has at least 14,000 more food stamp recipients than it did last year.

The increase, experts say, reflects a combination of federal government efforts to alert potential recipients that they may qualify for food stamps, as well as to the growing number of people in Orange County who are in need of assistance.

“A lot of the growth in this county is coming from people who are more likely to be less advantaged,” county demographer William F. Gayk said. “Orange County is picking up an awful lot of immigrants and refugees” and the county’s birthrate is far higher for non-whites, many of whom are disadvantaged, than it is for whites.

Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez agreed that the county’s fast-changing population is dramatically reshaping programs such as food stamps.

“Obviously, the demographics of Orange County are changing in a lot of ways, some of them very significant,” he said, adding that he believes the 1990 census will illustrate the depth of the changes during the past decade.

Illegal immigration has played a significant part in the county’s changing profile, but illegal aliens cannot receive food stamps. Under the federal amnesty law, aliens who apply for and receive amnesty become eligible for government assistance after five years, Griffith said.

Other immigrants, such as refugees, are immediately eligible, however.

The food stamps themselves are paid for by the federal government, but a portion of the cost of distributing them falls to the county, which is obligated to participate and has to operate within certain constraints.

The Board of Supervisors will consider the request Tuesday, and some supervisors complain there is little they can do to control the cost of administering the food stamp program.

“We want to have compassion, but it imposes a tremendous fiscal burden on the taxpayers of this county when state and federally mandated programs are not accompanied by full funding,” Vasquez said. “It’s a tremendous irritation.”