Low-Income Riot Victims Urged to Seek Emergency Food Stamps

A coalition of Los Angeles politicians and anti-hunger groups on Thursday urged low-income residents who suffered losses during the riots to apply for emergency food stamps, noting that fewer than 6,000 people have done so.

The application deadline is July 15 and up to 150,000 people throughout the region may be eligible.

Officials said they were particularly concerned about thousands of immigrants who are eligible but have not applied.

“Immigrants traditionally don’t apply for such things,” Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Hernandez said. “But this is an emergency and people are hungry.”

Immigrants who qualified for legal residency in the United States under the 1986 amnesty law or the 1990 Temporary Protected Status Law for Salvadorans are eligible under the emergency program. Immigrants who cannot prove legal residency are not eligible for emergency food stamps, Hernandez and others at a City Hall news conference said.

Eligibility for the emergency program is limited to residents who lost jobs or businesses during the riots, those who lost food because of power outages and people who suffered other losses because of the riots.

The emergency program, administered for the federal government by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services, got off to a slow start after the U.S. Agriculture Department initially refused to issue food stamps on an emergency basis after the riots.

Lawyers for the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, the ACLU Foundation of Southern California and the Western Center on Law and Poverty filed suit in federal court contending that losses suffered by Los Angeles riot victims were comparable to those suffered by victims of Hurricane Hugo or the Loma Prieta earthquake, both in 1989.

Victims in those two disasters received prompt emergency assistance from federal authorities, the lawyers argued.

Federal officials agreed to extend emergency aid to riot victims after they initially decided that existing food programs were adequate to deal with the riots’ aftermath.

The initial reluctance to issue emergency food stamps had a severe impact on people such as 76-year-old William Jones, who has lived with his wife in the same house in the Willowbrook area of South Los Angeles since 1954.

Jones, a retired aerospace worker, was without electricity for five days as a result of the unrest. Jones said he lost about $250 worth of food in two freezers.

He was rejected twice for food stamps by federal officials before turning to Legal Aid for help. Just four days ago, after nearly two weeks of futile efforts, he received $110 in food stamps, the maximum allowed under the emergency program.

“I was running out of food,” he said. “I don’t think I would have gotten the food stamps if I hadn’t called Legal Aid.”

Berta Saavedra, an official with the Interfaith Hunger Coalition in Los Angeles, said volunteers would be at two branches of the county Department of Social Services next week to help eligible people fill out applications for emergency food stamps.

Next Monday, applications may be made at the Florence area office at 1740 E. Gage Ave. between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. On Thursday, applications will be taken during the same hours at the Watts office, 10728 S. Central Ave.

Applications may be made at any of the 29 Department of Social Services offices throughout the county.