Homeless, elderly and disabled people in Orange County can use food stamp debit cards to buy hot meals

Jan. 31--The long-anticipated Restaurant Meals Program kicks off Thursday, Feb. 1, allowing homeless, elderly and disabled people in Orange County with CalFresh food stamp benefits to buy hot, prepared foods at participating establishments.

The program, promoted by homeless advocates and approved by the county Board of Supervisors in December 2016, gives more than 26,000 eligible CalFresh client households the ability to buy hot meals with a swipe of their Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) cards.

So far, there are eight approved eateries in Anaheim and Santa Ana: seven Subway sandwich shops and one Indian food restaurant.

Arvind Thakori, owner of Rasoi Curry Point in downtown Santa Ana, sees the participation of his family-run business as community outreach. He said he is especially pleased that homeless people with EBT cards -- called the "Golden State Advantage" card in California -- can become patrons starting Thursday.

"At least when they sleep, they will have something in their stomach," said Thakori, who immigrated to the United States from India 40 years ago and moved to Orange County from Illinois in 2012.

He added that his Santa Ana Boulevard restaurant, across the street from the Old Orange County Courthouse and a short walk from The Courtyard homeless shelter down the street, was the first establishment to apply for the program and be approved.

"I was so excited," said a smiling Thakori, who displayed a sign in a corner window saying "EBT Accepted Here."

Another 56 establishments have applied to the program and are at various stages in the approval process, said Molly Nichelson, public information officer for the county's Social Services Agency.

"We expect more to be approved within the next few weeks," Nichelson said, explaining that it is a back-and-forth process between the federal government and the Social Services Agency.

Participating food providers must fit the county's criteria of a "private for-profit establishment where meals are sold and served to customers, including in store delis," according to the Restaurant Meals Program website.

Orange County joins eight other California counties, including Los Angeles and San Diego, that have opted in to the Restaurant Meals Program through the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

At last count, the 10,592 CalFresh recipients who are homeless make up the second-largest group eligible for the program, behind the elderly. Lobbying by homeless advocates and merchants to initiate the program dates back at least six years, but picked up a crucial supporter when Susan Price was hired as the county's director of care coordination in May 2016.

Mohammed Aly, who heads up the Orange County Poverty Alleviation Coalition and was among those who contacted Price, sees the Restaurant Meals Program as a way to help feed the homeless population and to humanize them.

"There is a tendency to think of homeless people as different," Aly said. "By allowing them to come in and interact in a neutral environment and just be treated as normal customers emphasizes their sameness rather than difference."

He added that the start of the Restaurant Meals Program is timely, with a crackdown on serving food to homeless people at the Santa Ana Civic Center and the ongoing displacement of homeless people from the Santa Ana River Trail.

A few Subway franchisees raised concerns about having homeless people frequent their shops, said David Haywood, director of operations for Subway in Orange County, and a longtime proponent of participating in the program.

"They were scared it might bring in those that are very unfortunate, who are having a rough time and don't smell very good," Haywood said. "I was like, no, that's not necessarily how this works, so at least give it a chance."

He told them the program has seen great success at Los Angeles Subway shops, without any issues regarding homeless patrons -- if servers even know their guests are homeless, Haywood said.

"I was like y'all need to hush, because we don't see this up in L.A."

Besides the seven approved Subway locations here -- six in Anaheim and one in Santa Ana -- another 29 are in the application process, said Haywood, who cautioned that the Subway shops won't have the program up and running until probably mid-February because of issues with their payment processing system.

Haywood is eager to get started, convinced the portability of Subway's offerings -- and the notion that a sandwich can hold up better than a hamburger hours later -- makes it an ideal fit. Whether it might help boost sales in struggling franchises remains to be seen, he said, but "anybody that's not willing to at least participate in this is definitely cheating themselves of a great opportunity."

The supervisors chose to initiate a one-year pilot project which focuses on locations in Anaheim and Santa Ana because those cities are Orange County's two major population centers and have large concentrations of homeless people, Nichelson said.

Applications from potential eateries in Santa Ana and Anaheim continue to be sought from places that offer hot, prepared meals and healthy options such as salads and vegetable dishes.

"It's up to the client to choose the meal but the restaurant has to have a healthy option," Nichelson said.

About half of the applicants currently under consideration are Subway sandwich shops.

Participating merchants must pay for the CalFresh EBT card reader that will be used to ring up Restaurant Meals Program purchases. Thakori said his cost for the equipment at Rasoi Curry Point is $75 a month. He's not concerned about recouping the investment at his Santa Ana restaurant, which opened eight months ago as a spin-off of his four-year-old eatery in Tustin.

"I'm not doing this to make money," Thakori said. "This is just to help the community and have the satisfaction that I did something."

For a list of participating restaurants, go to ssa.ocgov.com/calfresh and navigate to CalFresh on the menu and then Restaurant Meals Program, or call Orange County's central social resources clearinghouse at 2-1-1.

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