Lose your job, lose your children. Great policy ideas from the thoughtful HN crowd, as always.
I've helped a bunch of homeless folks apply to assistance programs (not for school lunches, but for a lot of other aid) and almost universally, applying for aid is extremely difficult. I've walked at least 30 people through the process of applying for housing aid and I'm pretty sure exactly none of them have actually received aid. The only program's I've seen people actually successfully apply for were medicaid and SNAP. It is the norm for it to take over a month to receive medicaid, and it's the norm for it to take over 6 months to receive SNAP. Meanwhile people are dying of medical conditions and starving.
Now add in all the reasons people are in this position in the first place--these people are struggling. It's hard to apply for these programs, and it's harder when everything else in your life is going poorly as well.
And after all that, you might discover that you don't qualify even though you clearly have need. In the OP the author notes that many families with lunch debt were right above the income line for receiving aid.
Some political forces are concerned that people will take advantage of these programs who shouldn't, and others simply don't want these programs to work so that they can have an excuse to cut them, and as a result there are numerous hurdles set up before you can obtain any sort of aid.
There are problems and inefficiencies in the NSLP. Making free lunches available to every child would solve some of them. That's unlikely to happen any time soon though. The current administration has repeatedly threatened and chipped away at the program while also making it harder to provide safe and healthy food to the children who are currently enrolled.
At the rate things are going I wouldn't have so much faith that the program will continue or, if it is to continue, that it wont continue to be made worse and leave an increasing number of children going hungry.
> Yes, I'm familiar with medicaid and some other stuff.
...and you're notably not disagreeing with anything I said about them.
> Your complaint about SNAP ignores foodbanks.
Food banks can safely be ignored. The nearest food bank to where I am currently located is a 20 minute drive, with no public transit that goes there, so you're SOL without a car, and it's run by a church which is extremely conservative (i.e. gay and trans people need to put up with hearing how they're going to hell if they'll be served at all). They're also open 1 day a week.
Food banks are great--but they should not be necessary.
> Medicaid may take months to recieve but it can cover costs incurred since applying retroactively once it is approved.
Do you even know what a poor person is, or do you simply lack all empathy?
Poor people don't get to "incur costs". They simply can't pay for care and then therefore don't receive it. So getting reimbursed for care they didn't receive because they couldn't pay for it, isn't really all that helpful.
Applying for medicaid and SNAP is quite a bit more difficult, especially for a homeless person. But school lunches is really as simple as it could be, excepting just making it free for everyone.