Just a few years ago, Symone Wilkes would spend a day parked at a Detroit gas station. She said she sold CDs, but it was rarely enough to feed her son Dyson, now 8.
“I was the type – I would stand up at the gas station and be like, ‘Hey, you got any change or anything like that for me to feed my children?’” Wilkes said.
Now, she has a place to call home, a part-time job as a community organizer. Recently, I sat with Dyson, tucked away in a carpeted nook at a public library in west Detroit. Here, Wilkes can keep an eye on her sons while she doubles duties as a full-time single mother.
“I can bring my kids to work, and it's really helpful for me because I really don't have a village as far as babysitting,” she said.
Since she began receiving food stamps from the federal Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program, her sons have not once gone hungry, she said.
Over the past two weeks, federal judges, state officials and the Trump administration have gone back-and-forth on food stamp money. Starting again Monday, Some Michigan SNAP beneficiaries have started to see the money loaded onto their accounts.
But many other states haven’t started those food aid payments yet. The Trump administration wants the U.S. Supreme Court to keep those payments on hold until the federal government reopens. The justices are expected to make a decision today.
Now, she makes $600 a month
After she pays her utility bills and sets aside a little money for the laundromat, Wilkes said she’s left with somewhere between $30 to $40 to support her family.
Even with a supplemental $300 in her grocery budget, Wilkes finds herself stretching dollars to fit the boys’ nutritional needs.
Dyson agrees that he’s a picky eater, but he said "Dylan would eat anything, it don’t matter if it came from the garbage can or something,” Dyson said. “If there’s only grass on this Earth, he will literally eat the grass.”
One thing the boys do agree on is chocolate cereal, because it turns the milk chocolatey.
“I would eat, like, three bowls a day,” Dyson said. “And then when I try to get one more, mommy would be like, ‘No, that's enough.’ So I take a break. And then I eat another - I sometimes sneak another bowl.”
Wilkes said she received housing through Section 8, and soon after, submitted social security cards and birth certificates. She eventually received a Bridge Card, which disburses food stamps. It isn’t a solution, Wilkes said. But she said it goes a long way.
Wilkes’ family is just one of nearly a million and half Michigan households that get SNAP money for food. The vast majority are working families. About half have a family member with a disability.
Stretching money to make the food go farther
Just north of Traverse City, Dana Tuller woke up at 6 a.m. to work a shift at her local church. On this day, she picked up a longer shift than usual because she spent the earlier part of the week working her other job at an advocacy nonprofit. Between those jobs, she’s caring for her four kids at home.
The family received a payment of food stamps on Oct. 1. They received a second payment on Nov. 6.
“I think a lot of people are afraid of the unknown and with the way our government is acting right now, there is a lot of unknown,” Tuller said. “I'm concerned about the future of everything, including health insurance, which is a big thing.”
Tuller already grows vegetables and collects eggs from her flock of chickens. For now, they’re planning to “stretch” the food they have, Tuller said.
“We do a lot of casseroles, so that we can stretch the meat, the protein, because that's the most expensive of it,” Tuller said.
Soon, she plans to start a third job at a warehouse. She said her husband underwent triple bypass surgery in August, which left him unable to work for now. In turn, he hasn’t brought home his typical paycheck of $1000 per week, and the family is now struggling to “make ends meet,” Tuller said.
But her husband’s leave from work meant her family finally qualified for SNAP benefits after years of struggling to keep her family fed.
Over the years, Tuller has compiled a spreadsheet of food pantries in northern Michigan. Receiving SNAP benefits meant she no longer utilized the pantries as a resource, Tuller said. Tuller described this as a “relief” because she no longer had to organize trips to food pantries as far as 40 miles away.
“So if you put your house in a target and you build that target out and you can go to that pantry that's close by once a month, but then the next time you need to go to a pantry, you have to go to one further out,” she explained.
For now, Tuller is doing what she can to leave those resources for others.
“I know there's families that absolutely need that, but that's their only source of food (whereas) we can kind of make things work based off of what I've been able to save and put away,” Tuller said.
In Detroit, Wilkes said she’s planning to start working night shifts at an Amazon Warehouse. She is planning to ask her teenage cousins to babysit Dyson and Dylan those nights, but Wilkes is concerned that she won’t be able to spend much time with the boys. She worried more income could be a double-edged sword.
“So I'm just saying that when (SNAP does) come back on, when the government do come back up and they see that I've been working more, I'm be off of food stamps,” Wilkes said. “So now that's a double whammy for me again.”
For now though, Wilkes said she’s skipped some meals, opting for salt-and-pepper seasoned tomatoes and tea to keep herself satiated.
“(It’s) like a tug of war, going this way, going that way,” Williams said. “I just gotta make sure my kids eat. That's the risk I'm willing to take to make sure they eat.”
