How Many Families Are in the Us Military
SAN DIEGO — Dozens of people formed a line outside Dewey Uncomplicated School on a recent Monday, pending the arrival of a Feeding San Diego truck that gives out costless groceries every other week.
The vast majority weren't homeless or fifty-fifty newly unemployed. They're the husbands and wives of U.S. war machine service members.
"I knew we wouldn't exist wealthy, simply I idea it would be a lot more than manageable," said Desiree Mieir, a mother of iv whose Navy married man's well-nigh recent deployment lasted about eight months.
Mieir can't beget cablevision and often leaves her home's air workout shut off to go along her utility bill down. "I didn't know I'd accept to effort this hard," she said.
To make ends come across, Mieir and thousands of other armed services families around the country routinely rely on federal food assistance, charities or loans from family. Their struggles are caused by a diverseness of factors: the loftier cost of living in cities like San Diego, difficulty qualifying for federal food assistance, and a transient life that makes it challenging for spouses to build careers.
It'south difficult to quantify the full scope of the problem. The Department of Defense doesn't collect data on how many service members are seeking food assistance. But interviews with dozens of military family members, besides as visits to makeshift food pantries similar the ane at Dewey Elementary, indicate that the number of military machine families struggling to put food on the table is substantial.
Pentagon records obtained by NBC News through a Liberty of Information Human activity asking give just a hint of the trouble. The data shows that during the 2018-19 school twelvemonth, a tertiary of children at DOD-run schools on military machine bases in the United States — more than 6,500 children — were eligible for costless or reduced lunches. At one base of operations — Georgia's Fort Stewart — 65 percent were eligible.
"I think it is a national outrage," Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., a onetime army helicopter airplane pilot, said. "Can you imagine being deployed and you're in the Western farsi Gulf, or you lot're in Republic of iraq right now, and you're worried whether or not your kids are able to have a repast?"
"We should say if you come to the military, your kids are going to get a good education, you're going to get good housing, and your kids are going to be fed," she added.
Duckworth and Rep. Susan Davis, D-Calif., have been working on a provision to the National Defense Dominance Act that would aid heighten the income of some service members whose bones pay is close to or below the poverty line.
On a recent visit to the makeshift nutrient pantry at Dewey Unproblematic, Melissa Carlisle, a mother of ii whose husband serves in the military, picked up a pocketbook of potatoes that she plans to spread out over three different meals and freeze the rest for afterwards.
"They have this military illusion that we're merely rolling in dough, merely we're not," Carlisle said. "...We're merely really good with the little bit of money that we get."
Almost anybody who gets groceries at the Feeding San Diego pantry at Dewey Uncomplicated is war machine, and everything is free, and then Carlisle and other military spouses starting time lining up early to fill their numberless with fresh produce, snacks for the kids, and basic staples such as flour and breadstuff.
At a school where well-nigh 80 percent of students are the children of active-duty military personnel and more than 70 percent are eligible for complimentary and reduced lunches, the biweekly free groceries often brand the difference between struggling to pay the bills or just going hungry.
When she'southward non getting gratuitous nutrient from Feeding San Diego, Carlisle normally shops at the armed services commissary, which is tax-gratis, or at Ralph'southward, a grocery shop in San Diego where purchases of food accrue points she can use on gas. "You don't demand to decide, 'Do I need gas, or do I need food?'"
Simply Carlisle said that even with aid, just getting by is a constant worry.
"I wouldn't say check to check, but pretty darn close. If y'all sneeze difficult, a flat tire goes out, that's it," she said.
The lower-ranked enlisted service members in all branches, those with pay grades from E-ane to E-5, make somewhere between $18,648 and $40,759 in basic pay, depending on their rank and years of service. This doesn't include their allowances for housing and food or special compensation like gainsay pay.
But the housing allowance, which can range widely depending on where a service fellow member lives, is ofttimes enough to push a family out of the eligibility subclass for federal food assistance.
Even and then, 2017 data from an annual Census Bureau survey showed that more than 16,000 agile-duty service members received food stamps, known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
In 2016, the Government Accountability Function published a report recommending that the Defence Section kickoff tracking data on service members' and their families' utilize of nutrient assistance programs such as SNAP and the Special Supplemental Diet Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC, only aid groups and lawmakers question whether the department is collecting meaningful data.
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"They don't fifty-fifty take adequate data almost how many people are impacted," Josh Protas, the vice president of public policy at Mazon: A Jewish Response to Hunger, said. That's a problem, said Protas, whose group has been a leader in researching armed services hunger, because without accurate data on how many families are afflicted, information technology's difficult for policymakers to accost the issue.
The USDA'south Food and Diet Service, which operates federal nutrient assistance programs, told NBC News information technology is collaborating with the Department of Defense "to provide national estimates of the percent of armed services families eligible" for SNAP, but declined to provide further details on that collaboration.
Mazon has been working with lawmakers to draft legislation that would ease the burden on service members in the lower enlisted ranks.
"We've identified that at that place are food pantries on or near well-nigh every armed services base of operations in this country. And there's nothing wrong with going to a food pantry when you lot demand emergency help," Protas said, "but in that location's no reason that those who are serving in the armed forces should have to do that on a routine basis."
"I think for DOD this is a public relations issue," he said. "They would rather it just went away or was dealt with quietly. Unfortunately for the families that are struggling, ignoring the issue won't aid their circumstances."
The undersecretary for personnel and readiness at the Pentagon is the Defense Section's key policy adviser on pay, benefits, recruitment and morale, and also oversees the agency that runs schools on military bases. But the role has been vacant since former Undersecretary Robert Wilkie left to pb the Department of Veterans Diplomacy a yr ago. President Donald Trump has not nominated a successor.
NBC News made multiple requests for an interview with acting Undersecretary for Personnel and Readiness James Stewart but was told he was unavailable. Instead, a Defense Department spokesperson sent an email saying the issue of food insecurity in the military is "minimal," that "military members are very well paid," that at that place is a subsidized grocery shop on each base of operations, and that service members tin can avail themselves of "financial literacy training" the war machine provides.
Mieir told NBC that it's hard to imagine how she could mayhap plan and save anymore than she is already doing. "My married man and I have taken advantage of resource available to us. We have met with financial counselors provided by Armada and Family services," she explained. "We have done that work, and we do communicate."
Duckworth said information technology's unfair to compare armed services families, which are usually single income, to the average U.Southward. family, which is dual income. Often, one spouse is following the other from base to base, she said, "and that spouse who'southward following around tin can't actually grow a career… They're at a disadvantage, and to say, 'Yeah, well, she's staying home, she should just practice better with her budget,' you know, that'south actually insulting."
The Defense Department points to the fact that in addition to their basic salary, service members receive an allowance for housing, and a food assart, called a basic allowance for subsistence (BAS), as office of their compensation. But co-ordinate to a 2018 survey by Bluish Star Families, a group that supports armed services families, the bulk of respondents spent hundreds out of pocket to obtain housing that actually worked for them.
Mieir is a stay-at-home female parent. With iv kids under age 10 and one not in school withal, like many young military families, the Mieirs estimated they would pay more in kid care than they'd brand by having Desiree join the workforce.
Dan Mieir, her husband, works in Naval communications and makes $34,279 in bones pay before taxes. That'due south just under the federal poverty line for a family of 6 in most of the country. To qualify for SNAP nationally, your pay cannot exceed 130 pct of the poverty line, though some states are more generous, like California, where the Mieirs live. The Mieirs would qualify based on California's threshold — only their housing allowance, which counts as income on SNAP applications, pushes them above the limit and makes them ineligible.
Rep. Davis and Sen. Duckworth accept sponsored legislation in the House and Senate that would keep the basic allowance for housing from being counted toward total income on nutrient aid applications, but their bills accept stalled in both chambers.
The food assart, chosen the BAS, that enlisted service members receive is about $360 per month, but that sum is intended for the member lone, not his or her family, so unlike the allowance for housing, information technology does not increase if one has dependents. The money is likewise taken abroad when a service member is deployed.
The BAS is supposed to increase marginally each year to keep up with inflation and changes in food costs, but for the fourth year in a row, the nutrient allowance has gone up by less than 1 percentage.
Former Navy fire controlman Crystal Ellison said her family used her BAS to pay the bills.
For most of the xiii years Ellison spent in the Navy, managing circuitous weapons systems and high-powered radars, she had to rely on loans from her in-laws to feed her family unit. "I constitute it embarrassing. I felt like, yous should exist able to provide for your family and not lean on everyone else. That is what yous are supposed to do equally an developed," she said.
Ellison grew up in a military family unit and dreamed of joining the Navy, but for years, as she worked her way through the lower enlisted ranks, she quietly struggled to feed her family unit.
"It was difficult … especially being a junior crewman, yous don't make a lot of money," Ellison said, "So if you didn't have plenty money saved up, you were definitely in the hurt locker."
The Defense Department said that service members make more than civilians with comparable instruction and experience, but Ellison said leaving the Navy was the start fourth dimension she was financially secure. "The chore I had [in the Navy] made me very marketable. I work for a large semiconductor visitor here in Arizona. That definitely pays a lot more."
Ellison is at present in the individual sector and no longer struggling financially, but she said she wishes more Americans knew nutrient insecurity amidst the lower enlisted ranks of the military was a problem. "Nosotros're giving 100 percent to the country, and the country doesn't give it back."
"We're willing to spend hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars on a fighter jet — which I want our troops to have — to carry them into boxing," Duckworth said. "But if the people that are working on them can't focus on turning the wrenches and maintaining the equipment because they're worried whether or non their kids are hungry, what's the point of having that fighter jet?"
Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/why-are-many-america-s-military-families-going-hungry-n1028886
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