No one in the United States of America should be without access to healthy food options at any point in their lives. When you’re experiencing homelessness, there are many factors that affect you day in and day out. Today, I'm choosing to highlight and focus on food instability and the limitations that come with food assistance.

The cheapest, most affordable way to eat is by cooking for yourself, but what happens when cooking for yourself isn't an option?!? The alternative is you pack your body full of high sugar content and artificial foods to kill yourself slowly? But let’s say we try to eat healthy. Everything labeled as healthy is listed at higher prices. If eating healthy costs twice as much, that means I'd run out of food stamps, gift cards, or I'd be running thin on food resources, which means I'm only eating half as many meals throughout the month. 50% sustainability isn't sustainable. Consumer prices have gone up 21.4% since February 2020. Prices of groceries have gone up by 6.6% since the beginning of 2023, the 6th highest rate in the entire country, yet the highest allotted SNAP amount for 1 individual 18 or older that qualifies in Massachusetts is $292. On average, we have 30 days in a month. $292 doesn't even break up evenly into $10 a day per person. That’s how much they expect us to live off of! 

I think that we as people hate to see someone deal with an insecurity that should be a basic human right… that IS a basic human right. No child should have to wonder where the next meal is coming from. No one going through housing instability should have to go to sleep hungry then wake up the next day and start that day as hungry as they were yesterday. Do you know how hard it is sitting through a professional meeting regardless of who is presenting when you don't have any form of nourishment? To be of a proper mind, body, and spirit, you need to be able to feed your body the right nutrients and vitamins.

Homeless individuals are robbed of a warm place to sleep and eat. Imagine walking past a warm open buffet full of food and getting told "SNAP doesn't cover this." Who needs a hot meal more than someone who's always looking for warmth in different areas of their life? More than someone whose life refuses to give them anything but the cold shoulder? A warm cup of coffee might have the exact same ingredients, but not mean the same thing to 2 different people. One man grasps the cup and thinks to himself "this reminds me of the warmth I'll have once I get back home tonight." The other man sits and stares at his coffee and thinks "I'm grateful to have received warmth today."

This is where I think BAY-CASH steps in. With an extra $1,200 a month, a youth can have extra $$ to eat as healthy as he or she sees fit. Maybe the young adult could get a gym membership as well to make sure they are taking care of their body too. I know there are various programs that will deliver pre-made meals for as little as $75 a week. I'm not saying this is 100% gonna be the solution or the desired outcome, but it could be; and that's all it needs to be, a chance to relieve a burden from a young adult's shoulders through financial freedom and having the chance to finally be financially flexible. A chance for a young adult to establish peace of mind or stop something from negatively altering their peace of mind. 

BAY-CASH will help alleviate stressors that affect young adults on a day-to-day basis and provide financial flexibility, something which might have never previously been an option. The whole point is to help struggling young adults achieve a piece of mind and push them toward financial freedom. Name me one other program helping bridge the gap between homelessness and sustainability like BAY-CASH. I'll wait.......

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Written by Warren C.

1.  https://www.bankrate.com/banking/federal-reserve/latest-inflation-statistics/

2.  https://www.consumeraffairs.com/finance/cost-of-groceries-by-state.html