The Office of Hawaiian Affairs approved over $6 million for a program to help Native Hawaiian beneficiaries impacted by the suspension of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps.
About 29% of people in the state who use SNAP are Native Hawaiian. The OHA program will also help federal employees who have missed paychecks due to the government shutdown.
This comes as the state details its own relief program that will help low-income families with children pay for utilities and rent.
OHA Board of Trustees Chair Kai Kahele explained that their program will help to provide direct cash assistance to beneficiaries who don’t qualify for the state’s plan.
“What OHA is attempting to do is fill that gap and especially fill that gap around Native Hawaiian beneficiaries,” he said.
“So if you can imagine, we have a kupuna who lives alone, lives at home, doesn't have dependents, is single, is retired, is collecting Social Security, and also relies on their monthly SNAP benefit. They would not qualify under the governor's current plan, but they would qualify under OHA’s plan. And so that's where we're trying to help.”
To qualify, people have to be in the Hawaiian Registry Program, which can be done online, at an OHA office, or at one of the mobile registry sites, which is currently at the Association of Hawaiian Civic Club Convention in Kona.
More information on how the program will work will be announced in early November.
In the meantime, OHA is looking for agencies to partner with to increase the amount of funds available to people.
“We need to make sure we stretch these funds as much as possible, which is why we're also aggressively trying to get other stakeholders and other partnering organizations to either match OHA’s funds or to match a portion of OHA’s funds,” Kahele said.
“Our $6.1 million can be $12.2 million within a week or two, and we really think that's going to be important to sustain the current program that we're proposing right now.”
