Public assistance, living environments, and food insecurity: A comparative community case study

Food insecurity continues to affect certain seg­ments of the U.S. population at the household and individual levels even when the economy is experi­encing growth. This recognition has led to the design and implementation of food assistance programs, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, targeting food hardship in low-income families. This is in addition to other types of government assistance, such as housing subsidies and public housing, as low-income households and individuals face similar challenges in housing security. Concern over “concentrated poverty” in traditional public housing environment has contributed to a shift toward mixed-income developments, envisaged to improve the living conditions and economic opportunities of public-housing residents. This paper provides a compara­tive assessment of food insecurity in traditional and mixed-income public housing communities. It also examines the effect of nonhousing public assis­tance on food insecurity and the temporal relation­ship between the timing of food hardship and the receipt of assistance. Administering a modified version of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s Household Food Security Module to the majority of residents in the two communities, the researchers found negligible differences in food insecurity between recipients and nonrecipients of government assistance. Nevertheless, government assistance appeared to improve the probability of being food secure as it interacted with living envi­ronments, suggestive of greater beneficial effect in the environment of mixed-income housing. The results show that the number of households experi­encing reduced food intake was lowest in the first two weeks and highest during the fourth week of the month.