It's not the State Unemployment office, but the pandemic dysfunction between California and the federal government costing families in need food and money.
When the pandemic closed schools - some children had to go without the free meals that fed them daily, but the Federal Govt s came-in with a lot of government red tape - there were changes, reviews, and delays. Now 500,000 Pandemic EBT Cards, totaling $182 million are siting unused. It's not known when they were mailed out, but they haven't been used. Largely due to delays in congressional legislation, California started issuing significantly delayed payments for most of the 2020-2021 school year and all of summer 2021, California state auditor Elaine Howle wrote in the report released Thursday.
Unless California officials conduct “additional outreach, some households could also miss out on payments for school year 2020-21, summer 2021, and any future school years,” Howle wrote.Thousands of children from low-income families may have gone hungry as a result. The benefits expire after 365 days, and these unused cards are from the 2019-2020 school year, so some of the money is likely unusable already, according to The Sacramento Bee.