A child eats breakfast at an elementary school in San Diego, June 14, 2024. Food assistance to pay for groceries is still available to many low-income California families who receive summer food aid for their kids. (CalMatters/Gastaldo)
- Federal program funds low-income families whose children are eligible for free or reduced-price school lunches or who receive MediCal.
- Nearly $106 million in SUN Bucks benefits are still unspent, but eligible families have just a few weeks left to tap the money.
- Families must spend the funds within 122 days of receiving them, or they expire and return to the federal government.
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Food assistance to pay for groceries is still available to many low-income California families who receive summer food aid for their kids.
Nearly $106 million of the federally funded SUN Bucks benefits are still unspent — but eligible families have just a few weeks left to tap the money, according to the California Department of Social Services. The benefits are only available to households that have already gotten the SUN Bucks in the mail this summer.
Families must spend the funds within 122 days of receiving them, or they expire and return to the federal government.
The program works like this: Every summer, California sends eligible low-income families electronic benefits (EBT) cards preloaded with $120 in food benefits per child. The state provides two meals a day to all public K-12 students, and the cards are meant to help families afford groceries for their kids throughout the summer when school is out.
This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.
SUN Bucks for 3.8 Million Children
Families receiving SUN Bucks cards have kids who are eligible for a free or reduced school lunch or who are enrolled in other assistance programs such as Medi-Cal or CalFresh. This year the state automatically mailed cards to the families of 3.8 million children.
Though the state tries to remind families about the benefits through text messages and other nudges, households sometimes still leave a lot of money on the table. Last year, nearly a quarter of the summer food benefits — $118 million — went unspent, according to records from the Department of Social Services obtained by New York-based public policy consultant David Rubel and shared with CalMatters. And nearly a fifth of cards mailed out last year were never activated by the recipients.
Many of the cards this year haven’t expired yet because California mailed SUN Bucks to families in different batches throughout the summer. If a family got a card in mid-June, they may only have a couple of weeks left to use the benefits. The last cards were mailed out in late July and expire in mid-November.
If a family receives both SUN Bucks and the traditional CalFresh food assistance program, Social Services spokesperson Jason Montiel says the state recommends they use the SUN Bucks first because they expire soon.
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
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