Housing expenditure
The lack of affordable housing in urban areas means that money that would have been spent on food is spent on housing expenses. Housing is generally considered affordable when it costs 30% or less of total household income; rising housing costs have made this ideal difficult to attain.
This is especially true in New York City, where a recent survey shows that more than 28% of city renters are spending more than half their income on rent. Amongst lower income families the percentage is much higher. According to an estimate by the Community Service Society, 65% of New York City families living below the federal poverty line are paying more than half of their income toward rent.
The current eligibility criteria attempt to address this, by including a deduction for "excess shelter costs." This applies only to households that spend more than half of their net income on rent. For the purpose of this calculation, a household's net income is obtained by subtracting certain deductions from their gross (before deductions) income. If the household's total expenditures on rent exceed 50% of that net income, then the net income is further reduced by the amount of rent that exceeds 50% of net income. For 2007, this deduction can be no more than $417, except in households that include an elderly or disabled person.
The adjusted net income, including the deduction for excess shelter costs, is used to determine whether a household is eligible for food stamps.
Income maintenance
The purpose of the Food Stamp Program as laid out in its implementation was to assist low-income households in obtaining adequate and nutritious diets. According to Rossi, “the program rests on the assumption that households with restricted incomes may skimp on food purchases and live on diets that are inadequate in quantity and quality, or, alternatively skimp on other necessities to maintain an adequate diet”. Food stamps, as many like Rossi, MacDonald and Eisinger contend, are used not only for increasing food but also as income maintenance. Income Maintenance basically is the money that household would have spent on food that they no longer have to; since households no longer have to spend this money on food, they can spend it on other things. The FSP is meant solely to increase food purchases, not to act as a tool of income maintenance.
According to various studies shown by Rossi, because of income maintenance only about $0.17-$0.47 more is being spent on food for every food stamp dollar than was spent prior to individuals receiving food stamps.
Nutritional improvement
Another benefit sometimes attributed to the Food Stamp Program is that it makes nutritious food more readily available.
According to the National Food Consumption Survey individuals in food stamp households do not differ significantly from those living in non-recipient households in the nutritional quality of the food eaten. As a result, Rossi argues that this objective is not being met. However, other studies found that that lack of nutritional improvement was a result of selection bias where only those most in need of nutritional supplement took advantage of the program and therefore the nutritional gains of these participants was not seen in the data