Health

Food Bank Opens Monthly Sign Up Center for Food Stamps At City Hall

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published June 10, 2010 at 3:02 PM PDT

This story was published more than 13 years ago.

Councilwoman Marti Emerald and Mitch Mitchell, spokesman for the San Diego Food Bank, talk during the kickoff of the food stamp project on June 10, 2010.

The San Diego Food Bank set up a food stamp sign-up clinic outside San Diego City Hall Thursday.

The city council and the food bank are working together to get more people signed up for the federally funded program.

City councilmember Marti Emerald has criticized San Diego County for managing the program poorly.

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She says the sign up clinic will help speed up the application process and make it easier to qualify.

"This offers folks an opportunity to just sit down and find out if they qualify," she said, "They get pre-qualified and then start the application process here. Then the food bank will take those applications and get them into the County directly, so that these people don't have to walk them through, and help get them into the system quicker."

A recent study by the Food Research and Action Center found nearly two-thirds of the people eligible for food stamps in San Diego are NOT enrolled. The national non-profit's study found San Diego's food stamp participation rate was the lowest of the nation's 25 largest urban areas.

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.