The dialogue regarding food stamps and other assistance programs often centers on how to sort the "deserving poor" from those supposedly lazy, entitled slackers known as the "undeserving poor" – and what stringent requirements we can implement to weed out the so-called layabouts.

I should know. I was one of them.

I applied for food stamps in 2011 at age 23, when I encountered difficulty finding work after earning a Master's degree. Young workers graduating that year, as the Economic Policy Institute said in a report at the time, faced a "dire labor market without a safety net".



To say the least, I felt terrible about investing seven years of my life, not to mention the debt incurred, in earning my degrees – and still needing help just to feed myself.



The first step in the food-stamp application process was turning in every imaginable document regarding my identity, housing, assets and personal finances. I was photographed and fingerprinted, which made me feel like everyone thought I was a criminal. After winding my way through the byzantine bureaucracy, including several hours-long appointments during which I obviously couldn't be looking for work, I was finally approved; the monthly allotment worked out to about $5 per day.



To keep receiving food stamp benefits, I had to spend every "work day" at a Human Resources Administration work-search office – my presence there was mandatory from Monday through Friday and from 9am to 5pm. The office was more than an hour from my apartment (that is, when public transportation – which I had to pay for myself – was functioning properly), but arriving even five minutes late earned a strike against my record for "non-compliance".



Two strikes, and I would have been out: the US system automatically revokes all benefits for rule-breakers, who then have to start the application process all over again. It's not a pleasant thing to discover when you're attempting to pay for groceries and your EBT card suddenly no longer works. The only excusable absences are job interviews – which required asking the interviewer for a mortifying letter of verification – or for illness with a doctor's note.

I asked about what would happen if I'd had a cold but couldn't afford to go to a doctor just for a note about it. My caseworker shrugged and said I'd have to go to the ER.



At the work-search office, I received no real "job training". I took standardized tests to prove, on paper, that I could read at an eighth grade level, and attended sessions about how to conduct oneself at a job interview – with a smile, and with confidence! After our daily sessions, we were dismissed to the computer lab to apply for jobs on old and faulty computers, and closely monitored by staff looking over our shoulders to ensure that no one fooled around.



While in the system, I encountered anything but the mythical "welfare queens" using it to support their lifestyles. Instead, there were plenty of hard-working applicants who held poverty-level jobs – such as the fast-food jobs at the heart of recent minimum-wage protests – and wondered why their corporate overlords couldn't just pay them enough to not require food assistance. There were the applicants who'd previously held jobs that they were perfectly content with and did not want to quit – but their hours had been cut and they no longer met full-time "workfare" requirements, so they'd been forced to choose between working and maintaining their eligibility for food stamps. Regardless of their backgrounds, the faces of my fellow New Yorkers in the various offices to which I was shuttled around were etched with frustration and fear.



No one wants to be on welfare.

No one wants to worry about being judged as "wasteful" by pundits and policymakers and the people behind you in line for using your Electronic Benefits Transfer card at the grocery store to buy your prepackaged food, because you're too exhausted from 12 hours on your feet at a retail job and you don't have the time or the energy to cook.

No one wants to fear buying cake mix for a child's birthday celebration, only to receive scornful glares from other shoppers because they aren't buying rice and beans.

No one wants to explain for the fiftieth time that, Yes, my EBT card only works at grocery stores, and only for food – and, no, it can't be used for paper towels or beer.



These days, my life and financial situation are, thankfully, much better. Federal and state assistance helped me get through a uniquely difficult time in my life (as was intended), but my bounce-back to the ranks of the employed and my ability to earn a living wage were both aided by my privileges: I'm young, white, graduate school educated and able-bodied, and I don't have any children. Thanks to those advantages, during my brief period on "welfare", no one acted as if I was doomed to be permanently in need of government assistance – or that I "wanted" to be.

But when welfare fraud is a rare exception and not the rule, that benefit of the doubt should be extended to all – as should the lack of shaming.

Demonization of welfare recipients has shaped the public debate in the US since Ronald Reagan's 1976 presidential campaign, when he used the tale of criminal sociopath Linda Taylor to slam millions of impoverished Americans as fellow "welfare queens". By 1996, welfare changes signed into law by President Bill Clinton added a "workforce" development mandate, requiring each state to certify that recipients meet employment and job-search requirements. Now, politicians like David Brat in Virginia are still asking questions like this: "Are you willing to force someone you know to pay for the benefits for one of your neighbors?"



The reality of meeting workfare requirements, however, is different from the idealized bargain of "will work for food". The bureaucracy today is mind-numbingly difficult to navigate and ultimately serves to block welfare recipients from access to better jobs and educational opportunities.



Annie Hollis, a Baltimore-based social worker who has worked in urban settings for over 10 years, explained why the Clinton-era reforms were flawed and discriminatory from the start. "The problem with workfare is that in the wake of globalization, most of the jobs available to people without postsecondary education are increasingly part-time and minimum wage," she told me.

Policy hasn't caught up to that reality because recipients are only permitted to receive vocational training for a maximum of 12 months. Based on my personal experience working with single mothers leaving domestic violence situations, most jobs that pay a living wage require much more than one year of post-secondary education.

If federal workfare requirements weren't already stringent enough, states such as Florida, Georgia and Maine have pushed to expand the hoops that applicants must jump through to avoid sanctions – including eliminating waivers for job training absences due to illness to forcing recipients to pay for their own unconstitutional drug testing. On the other hand, New York City – yes, "de Blasio's New York", that supposed bastion of nanny state recidivism – recently pushed back against the trend of increased restrictions by loosening those that had worked against recipients' best interests.



Steve Banks, the new commissioner of New York City's Human Rights Administration (which oversaw my "workfare" program), previously worked at the Legal Aid Society to defend welfare recipients denied assistance after being deemed "noncompliant". Since taking office, he's lifted the obligation of food stamp recipients to attend the HRA's job-placement program, which, as it turned out, was actually falsifying its records to hide its failure to actually place the needy into jobs.



Writers such as Slate's Reihan Salam have gasped in horror at the changes, and the New York Post still insists that reducing bureaucratic hurdles will lead to able-bodied adults lazily watching TV all day instead of applying for jobs. Perhaps they should save their moral panic for this: in one of the richest cities in the world, 32% of residents have had difficulty affording needed food.

Nevertheless, to borrow a phrase from Diana Spatz – the president of Lifetime Networks who wrote in 2011 about her rise from the bottom and the needless obstacles the Clinton-era changes brought to single mothers seeking education – it's the end of welfare as I knew it.

Unfortunately, the US will probably never return to the days of the Reverend Jesse Jackson guest-starring on Sesame Street to reassure poor children on welfare that they are still special. Despite endless studies on inequality and the legions of self-determined low-income workers demanding living wages, the cultural damage is done and the stigma shall remain.



In the meantime, it's a relief to know that under progressive policy reforms, welfare recipients will no longer face one more circle of hell just to get a bite to eat.