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Page | 115 7413 PROCESSING PARTICIPANT APPLICATIONS FOR AUTHORIZED RETAILER FACILITIES

The usual processing standards for initial and later eligibility decisions, handling reported changes, and other program actions as well as usual verification and documentation requirements apply to residents in homeless shelters, treatment centers, and shelters for battered women that are operate as authorized retailers.

For eligible residents of drug or alcohol rehabilitation centers, battered women and children shelters and homeless shelters who meet the expedited service regulations, the specialist must ensure benefits are available no later than the seventh calendar day after the application date.

Resident households have the same rights to notices of adverse action, fair hearings, and lost benefits as other households. A notice of adverse action, however, is not required when the drug or alcohol treatment center or homeless shelter loses either:

A. Certification from the state, or B. Its status as an authorized representative because USDA revoked its retail status, prohibiting it from receiving SNAP.

The exemption from the notice of adverse action does not apply to shelters for battered women because the residents participate as individual households, and each household decides how it spends its allotment.

There are a few special processing standards for residents in treatment centers, and shelters for battered women participants. They are as follows:

A. Residents of treatment centers, if otherwise eligible and have no children residing in the center with them, must be certified for program participation as one-person households. If the child(ren) of the resident resides in the treatment center with them, the child(ren) must be certified as household member(s) in the resident's household. DSS certifies non- resident participants under normal procedures.

Specialists determine SNAP eligibility for shelter residents based on their income and resources and the expenses they are responsible for. The amount of shelter expense is determined after deducting a one person allotment amount from the amount of the room and board payment. ACCESS automatically makes this calculation on the GLEX panel, so it is important that the room and board payment is entered on ACCESS.

B. Residents of battered women and children shelters may apply on their own or use the shelter or other person as an authorized representative. DSS determines the eligibility of these applicants as individual households.

These shelter residents may have left a household that includes the person who abused them. The former household may already be certified for SNAP benefits and its certification may be based on a household size that included the woman and children who left. An application from a shelter resident who received SNAP benefits as a member of their former household may be certified as a separate household. The allotment would be based on the new household size.

The Specialist must report the change in household composition of the former household to the office where the former household's case file is located.