Jim Guffey: Even people living on green suburban cul

In the suburbs, poverty doesn’t always look like what you expect. It hides behind green lawns, quiet cul-de-sacs, and school buses that roll through neighborhoods where families appear to be doing just fine.

But behind many doors are parents deciding between paying the electric bill or buying groceries. Seniors rationing prescriptions to afford groceries, or cutting back on eating to afford their medicines.

For these neighbors, the recent delay and disruption of federal SNAP benefits didn’t just mean inconvenience. It meant crisis. For some families, the ones you often don’t see, it meant a worsening of a crisis they go through every day.

Isolating poverty

Suburban poverty can be particularly isolating because it is hidden. Many families here live just above the federal poverty line an