AUSTIN — Despite rising food prices and stagnant wages, Houston families are leaving a large portion of federal food assistance on the table.

Half of eligible Houstonians are not receiving food stamps, costing the local economy $164 million in lost spending, according to estimates in a new report by an anti-hunger group.

That put Houston's food stamp participation rate near the bottom of the 24 urban areas surveyed by the Food Research and Action Center. San Antonio, the only other Texas city surveyed, has an estimated 72 percent participation rate.

"When millions more Americans are facing unemployment, shortened hours of work or reduced wages, failure to get food stamps to needy families is deepening the harm to them, hurting urban economies and worsening the recession," said Jim Weill, president of the center, which advocates policies to end domestic hunger and poor nutrition.

The average access rate was 68 percent. Detroit was the top-performer, with a 98 percent access rate. Denver's 42 percent participation rate was the lowest, followed by Los Angeles' 50 percent and Houston's 51 percent.

Food Bank President Brian Greene said he was not surprised by the findings.

"Harris County has been low for years and is still way under the national average," he said. "We have a lot of obstacles."

The city's rapidly growing immigrant population faces language barriers and tends to be disconnected from community resources, he said.

364,000 recipients
The low rate of food stamp participation comes despite a tremendous 62 percent increase in the number of Harris County beneficiaries from May 2003 to May 2008. National growth during those five years was 32 percent.

In October, 364,000 Harris County residents were among the state's 2.6 million food stamp recipients.

State Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, said the economy misses out when people don't get the help they need.

"It goes through grocery stores and back to our agricultural producers," he said.

The Houston Food Bank has just two state-funded outreach workers helping to enroll families for food stamps, compared to the San Antonio Food Bank's 18 outreach workers.

Executive Director Eric Cooper of the the San Antonio Food Bank said the increased effort is responsible for a remarkable turnaround since 2001, when a study estimated that only 33 percent of eligible San Antonio families were getting help.

"When you look at why San Antonio is leading the state, it's directly related to the strategic partnership with our local (benefits) offices and the investment that we've made in outreach," Cooper said.

Houston needs to extend office hours and offer online and telephone enrollment to help increase participation, said Kathy Barton, a spokeswoman for the city's Health and Human Services Department, which helps people apply for food stamps.

"We'd like to see the state be more aggressive and see them reduce barriers to enrollment," she said.

Overburdened with the growing number of applications, Texas' benefits offices are failing to meet federal expectations that 95 percent of food stamp applications be completed in 30 days. The state had improved to 90 percent compliance in September but fell to 61 percent in October due to a surge in applications for emergency food stamps after Hurricane Ike.

Food stamps are federally funded, but Texas pays for half of administrative costs — about $181 million this fiscal year. The Texas Health and Human Services Commission wants funding to hire 824 more eligibility staff, in addition to the 7,889 positions currently budgeted.

"If the Legislature is serious about getting our eligibility system back on track, they will give HHSC more than what they are asking for," said Celia Hagert, a senior policy analyst for the Center for Public Policy Priorities.

Stigma and misinformation about food stamps — recently renamed the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — also hinder the program.

Detailed application
Many low-income working families aren't aware that benefits are available and legal immigrants are afraid to apply, experts said.

And while the acronym for the program is now SNAP, applying for benefits is anything but. Texas uses a 12-page application that requires details about employment, bank accounts, life insurance policies and burial plots.

The state is redesigning the application to make it easier to fill out and has budgeted $6 million to spread the word about food stamps and other services through community groups.

"The key is to reach families through the people and places that they turn to for help — food banks, churches and other community organizations," commission spokeswoman Stephanie Goodman said.