Food pantries across the U.S. are breathing a sigh of relief as SNAP benefits are expected to resume following the end of the 43-day federal government shutdown, but organizations say their work addressing increased hunger in communities is far from over.
The federal government reopened Wednesday evening after more than six weeks of uncertainty caused by the shutdown and conflicting court rulings over SNAP benefits. During this period, food pantries scrambled to fill gaps for families who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
“We’re optimistic, now more than ever, that at least partial benefits will hit the SNAP cards soon. But we haven’t seen any relief quite yet,” said Michele Carlisle, executive director of the Amen House in Scott County, Kentucky.
The impact on food pantries has been dramatic. Amen House typically serves about 1,500 people in November, but Carlisle said they approached that figure by November 13.
To meet the increased demand, the pantry implemented a double distribution system this month.
“They’re not just getting one full grocery cart full of food, but at their discretion and when they need it and are ready for it, they can come back for their second. And we’re definitely seeing people come and do that second wave,” Carlisle said.
Despite the government reopening, uncertainty remains about when SNAP recipients will see benefits restored to their cards.
“I still feel like there’s a lot of uncertainty. I’ve even been Googling around today to just find out when exactly our membership will see those EBT dollars on their SNAP cards,” Carlisle said.
By Thursday morning, guest numbers at Amen House were still slightly elevated but closer to normal levels after more than a month of increased demand.
“Hopefully we’re gonna take a breath and December will look more like what we’re used to,” Carlisle said.
Amen House operates with what Carlisle calls a “really bold mission” to end hunger in their community, a goal that became more challenging during the federal shutdown.
“We have a really bold mission. We really think we can end hunger here. So we had to respond and that’s where we landed,” Carlisle said.
If you’d like to learn how to donate or volunteer, click here: AMEN House.
This article was written by Annie Brown for the Scripps News Group in Lexington.
A mother holds her infant as she shops for food at the pantry inside Care Ring on Plymouth Avenue in Charlotte on Thursday.
Melissa Melvin-Rodriguez
mrodriguez@charlotteobserver.com
Kay Soto-Padgett and their wife didn’t even bother waiting to get into the Bountiful Blessings drive-up food pantry on Thursday.
Its line snaked around several streets in a quiet Gastonia neighborhood. The couple spent some time driving around, hoping to find a place to enter the line, but it seemed to have no end in sight. Even if they did find a place in line, Soto-Padgett was sure they’d be waiting for hours.
Food pantries like Bountiful Blessings have helped Soto-Padgett and their wife stretch the couple’s $500 stipend from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program the last few months. But in November, due to the government shutdown, that food stamp money might not be coming. And the couple, who are still recovering from a car accident this summer, are in the red as they rely on their DoorDash income and loans from family to get by.
To see a program that Soto-Padgett has relied on since they were a kid be paused is scary. But to see it used as a negotiating chip by the federal government is angering, they said.
“At the end of the day, they’re sitting over here fighting across the table. ‘You did this.’ ‘No, you did this.’ ‘No, you did this.’ And we’re just like, can we get some food please?”
President Donald Trump’s tax and spending cut bill, which passed in July, slashed $1 trillion for Medicaid and SNAP. It left states like North Carolina with a difficult choice: find a way to front hundreds of millions of dollars for SNAP annually, or cut the program altogether.
The latter was a feared worst case scenario for the state health department, advocates and recipients. But the current government shutdown has whisked concerns about the impacts on life without food stamps into immediate reality.
On Saturday more than 143,000 Mecklenburg County residents and 1.4 million North Carolinians are likely to experience a pause to their SNAP benefits. A federal judge ruled Friday that the Trump administration must pay for SNAP benefits during the shutdown, but it was not immediately clear if or how quickly those benefits would appear.
Food pantries in the Charlotte metro region — some of which have already hit record service numbers — are bracing to help the thousands of people whose EBT cards won’t be loaded with their monthly stipend. State and local leaders have warned for months that nonprofits alone do not have the capacity to fill the gaping hole that will be left by cuts or delays in SNAP. The fallout, leaders say, will be catastrophic.
“To just freeze it all together, that’s never happened in the history of SNAP benefits,” said Tina Postel, CEO of Nourish Up. “I mean, it’s never happened. There have been threats of delays and things of that nature. But you are talking (about) millions of Americans. I mean, the numbers are so big it’s hard to even imagine it.”
People shopped for a week’s worth of groceries at the pantry inside Care Ring on Thursday. Melissa Melvin-Rodriguez mrodriguez@charlotteobserver.com
Increased demand came before SNAP threat
In a tucked away corridor inside Care Ring’s headquarters, mothers with their babies and individuals shopping for their families peruse the shelves of the cozy food pantry. The pantry opened in March as part of Nourish Up’s network of 40 food pantries across Mecklenburg County.
Clients, who get access to the pantry on a referral basis, have their choice of canned goods like Campbell’s Spaghetti & Meatballs, cereal, some produce and essentials — like baby bottles and Similac.
In its seven months, Care Ring’s food pantry has provided food to more than 600 households. And for those who come in without an appointment, staff have emergency food boxes prepared so they don’t leave empty-handed.
In the last few weeks, pantry staff said they’ve seen an increase of walk-ins — many federal workers lacking paychecks during the government shutdown, which has no end in sight. With SNAP experiencing delays, they expect an increase in visitors.
“These next couple of weeks are going to really show what’s going on,” said Jennifer Andrews, Care Ring’s director of communications.
The loss of food stamps doesn’t just cause people to be hungry, but has trickle-down effects that seep into other areas of life, said Tchernavia Montgomery, chief executive officer of Care Ring.
“Food is medicine and by preventing access to food, individuals are going to have negative impacts on chronic diseases. It is going to only inflate other issues like poverty, unemployment, and it’s going to put a strain on our safety net system that is already very fragile,” she said.
Since the government shut down, Nourish Up’s network of food pantries has seen a 20% increase in visits largely from federal workers, Postel said. To prepare for the loss of SNAP, the organization has ordered extra tractor trailer loads of food and appealed to the community to donate to help them purchase more meals.
Last year, Nourish Up hit record numbers feeding 164,000 people — enough to fill Bank of America Stadium twice.
The service is vital for families. But there’s a recognition that what they provide is only a Band-Aid on their clients’ true needs, Andrews said. A referral to Nourish Up’s food pantry program grants a client access to any of their network of pantries for a total of 12 times a calendar year. But outside those 12 visits, families have to figure out other options, Andrews said.
Long before the government shutdown, Postel had warned about the impact that the loss of SNAP would have on the community. For every person her organization feeds, SNAP feeds nine more.
“Even if the entire nonprofit sector as a whole came together, there is not a nonprofit big enough. We do not have a superhero cape big enough to make up the gap of this crisis the federal government has created,” she said.
Political games
This is the first time a government shutdown has disrupted SNAP, a program that dates back to the Great Depression. Some feel the most vulnerable are being used as pieces in a political game.
Carmen Hooker Odom, former secretary of the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services and board member for Care Ring, never thought she’d see the day that SNAP would become vulnerable. It’s hard for her to wrap her mind around it.
“For an administration that prides itself on business acumen, this doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “If you just look at it, from the return on investment and economic boom to families. And if you have any sense of caring about children and children’s nourishment, and I do think they do care about that. So it doesn’t make any sense to me.”
Carmen Odom, a former secretary of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, volunteers by assisting residents in picking up food from the pantry at Care Ring in Charlotte. Melissa Melvin-Rodriguez mrodriguez@charlotteobserver.com
The Trump administration argued that it can not tap into its $5.5 billion contingency fund to cover SNAP benefits in November. “Bottom line, the well has run dry,” reads a message on the U.S Department of Agriculture’s website. Postel called the choice not to tap into these funds “cruelty at its finest.”
“There is $6 billion sitting in that USDA reserve fund. Now that wouldn’t cover all of SNAP benefits for November, but man, it would give people a lifeline,” she said. “And so, their statement that the ‘well has run dry,’ that couldn’t be more untrue. They are locking those funds behind a wall, and they’re just going to watch people suffer.”
Montgomery described her board of directors as a ‘purple board’. Its members represent many sides of the political spectrum, she said.
“Some way, we find a path towards agreement and understanding. And it has not interrupted our work as an organization because we are aligned to a shared mission and vision for this community,” she said. “It would be my dream for our state and federal government to arrive to a similar place of understanding. So that vulnerable individuals in our community and nonprofit organizations that have vowed to support them are not facing some of the detriment that we believe is ahead.”
Watching the news the past couple weeks and seeing debates over SNAP benefits and health care amidst the shutdown has been frustrating, Soto-Padgett said. It’s hard to watch and not feel like a political pawn, they said.
“Those are human rights. Those are human necessities,” they said of health care and food. “If you don’t take care of us health-wise, we could die. If you don’t feed us, we could die. And instead of sitting at the table and looking at each other and going, ‘OK, Americans are hungry, and they’re sick, we need to be able to meet both needs.’ It’s either one or the other and I don’t think that’s fair.”
Briah Lumpkins is the emerging news reporter for the Charlotte Observer. In this role, she finds important and impactful enterprise stories impacting the Charlotte-metro region. Most previously, Briah spent time in Houston, Texas covering underrepresented suburban communities at the Houston Landing. Prior to that, she spent a year at the Charleston Post and Courier for an investigative reporting fellowship through FRONTLINE PBS. When she’s not at work you can find her binge reading on her kindle or at the movie theater watching the latest premieres.
Montgomery County officials have said SNAP benefits could run out if the government shutdown doesn’t end, and that’s putting strain on food pantries, such as Manna Food Center.
Every month, more than 680,000 Marylanders, including 270,000 children, receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits.
As the government shutdown wears on, those benefits, roughly $180 a month, have an expiration date.
“If the shutdown does not end by the end of this month and the Trump Administration does not act to tap into existing contingency funding as required by law, benefits will be paused starting November 1st. This means new SNAP benefits will no longer be deposited on EBT cards for customers to help feed their family,” the Maryland Department of Human Services said in a news release.
In Montgomery County, more than 68,000 residents are SNAP beneficiaries; 29,566 of those recipients are children.
Craig Rice, CEO of Manna Food Center, a nonprofit in Montgomery County that feeds between 5,000 to 6,000 people each month, says without funding for SNAP, “that puts tremendous strain on food assistance providers throughout the state, throughout this nation, that are really struggling and trying to figure things out right now.”
Rice said the government shutdown, coupled with the mass layoffs of federal workers, has prompted an influx of people asking for help.
“One of the saddest things we saw just last Friday were two uniformed service members who came to our doors asking for food assistance,” he said. “Those are the kinds of things that we’ve never seen before.”
Manna Food Center, Rice said, is not intended to be a family’s primary source of food.
“When it comes to SNAP versus food bank benefits, we’re only supposed to be a small part of that equation,” Rice said.
The need for food assistance was already an ongoing issue in Montgomery County, where Manna provides food pantries at more than 60 schools, according to Rice. He said that was the case before the layoffs, federal shutdown and increased grocery prices that many families are seeing.
Rice, who’s served on the Montgomery County Council and as a state delegate in Annapolis, said the economic pressures are the worst he’s seen — even accounting for the economic downturn in 2008.
“We have so many things that are happening all at the same time,” he said.
Citing high grocery prices, job cuts and the impact of tariffs on local businesses, Rice said, “This is cutting across all different sectors, and I think that’s where this time is a little different.”
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