With less than 48 hours left until millions of people are cut off from federal food assistance funding, local counties are bracing for the worst.
The SNAP program, once called food stamps, is set to freeze all funds on Saturday.
An urgent town hall was held Thursday, which involved the leaders of the main food bank for Contra Costa and Solano counties to address a disaster.
“Currently right now in Contra Costa and Solano counties, we are serving over 65,000 households every single month, and the need is continuing to increase,” said Haley Solaris with the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano.
The dual county food bank says donations are coming in, just not in quantities large enough to meet the growing need.
Despite that, they say they’re optimistic they will be able to fill the gaps -even if federal SNAP funding grinds to a halt, as expected, this weekend.
Urban farmers are tiling the ground at a north Richmond produce farm to provide fresh fruits and vegetables to families in need.
Supervisor John Gioia says the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors will soon vote on a plan to use $20 million in emergency funds, which was already earmarked for situations just like this – to provide gift cards to snap beneficiaries who are about to be empty handed.
“Fortunately have a large reserve, with $20 million from our reserves, we know we’re not going to get reimbursed by the federal government to replace the EBT card with a cash card that people can use at their local grocery store,” Gioia said.
The board will consider the plan at its meeting Tuesday morning and, if approved, the cards would likely be distributed at county social service offices.
“The locations right now that we’re thinking about are Richmond, Hercules, Antioch, Concord – so around the county and we’ll see if there will be more,” Gioia said.
More than 64,000 Contra Costa County households currently receive federal SNAP benefits, known as CalFresh in California.
St. Jerome’s Catholic Church, in El Cerrito, distributes food for Saint Vincent DePaul, and one of their leaders discussed how critical the situation is.
“It’s stressful for us right now, because like I was just telling you, we’re getting an increase in demand coming in and people coming in and we’re getting more phone calls, so we’re going to reach out to Safeway and Lucky’s to see if we can get some turkeys donated to us,” said Yolanda Stenmark with the church.
Stenmark says with private donations slipping and demand climbing, she thinks the gift cards come at a perfect time.
“We know Christmas is coming also, so that’s when we normally give out gift cards for Christmas,” Stenmark said.
The county and the food banks of Contra Costa and Solano say they don’t want people to panic because one way or another they will make sure everyone who needs food has access to it.
Source: NBC Bay Area