Capital Region food pantries are bracing for increased demand as the United States Department of Agriculture plans to put federal food assistance benefits on hold.
Half hour after it opened Tuesday, a line of about 10 people formed outside St. Vincent de Paul Food Pantry on Madison Ave in Albany.
Richard Degrijze is the director of the pantry, which he says served 1,472 individuals, or just under 500 families, last month.
But with the USDA announcing over the weekend plans to put Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program funds on hold, Degrijze expects to see a higher volume of people relying on the pantry’s services.
“The volume is definitely going to increase, and its going to increase substantially. Unfortunately, money is very tight,” Degrijze says.
The USDA made a post on their website blaming Senate Democrats for the shutdown, saying they “have now voted 12 times to not fund the food stamp program, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Bottom line, the well has run dry. At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 01.”
Otherwise known as SNAP, the federal program provides food benefits to low-income families to supplement their grocery purchases.
According to the Associated Press, the USDA’s post came after the Trump administration said it would not tap roughly $5 billion in contingency funds to keep the benefits flowing into November.
Regardless of who is to blame, pantries like St. Vincent’s in Albany could now be stretched to capacity.
But Degrijze says the pantry, which receives its food from the Regional Food Bank, will never turn anybody away.
“I believe that not only that our volume of individuals who aren’t working who are on the fringes of society and need some help, but now because federal employees are not getting paid, they need some sustenance also, so I believe that they will eventually be coming to the pantries wherever they are located,” Degrijze said.
The Regional Food Bank’s Chief Advocacy and Engagement Officer, Susan Lintner, also thinks federal workers may soon be lining up at food pantries more frequently.
The Regional Food Bank provides perishables to sites like St. Vincent’s in 23 counties in New York.
Lintner says food providers are already seeing an uptick in demand from federal workers, who have been working without pay because of the government shutdown that began October 1.
“These are people who have never needed the assistance of a food pantry or food bank before, so we are coming up with creative needs to meet that need and our pantries are just continually trying to put these pieces together, making sure that our neighbors have access to the nutritious food they need, but there are limits to what they can do,” Lintner said.
Lintner says if the program is halted on Saturday, the Regional Food Bank and its pantries will have to fill an additional equivalent demand of 36 million pounds of food in November alone to make up for the loss of SNAP. Lintner adds that for every 12 meals that SNAP provides, the Regional Food Bank provides one.
“Every given month, in the 23 counties that the Regional Food Bank serves $59 million in SNAP funding goes into families’ pockets,” Lintner said.
Arielle White, is a market manager with the Schenectady Green Market – a nonprofit that operates a farmers’ market and provides food accessibility services to residents of Schenectady County.
White says the loss of SNAP will affect people’s ability to purchase food at the Green Market.
“They will have less funds to utilize and to purchase items that they use on a day-to-day basis, like their meat, their bread, even their vegetables, that will be limited,” White said.
White says the loss of funding will have economic impacts as well, in that the Schenectady Green Market puts around $7,000 a month back into the pockets of its vendors from purchases made using SNAP and Double Up Food bucks – a separate service run by a national nonprofit that matches SNAP funds used to purchase fruits and vegetables.
As far as preparations go, White says the Green Market is waiting to see what happens.
“There’s nothing really we can do at the market to fill the gap,” White said.
