SANTA BARBARA AND VENTURA COUNTIES, Calif.—Laurel Alcantar is the Director of Marketing for the Foodbank of Santa Barbara County.
She says food insecurity is going to spike amid the federal government shutdown.
“We have a lot of older adults and they don't really have another option sometimes for getting for getting food,” said Alcantar.
SNAP benefits, known as Cal-Fresh in California, will be put on hold starting November 1st.
“It means people struggling. It means people cutting other things, making really tough choices, like cutting out medicine, cutting out their holidays this year and, you know, being in unfortunately bad living situations because they need to provide for their families,” said Alcantar.
Now local food pantries are bracing for a surge in demand and the worst case scenario.
“If we needed to, what it really would come down to— is unfortunate — would be if we had to give less food to each person,” said Food Share of Ventura County CEO Monica White.
Monica white says Food Share of Ventura County has dealt with several emergencies the past decade.
“We did it with the Thomas fire. We did it with the Woolsey Hill Fire. We did it during COVID. And there was a government shutdown back in 2018. But they frontloaded all of the benefits for SNAP,” said White.
But this is the first time she’s seen what she’s calling a man- made disaster, and she is worried about the additional stress placed on families.
“We have seen every single different type of scenario of what leads somebody to come to a food line. And it's seniors. It is it's children and it's working families. And some of these people that we're serving have up to three jobs,” said White.
Approximately 5.5 million Californians depend on Cal Fresh to help afford their groceries. That includes about 57,000 people in Santa Barbara County, 31,000 in San Luis Obispo County and 78,000 in Ventura County.
It’s a tough pill to swallow, but the Foodbank of Santa Barbara County and Food Share of Ventura County are determined to find a way.
“No one is going to go without food. We just need to figure out how we're going to get it,” said White.
Local food share organizations prepare for “man-made SNAP disaster” News Channel 3-12.
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