Jasmine Kendall had $86 left in her bank account this week.
In October, the 34-year-old single mom was informed that, due to a lack of federal funding, she and her children may no longer qualify for their subsidized housing in Denver. Her car’s gas tank was empty Tuesday, her refrigerator and freezer picked clean.
How does the mother of three feed her hungry family when she also has to work 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. as a registered behavioral therapist caring for kids with autism? Kendall said her life feels like a cruel word problem she’s struggling to solve — and the math is not in her favor.
She locked down a stable, full-time job paying $21 an hour. Housing assistance typically covers a portion of her $3,000 monthly rent. She thought that, this year, she could finally provide her family with a Christmas without the help of charity.
Then the Trump administration announced it would stop funding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, beginning Saturday, due to the U.S. government shutdown — suspending the federal food assistance program for the first time in its history.
SNAP, which costs the federal government about $8 billion a month, serves about one in eight Americans and is a pivotal piece of the nation’s social safety net. More than 600,000 low-income Coloradans, half of whom are children, rely on SNAP benefits for food monthly.
State and local leaders in Colorado, as well as food bank operators, this week scrambled to help meet the already overwhelming demand of people without means to eat.
On Thursday, a state legislative committee approved $10 million in emergency funding to expand grants for food banks and pantries across Colorado to address the food insecurity crisis. Officials in Colorado and other Democratic states filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to unlock emergency federal funds to help tens of millions of Americans keep buying food.
Gov. Jared Polis , Denver Mayor Mike Johnston and other leaders have urged Coloradans to donate to their local food banks. And the operators of those food banks have sounded the alarm about dwindling supplies as panicked residents prepared for an indefinite loss of grocery money.
For Kendall, the monthly $500 in SNAP benefits usually allows her to buy milk, meat, fresh produce — and sometimes even a luxury like juice, she said — for her 14-year-old, 11-year-old and 7-year-old. But those benefits are expected to end this weekend.
“I’m living day to day,” Kendall said. “My life is up in the air.”
Meanwhile, a growing line of families with young children stretched outside a Salvation Army food pantry in Aurora on Wednesday morning.
Salvation Army freezers, usually stocked with meat, sat empty. The food pantry, at 802 Quari Court, served double the number of clients since news about the suspension of SNAP benefits trickled out, said Carl Esquivel, who oversees the Aurora Salvation Army.
“It has been heartbreaking,” Esquivel said. “We try not to turn anybody away, but we have been very close to having to turn people away because we just don’t have enough.”
‘Everyone deserves to be able to eat’
Single mom Rachel Figueroa does not understand how people are bickering about politics while children are left to starve.
The 25-year-old mother of a 4-year-old and a 7-year-old relies on SNAP to make ends meet in her Parker household. Without that $375 per month, Figueroa plans to turn to food banks and the generosity of her family to keep her children fed.
“I don’t have extra money for groceries after I pay my bills,” Figueroa said. “I have my car payment. I have internet. I have our rent and miscellaneous things for my girls. I know the stigma around SNAP is it’s people who are lazy and don’t work and want to benefit off the government. I work. I always work. I work full-time, so without those benefits, we are not in good shape.”
Figueroa is a veterinary technician who has relied on SNAP for five years. The federal assistance affords her a trip to Walmart, where she grabs macaroni and cheese, eggs, milk, bananas, applesauce and a protein. If she can afford a treat, she’ll spring for chocolate milk for her kids.
“Everyone deserves to be able to eat,” Figueroa said. “I honestly have been so busy with work and the kids that I don’t have enough time to read up about politics, but this whole thing has opened my eyes that there are actually people out there who believe you and your kids don’t deserve to eat.”
At the Aurora Salvation Army, staff packed up boxes of whatever food they had on hand to distribute to the people lined up out the door. The food pantry is open 10 a.m. to noon and 1 to 3 p.m. Monday through Thursday. Food donations are accepted 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Thursday.
The only meat in Wednesday’s boxes was a small tube of ground beef. The boxes are intended to last a month, Esquivel said.
With the recent influx of customers, the Salvation Army location this month already had to dip into December’s budget.
“That means we don’t know how our fiscal year will end,” Esquivel said. “What do we do then? Do we close down operations one day a week? Do we get rid of services? These are things we can’t do. We are here to serve people.”
‘This solution is riddled with holes’
Kendall is Native American, a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. The Indigenous woman said she lived on the reservation and knows what it takes to survive. She’s survived on rice and beans before and knows how to make bread from scratch, she said.
“But my kids aren’t used to that,” Kendall said. “I told my son we’re not going to have the luxury of getting things like chips anymore.”
Julia Walker’s brain is inundated with stories like Kendall’s — single mothers, children, seniors, the disabled, veterans and neighbors who are coming to her Arvada food pantry scared and hungry.
Walker is the founder and executive director of nonprofit Hope Connection and Community, created during the pandemic out of a need to feed people and provide basic goods to her community.
In the past couple of weeks, as talk of losing food assistance benefits swirled, Walker said her small operation went from serving 25 families a week to 175. She has had to restrict the food pantry to Arvada residents only to keep up with demand.
“Quadrupling the amount of families we’re serving a week for a whole month is really going to take a toll on us financially and emotionally,” Walker said, noting that her small food bank is not a partner with larger operations like Food Bank of the Rockies and likely won’t see any of the state’s emergency $10 million. “This is a very emotionally taxing position to be in when you have families coming every 30 minutes, crying and scared and trying to find hope.”
The Hope Connection and Community House is located at 5469 Reed St. in Arvada and is seeking non-perishable food item donations such as cereals, pastas, sauces, canned meats, applesauce and canned soups. Donations are being accepted at any time, and cash donations are accepted via the organization’s website.
On Thursday, the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee approved a $10 million request from Polis to boost food banks across the state. Too little for the need, but it was what was available, given the state’s own ongoing budget constraints.
“This solution is riddled with holes,” said Tom Dermody, chief legislative budget and policy analyst for the committee. “It is just as effective as us trying to plow a field with a fork. The scale of this particular emergency vastly outstrips any ability for the state to mitigate it in any truly meaningful way.”
The money will be distributed in three waves over the next month and targeted toward parts of the state with the highest number of SNAP beneficiaries. Because food banks can buy bulk foods at steep discounts, officials hope the money will stretch to the equivalent of $30 million to $50 million.
The government shutdown has continued as the Democratic minority in the U.S. Senate refuses to vote for a Republican budget bill that does not renew the expiring tax credits for people who buy health insurance on the individual marketplace. Democrats warn insurance premiums will shoot up by tens of thousands of dollars per year without the credits.
Republicans say Democrats must first agree to reopen the government before negotiations on the health care subsidies.
Democratic legislators have also argued that the administration is legally required to keep food assistance going as long as it has funding, but Trump’s U.S. Department of Agriculture said it will not use a roughly $5 billion federal contingency fund to keep SNAP running.
“This isn’t something we individually should be having to do right now,” state Rep. Emily Sirota, a Denver Democrat on the Joint Budget Committee, said, noting that she has donated personally to a local charity. “We all pay taxes here, federal taxes. And they should be going to support these programs that we pay taxes to provide for, and that’s not happening right now.”
‘What’s going to happen?’
Even in the most dire of circumstances, Coloradans have rallied around their neighbors.
Families have been dropping off carloads of goods to replenish wiped-out food banks, including at the Aurora Salvation Army, Esquivel said.
For those who want to best help, organizers said monetary donations to the food bank of your choice allow them to purchase more with their mass-quantity buying power, but they also encouraged donations of food, pet food and hygiene supplies.
Local businesses like pasta purveyor Sfoglina have offered free meals and goods to neighbors in need. A Lakewood farmer donated some of his yield. Select Denver recreation centers are providing Saturday meals for youth starting this weekend through the end of the year, no ID or registration required.
More information about how to access food resources in Denver or be a part of a food insecurity solution can be found at denvergov.org/food.
At a Thursday news conference, Mayor Johnston, flanked by City Council members and food bank organizers, encouraged those with means to help during this crisis. The city has already seen about a 20% increase in 211 phone calls from Denver residents seeking help and resources, and the No. 1 question has been about accessing food, city officials said.
City Council member Darrell Watson said he is a product of SNAP benefits, having been raised alongside his six siblings by a single mother. Councilmember Jamie Torres said she stood in food bank lines with her mother as a child.
“What we’re talking about is supporting the families and children who will grow up to be the leaders of this city,” Torres said.
Torres worried that people too busy working to pay attention to the news will be shocked when they go to purchase food for their families and find their benefits drained.
“I’m not really big into politics,” said Kendall, the Denver mother of three. “I have to get up and go to work, but now it’s impacting me. Now I’m paying attention. What’s going to happen? What do I do?”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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