When Dan Raskin arrived at work at 5 a.m. Monday at Manny’s Cafeteria & Deli, a line had already formed outside the Near West Side restaurant for a free meal advertised on social media for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program recipients.
By 10 a.m., two hours after opening, Manny’s had gone through the 300 meals — a sandwich, potato pancake and a drink — it planned to give to people who didn’t receive funds to buy groceries on Nov. 1, the day SNAP funds were initially frozen amid the federal government shutdown.
“I hope that the people who need help can get the help that they need, and there is clearly a need,” said Raskin, the owner of the deli often known for its clout-heavy clientele. “I’m hoping that other restaurants can step [in] and do the same thing.”
Across the Chicago area, restaurants and residents are jumping in to help and provide free meals and pantry staples to people cut off from SNAP benefits this week. On Monday, President Donald Trump’s administration said it would partially fund SNAP benefits for November, following a pair of rulings in federal court on Friday ordering the government to keep the program running during the shutdown.
Still, it remained uncertain Monday when those funds would reach the prepaid cards used to buy groceries. The Illinois Department of Human Services is expecting only half the funds the state typically receives, and it did not yet have a date for when those funds would trickle down to recipients.
Illinois usually receives $350 million in SNAP benefits each month to distribute to nearly 2 million people.
“Their decision to fund reduced benefits will make it significantly more complicated for states to issue the funds, which will delay November SNAP benefits to households by days or weeks,” IDHS said in a statement.
It’s “highly unlikely” that SNAP will be distributed this week, said Poonam Gupta, research associate at the D.C.-based Urban Institute. That’s because some states will have to do computations manually to calculate a 50% cut in benefits, she said.
To distribute SNAP funds, states typically program their processor for how much an individual is supposed to receive weeks before the funds are distributed, Gupta said. The outdated systems don’t operate rapidly.
In the meantime, Chicago community groups like Free Root Operation are springing into action. Eva Maria Lewis, the group’s executive director, said they raised $4,200 in about two days so they could distribute funds by Saturday to 20 mothers to buy groceries. They work with mothers and women impacted by gun violence.
“They were surprised and relieved,” Lewis told WBEZ’s talk show “In the Loop.” “I think it also speaks to the breath of fresh air from the psychological warfare that people went through, having been told that they would not be able to feed their families, to suddenly realizing that they wouldn’t have to live in survival mode at least for another week and half or so.”
The group has continued to raise more funds since then. They will be used to distribute to more mothers and to hand out hot meals Thursday in Bronzeville, Lewis said.
In Albany Park, Kale My Name had served free meals to about 30 people since Friday after offering to provide the meals daily to anyone in need between 3 to 5 p.m., said Tina Youkhana, the vegan restaurant’s manager. Despite the news that some SNAP benefits will go out in November, Youkhana is still disappointed.
“Thanksgiving is coming up … We’re supposed to help each other and be thankful for what we have,” Youkhana said. “Even if we are getting some benefits back, it’s still not enough.”
Evian Rose’s family was among those who stopped by Kale My Name on Monday for a free meal.
The 31-year-old single mother of two girls receives about $600 in SNAP benefits each month, which supplements her income working in home care. But she still frequently stops by food pantries and pop-ups to feed her girls, which sometimes means arriving an hour before an event starts to ensure she gets at the front of a line.
Rose, of Uptown, has been checking the news about SNAP “every single day” since she first heard of the cutoff, she said. Rose still feels overwhelmed even after hearing that some benefits will be restored.
“I think that people have this idea that everybody in the system is lazy, and if we just got a better job, we wouldn’t have to rely on the government to take care of us,” she said. “I work a job. I’m a single mother. And I’m not just worried about me. It’s my community. What about the elderly? What about the kids?”
When Kitty Mortland, of Albany Park, saw on social media about baking bread for SNAP recipients, she started baking loaves of olive oil bread in her kitchen for her own neighbors.
She’s made four loaves so far and planned to make more this week to distribute at “little free pantries” located at the Drake Gardens and Luther Memorial Church of Chicago.
“It feels like a very sort of hopeless situation and one in which I personally feel powerless to do anything about … but baking bread is something tangible that I can do,” Mortland said.
The Greater Chicago Food Depository has seen an increase in volunteers reaching out to help, and shifts for their warehouse are pretty full for the rest of the year, said Camerin Mattson, the communications manager. The number of volunteers tends to increase around this time because of the holidays.
The depository has been providing pantries with additional food, and it plans to offer emergency food box distributions every Saturday this month. For Mattson, the SNAP freeze, though temporary, illustrates the level of need that will be evident once more restrictive rules kick in that were part of this summer’s sweeping tax and policy bill passed by Congress.
“It really points to how dire this will be for a lot of people,” Mattson said.