MARTINEZ — After the Trump administration refused to pay for SNAP during the government shutdown — an unprecedented move to cut a half-century-old food assistance program that has helped one in eight people in the U.S. pay for groceries — a federal judge ordered him to do so last week. That kicked off a back and forth that by Friday night had drawn in the Supreme Court, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson pausing a lower-court order to fully fund the program — and leaving payments to 42 million Americans in limbo.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as CalFresh in California, is a critical lifeline that helps 5.5 million low-income residents in this state pay for groceries. But those benefits, which can be up to $785 per month for a family of three, expired Nov. 1 when the Trump administration said it wouldn’t dip into $5 billion in contingency funds to help sustain the program.
What’s lost amid all of the political ping-pong, experts say, is the confidence that the national program will effectively prevent the physical, social and economic pangs caused by hunger.
Dr. Diane Schanzenbach, an economist at Georgetown University who studies policies aimed at improving the lives of children in poverty, said Trump’s decisions have derailed local food systems and SNAP’s overall effectiveness.
“I often think of food as the canary in the coal mine when it comes to families experiencing financial hardship,” Schanzenbach said. This data around food insecurity “is a first indicator for this to spiral into an eviction crisis.”
The federal program paid out over $100 billion last year in nutritional benefits, with each recipient, on average, receiving $188 on their cards on the first of each month.
In the midst of the current fight over SNAP, Contra Costa County on Nov. 10 will begin loading up to $21 million onto debit cards purchased for more than 100,000 local SNAP recipients. They hope this one-time, non-reimbursable payout of “rainy day” funds will combat the ripple effects of the federal shutdown, which prompted officials to declare a state of emergency.
SNAP’s economic reach is wide — the National Grocers Association estimates it supports 388,000 jobs nationwide. Maps published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture list more than 200 locations that accept CalFresh within the 10-mile radius stretching from the Caldecott Tunnel to Walnut Creek, up Interstate 680 to Concord and Martinez. In total, Contra Costa County staff said more than 705 local retailers rely on CalFresh transactions for approximately 8% to 10% of their total sales.
Monica Nino, county administrator and clerk of the board, said theirs is the only “double-digit,” tax-funded investment from any government agency to address the SNAP crisis.
While the plan Contra Costa County approved Nov. 4 is expensive, officials said that the one-time solution is vital to mitigating “extreme peril” caused by food insecurity, which harms a community’s physical, mental, economic and social health.
“Sometimes I think the community feels like they can’t trust government, and that’s what I hear a lot throughout the district — we say something, then we go back on it,” said Supervisor Shanelle Scales-Preston, recalling conversations she’s had with local seniors, immigrants and families already impacted. As the shutdown drags on in Washington, D.C., lunchtime meals at local community hubs are already being cut back in the East Bay, including rural stretches which researchers have found bear heavier burdens from SNAP cuts.
“Unfortunately,” Scales-Preston said, “this is the human cost of what’s happening in our Congress.”
Marla Stuart, the director of Contra Costa’s Employment & Human Services Department, said county officials in San Francisco chipped in $9.1 million to provide support to Cal Fresh recipients, while Napa County also seeded $1 million into their own debit cards — programs that will largely be kept afloat with philanthropic funding.
Alameda County supervisors in late October unanimously approved the distribution of $10 million to local food banks and food assistance programs. In Santa Clara County, where roughly 133,000 residents receive federal food assistance benefits, the county gave $4.5 million to Second Harvest of Silicon Valley as the food bank braced for a surge in demand.
But that form of help doesn’t directly replenish the money that’s now missing from residents’ already tight monthly budgets, said Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia. He thinks Contra Costa County’s system is a more dignified approach, allowing people to “walk down the street to their neighborhood market and continue to shop the way they always shop,” he said. “If we’re not using (these rainy day reserves) for this, then what are they for?”
This kind of food assistance helps lift and keep people out of poverty, said Dr. Lindsey Haynes-Maslow, an associate professor in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Department of Health Policy and Management. Without such aid, she said children are more likely to get sick and miss school, which can create educational gaps that negatively impact students’ earning potential after graduation.
At the federal level, children get the biggest piece of the pie, representing 40% of SNAP enrollees. Older Americans make up another 20% — a rate that continues to grow — while the remaining 40% of funding is doled out to those who are disabled, have children or simply don’t make enough money to afford food costs each month.
Haynes-Maslow describes it as “a roller coaster ride that we need to help people get off.”
“You get back into a cycle,” she said. “You can’t get out of poverty.”