In recent weeks, as the longest government shutdown in American history has delayed Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program funds, the line at Boulevard Place Food Pantry in Indianapolis has grown longer. On Thursday, it stretched down the block and around the side of the building.
“We’ve never seen it like this,” said Matthew Casbarro, 58, who does not work because he is disabled.
It is the first time in the several years that Casbarro has been coming to the bank that he has had to wait in line.
Tonia Miller, 54, said she too relies on the food pantry because she is disabled. Getting through the line these days “takes hours,” she said, and the pantry now runs out of milk and other essentials.
The shutdown, now in its second month, has furloughed hundreds of thousands of federal workers, suspending paychecks, snarling airport security lines and shuttering entire government agencies.
It has had an especially devastating impact on the 42 million Americans who rely on food security programs.
A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to immediately release billions of dollars from a U.S. Department of Agriculture contingency fund to pay for November SNAP benefits. The Justice Department said it would appeal the ruling.
Even if the administration complies, it would take days — and perhaps more than a week — to move the money from Washington to the states, and then from the states to Electronic Benefit Transfer cards that people use to access their benefits.
In the meantime, it is food pantries that are acting as the bulwark against hunger in the wealthiest nation on the planet.
To assess the strain on those food banks and the hundreds of thousands of Americans who rely on them, State Affairs visited locations in five states.
While governors from both parties have released millions in emergency funds, most of it aimed at filling food pantries that are suddenly serving many more customers, interviews with those who administer food aid and those who receive the aid show the undeniable consequences of the SNAP shutdown.
Maj. Tom McDowell, the corps officer at the Salvation Army in Topeka, Kan., said his food pantry has seen a “significant” increase in demand since the shutdown began. A pantry that typically serves 60 families a day is now seeing roughly 100 families a day. A free lunch program on weekday afternoons that usually feeds about 100 people attracted 294 people on Monday and Tuesday, he said.
One of the new faces at the Topeka Salvation Army food pantry was Rita Goodger-Darnall, 63, who has relied on about $200 in SNAP benefits every month after she suffered a stroke that forced her to retire early from her job as an office clerk. She uses the benefits to pay for fish, meat and thin multigrain bread that is supposed to help her recovery.
Goodger-Darnall said she turned to the food pantry when her SNAP benefits didn’t show up this month, searching for vegetables and bread to free up room in her budget for protein. She said the federal government needs to “get busy and stop messing around with people’s lives.”
She noted that members of Congress are being paid while SNAP beneficiaries scrounge for food.
“It’s not fair,” she said.
Mari Bennett, the executive director of Our Daily Bread, a food pantry in Rockingham, N.C., said her location had given out as much food in the first three days this week as it usually does over the course of three weeks.
“If things don’t change in a timely manner, we would be backing out of a day or two [of operation] on the limited resources of what we have,” Bennett said. “It will be extremely limited until we have nothing else to give.”
Eric Saunders, executive director of New Hope Ministries in Central Pennsylvania, said the nine food pantries in his organization typically see 10 to 15 new families a month. Now they are fielding requests from new families every day.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) has released $5 million in state funding to support food banks. Shapiro is also leading a fundraising effort to augment that public money, a drive that has yielded $2 million in additional donations so far. Saunders’s organization is conducting its own food drives at local Walmarts and Sam’s Club locations.
“We’re going to do it by faith,” Saunders said. “I’m telling people, ‘If you can help, help. If you need help, ask.’”
In Atlanta, the usual mix of retirees and homeless regulars who arrive at Antioch Urban Ministries every morning are now joined by families, young professionals and furloughed government employees.
“I’ve met a lot more people,” said Michael, a 72-year old retired warehouse worker who took a bag of oranges and a salad carton from the pantry on Thursday. “Everybody’s tired.”
Michael, who declined to give his last name because he is looking for work, has been relying on SNAP benefits for five years. This is the first time those benefits didn’t arrive. Michael said he is trying to find part-time warehouse work to help pay his grocery bill, but he’s had no luck — the pain from the arthritis in his knee is too great.
Until benefits resume, Michael said, there isn’t much to do but hope for the best.
“Just going to have to wait it out, I guess,” Michael said. “What else can you do?”
This story was reported by Beau Evans in Atlanta, Kirsten Adair in Indianapolis, Adam Goldstein in Topeka, Matthew Sasser in Rockingham, John Finnerty in Harrisburg and Sophie Quinton in Denver.