It’s official: 90,000 households of working families, single parents, seniors, veterans, and more who rely on SNAP in San Francisco and Marin to put food on their tables lost their benefits this weekend due to the government shutdown. And this comes on the heels of the $186 billion in cuts to food benefits passed earlier this year.
SNAP provides nine meals for every one meal we can distribute. No food bank — not even ours — can fill that gap. And with food costs still 3X higher than before the pandemic, we are already stretched to meet the need.
The lapse in SNAP benefits is just a preview of what will happen when recent policy decisions to gut SNAP go into effect and thousands of people in our community — billions nationwide — lose benefits. These cuts will have a devastating impact on food insecurity in San Francisco and Marin, putting 25,000 of our neighbors at risk of hunger. With the cost of food continually rising, we must strengthen, not cut, critical food benefits for households facing hunger.
Please, will you take a stand alongside the Food Bank and our partners and urge your member of Congress to restore and strengthen SNAP benefits? Your elected leaders need to know what's at stake for our more than 5 million Californian neighbors who rely on federal nutrition funding to put food on the table.
Together, we can make our voices heard and urge our leaders to restore SNAP benefits and strengthen and protect critical social safety net programs on which so many of our neighbors rely. Please send a message to your elected leaders today.
