In less than two weeks, increased pandemic relief benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will expire, which means thousands of people in Central Oregon will see reductions in their food budgets starting next month.
According to stats provided by the Oregon Department of Human Services, there are 21,541 households in Deschutes, Crook and Jefferson counties receiving SNAP benefits, also known as food stamps.
Since January 2021, eligible households got a 15% boost in their benefits from the federal government, a boost that will expire in March, according to the Department of Human Services.
Local food pantries, already strained by demand, are expecting a surge once the reduction goes into effect, and NeighborImpact, the nonprofit that supplies Central Oregon’s food pantries, continues to move increasingly greater quantities of food with fewer resources to meet surging demand.
April Munks, the district manager for the tri-county area at the Oregon Department of Human Services, said the reduction in SNAP benefits will deal a severe blow to many who rely on the extra money to feed themselves and their families, likely leading to other problems in addition to buying food.
“It will have a significant impact on people’s budgets in every way,” Munks said.
Munks said for many people in poverty, any cut in the benefits they rely on will snowball into further issues like staying housed.
“One of the things that creates a lot of instability for families is not having housing,” Munks said. “Housing is hard enough in Central Oregon when you have a good paying job, but when you are limited in your resources ... it is really tough. Going away from maximum allotment (of SNAP benefits), for some people, will likely mean that they lose their housing.”
Debbie Jones, 66, a former police officer and medic originally from Florida, is no stranger to scraping by with little. Jones moved to Bend about 15 years ago and struggled with housing. She now lives in low-income housing in Bend, but survives off of her Social Security check, which amounts to $983 a month.
She also gets some SNAP assistance and is worried about the cuts in March as she already struggles to buy the food she needs.
“I am a diabetic. And because of my disease, I have to watch what I eat, and my food is very expensive because they don’t make diabetic food cheap,” Jones said.
Jones gets a lot of her food from the Giving Plate, Bend’s largest food pantry, where she also used to volunteer until recently having foot surgery. The Giving Plate has at times, she said, been the difference between eating and not eating at all. Some days, Jones stares into an empty refrigerator, she said.
“It’s been hard, because my money doesn’t stretch that far,” Jones said.
Jones is one of many local residents who rely on food pantries to feed themselves and their families, placing more strain on a food system already under immense pressure..
Scott Cooper, the executive director of NeighborImpact, said his organization is bracing for a spike in need while at the same time trying to build a new warehouse to store an increasingly larger amount of food that is getting harder to acquire.
“We anticipate that (the reduction in benefits) will send a surge of demand into the food banks asking for assistance, which nobody can ever be ready for,” Cooper said. “We are in absolute panic about what is about to happen. And frankly, I am terrified for what we are facing for the rest of this year and next year,” Cooper said.
Cooper said there is effectively no plan in place on the state level to mitigate the food crisis, and at some point, if more resources are not diverted to the food system, NeighborImpact will eventually have to start restricting the amount of food it distributes to local pantries and pantries will have to turn people away.
Carly Sanders, NeighborImpact’s food program director, said she has not seen the food situation this bad at any time in the seven years she has worked with NeighborImpact. Sanders said the cuts to SNAP benefits are part of a triple whammy to working families struggling to put food on the table. Last summer, universal free lunches at schools ended, and then the COVID-19 child tax credit passed by Congress in 2021, which provided extra money to households with children, expired at the end of the year, further adding to the situation, Sanders said.
Sanders said some of NeighborImpact’s local partner agencies have already reported double the amount of people coming in for food, and as a result have doubled their food orders from the organization.
Gary Hewitt, the executive director at St. Vincent de Paul, said his pantry has been consistently getting more people in need for at least the last six months, and is expecting the number to go even higher after SNAP benefits are reduced.
“I think it’s going to be the biggest increase we’ve seen in a long time,” Hewitt said.
Despite the concern, Hewitt said he is confident the pantry is ready to take care of an influx of people at this time.
(3) comments
58514: great idea, let's make everybody a ward of the state. Or maybe you can feed some of them at your house.
So the pandemic relief benefits should last forever even though there is no pandemic?
The pandemic motivated us to address people going hungry. We should make the increased benefit permanent.
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