This is getting a little insane.
I live in the US, where an ongoing Federal government shutdown has been going on for some time. Specifically, I also live in Pennsylvania, who has had their own similar state-level shut down.
Well, amongst innumerable other effects, the nearly 4 month long budget impasse shutting down the Pennsylvania state government has prevented tens of millions of dollars of funding from going to the state’s food bank system.
Meanwhile, the federal government has prevented nearly $360ish million of monthly SNAP benefits from arriving to Pennsylvanians on November 1st.
That’s for Pennsylvania alone.
As millions of panicked residents of our great Commonwealth flood their phone lines, the state Department of Human Services is now directing everyone losing benefits to go to our food banks instead.
The problem is, even when properly funded, the monthly SNAP disbursement in Pennsylvania is over 9 times the operating budget of all of the state’s food banks put altogether.
All of which are normally heavily subsidized by the State of Pennsylvania. Except for now.
And all the people already using the food banks prior to the Federal shutdown were already hitting all time record demand in the state, stretching pantries.
Out of our local network of 9 food banks in Central Pennsylvania, 8 of them were already spending their own emergency funds as of October 15th.
A representative for the network has said these funds are extremely limited and are meant to sustain operations in extreme circumstances for less than 30 days. Probably because the assumption was that anything that extreme would cause the Federal government to come in and assist by then. I guess they didn’t foresee the Federal Government actively causing the extreme circumstances.
We have been slowly trying to claw our way back out of debt, and prioritizing utility bills, so Heather told me we need to get some help from the food bank to make that happen.
So, our food banks require that you call ahead and make an appointment. You can’t just arrive.
Well, I have called three different food banks 17 times in the last two weeks, leaving numerous voicemails.
I had not heard back at all. No missed calls.
So, things getting painfully tight, (and after eating far too many free courtesy peanuts from 5 Guys every time I deliver an order from them(shout out to Steve who lets me snag an entire bag each time (yes, I know nesting parentheses is indulgent; sue me))) I finally simply ignored the *You Must Call Ahead* and showed up anyway today.
And, after asking to speak to someone, I showed my phone call records and explained our situation.
They’re utterly swamped.
They asked me if I was sure we needed help because an awful lot of people really needed help right now and if we think we can do without, we should consider it.
The guy explained that they have been getting hundreds of calls every day. That the phone now spent more time ringing than silent. There are not enough volunteer hours to even take all the calls, let alone process all the new people seeking assistance.
Which frankly tracks with the half dozen times I got busy signals calling previously.
So, for the first time in my life, I thanked them for their time and walked out of my local food pantry empty handed.
So, it is what it is.
Our heat and lights will stay on, we have some canned goods we can experiment with, we’ll live.
And Pennsylvania is likely worse off than most with the double shut down it’s got going on.
But food banks are stressed past their breaking point everywhere with the SNAP hold up. They were never designed to handle a tenth of that load.
They were already stressed with increased prices across the board, and the next few weeks aren’t looking too great at the moment.
So, if you have the cushion, and you can deal, please consider tossing a couple bucks to your local food pantry.
They could use the help now more than ever.