The government shutdown is closing in on some of the most vulnerable Californians: children and the elderly.
In California, 63.2% of SNAP participants fall on either end of that spectrum.
San Diego is home to about 47,000 federal employees and more than 100,000 military personnel, reports NBC 7’s Jeanette Quezada.
“We service 16,000 seniors, but we also do a backpack program for those kids who are food insecure,” said Josue Castro, direct services manager for the San Diego Food Bank. “We give them a free backpack they can take home for the weekend with fresh produce, some grains, rice and also some supplemental food to hold them over to the weekend.”
Four hundred fifty nonprofits collect food at the San Diego Food Bank to distribute at food drives almost every day in the county.
Gov. Gavin Newsom recently announced that if Pres. Donald Trump and congress don’t fund benefits or reopen the federal government by Thursday, November’s CalFresh benefits will likely be delayed.
Also known as food stamps, those benefits support 5.5 million Californians.
That news also comes right before Thanksgiving, putting more stress on area food banks that were already seeing an uptick in visits from federal workers, who are furloughed or working without pay.
“One of the biggest things that we can go ahead and give people is that reassurance — that we are ready to meet the need and help those who might have food insecurities or are hosting families that might be going through that issue,” Castro said.
NBC 7 spoke with San Diegans anonymously, who said their families would not be able to survive without this help.
“Put yourself in the shoes or the perspective of someone like me,” one gentleman said, “someone who is on a fixed income, someone who does not have the disposable income to work around or the ways or means to cover for things that aren’t received.”
Another woman named Ana said she’s afraid.
“We don’t know how we’ll survive this,” Ana said. “The food, the rent — everything is too hard for us.”
Newsom said that the longer the shutdown lasts, the more programs will be affected.