2025 report from the Congressional Budget Office<\/a>.<\/p>\nOn the food side, the first cost-cutting rules kick in on Wednesday, April 1. That\u2019s when several categories of immigrants will lose access to government assistance. These include people seeking asylum or refugee status, and people who were victims of human trafficking, or other types of violence, in their home countries. Undocumented immigrants will remain ineligible for free food, maintaining a long-term status quo (eligibility is limited to citizens and legal permanent residents) on that front.<\/p>\n
Statewide, the immigration eligibility changes are expected to trim about 72,000 people out of CalFresh, according to state and federal data. Local welfare officials project the cut in Orange County will be about 2,000, with a few hundred people losing access to the program over the next year as their annual renewal dates come due.<\/p>\n
But the April 1 deadline, and the cut to immigrant access, is just the first of several bigger changes, and more cost-cutting.<\/p>\n
Starting June 1, long-standing work-requirement rules for SNAP\/CalFresh will be reinstated and expanded. Many of the 5 million Californians who currently get SNAP\/CalFresh benefits will have to prove they are working, volunteering or studying\/training at least 20 hours a week, or 80 hours a month, in order to receive a food-only debit card that, in Orange County, averages about $418 a month. If they fail to prove they meet work requirements, they can be limited to receiving benefits to only three months during a 36-month window.<\/p>\n
The idea isn\u2019t new. Work rules were instituted as a qualification for federal food (then known as Food Stamps) in 1996, though the requirement has been on hold since the high-unemployment era of the Great Recession.<\/p>\n
The stated goal back then was that by setting work requirements people would pick up new job skills that eventually would lead them off the government\u2019s dime. Back then, the rules excluded parents of teens under the age of 18, and adults age 55 or older, along with many veterans, recent foster care graduates and homeless people.<\/p>\n
This time, the stated goal is similar. But federal budget projections also show the program shrinking as the new work rules kick in, suggesting feeding fewer people is a feature of HR1. The Congressional Budget Office projects that over the next decade, SNAP expenditures will fall by about $187 billion; during that time, the program is projected to lose about 4 million clients.<\/p>\n
All of that will happen as more people will be asked to work.<\/p>\n
Under the new HR1 rules, parents with children age 14 and older living at home, and people between the ages of 55 and 64, will be considered Able-Bodied Adults Without Dependents (or, in government speak, ABAWDs) and, as such, will have to work to receive benefits. Others who\u2019ll be pushed to employment include many non-working veterans who currently get food assistance, adults age 18 to 24 who were still 18 when they were in foster care and homeless people.<\/p>\n
The details of the rules, and how to meet them, are complex. And the task of explaining it all \u2013 and of enforcing the rules as they take effect \u2013 is falling to state and county social service departments. Administrators say those duties are adding a new layer of work, and cost, to an already-overburdened system.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been working closely with community organizations to get the message out; hosting learning sessions, working with family resource centers, universities, faith-based organizations, the (Orange County) Hunger Alliance \u2013 anyone we can,\u201d said An Tran, director of the county\u2019s Social Services Agency.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want people to be able to make the best decision they can for their families.\u201d<\/p>\n
The audience, he noted, can be tough to reach.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen many of our clients get an email from government, there\u2019s some hesitation,\u201d Tran added. \u201cBut when they hear from a community partner, or a church, they\u2019re more likely to pay attention.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd it\u2019s very important, right now, that they know what\u2019s happening.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not clear how much, if at all, the work rules will add to hunger in Orange County. Tran said his \u201crough estimate\u201d is that 40,000 to 50,000 locals \u2013 out of a program that currently serves 292,000 people, mostly seniors and children \u2013 will be touched by the new work rules.<\/p>\n
Many of those newly minted ABAWDs, Tran suggested, figure to lose CalFresh benefits.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom my experience, as you add barriers, you see a decrease in participation.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Tran and others say people won\u2019t be leaving the program because they\u2019re lazy and don\u2019t want to work. Instead, they note that people who are chronically out of the workforce often face barriers \u2013 homelessness, mental illness, child care costs \u2013 that keep them jobless. Requiring paid work or volunteer work as a term of getting food won\u2019t necessarily change those barriers.<\/p>\n
Tran also questioned the projected savings of cutting CalFresh, at least locally. Each dollar spent by a CalFresh client, he said, generates about $1.79 in community spending, and CalFresh clients spend about $1,400 a year less in health care expenses.<\/p>\n
And, he added, the cost of administering the new work rules is coming out of his budget, not federal spending. He pointed to a third deadline, Oct. 1, as the date when the federal government will cut in half the amount it provides to administer CalFresh.<\/p>\n
Federal spending might fall, Tran said, but that\u2019s not true for the state or counties that administer federal food programs. The county\u2019s spending in this area is already running about $10 million a year and the state estimates that the new HR1 rules will add about $2.4 billion in administrative costs for CalFresh.<\/p>\n
While Tran said his agency\u2019s role is to \u201cadminister the program,\u201d not tweak it in any way, he questioned the overall benefit of making government food harder to get. The rules might change, but hunger will not.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs you get fewer people on CalFresh, and they\u2019re unable to get the food they deserve, they\u2019ll turn to emergency food system and stress that system out.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd it\u2019s already stressed out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Abyss time?<\/p>\n
If changes to government food push huge numbers of people to seek charitable food, it\u2019s unclear how everybody will eat.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s true, in part, because charitable food providers say Tran is right: Their side of the free food world is already stressed out.<\/p>\n
The 2020s, in fact, have been a string of seemingly non-stop emergencies for charitable food providers.<\/p>\n
First, the pandemic sent tens of thousands of newly hungry, newly unemployed people to seek food from pantries and churches and similar providers. Those providers met that need, initially with few resources and volunteers, and later in the pandemic, with a glut of resources and a lot of volunteers.<\/p>\n
Then, as the pandemic waned, in 2023 and early \u201924, came two jolts to the system \u2013 federal pandemic-era assistance ended, pulling food and food-related funding away from charities, and the number of people seeking food continued to grow.<\/p>\n
That hasn\u2019t ended. Whether it was because the pandemic showed how charitable food was healthy and relatively stress-free, or if it was because changes to the economy left lower-income workers behind, or both, county officials and reports from nonprofits suggest that most food pantries and food banks in Orange County are serving more people in early 2026 than they were during the peak of the pandemic.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere isn\u2019t always great data \u2013 we\u2019re working on that. But there\u2019s no question that the need has continued to go up,\u201d said Learakos. \u201cWe just don\u2019t know how much.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last year, two more jolts hit the charitable food world: the rise of federal immigration roundups and the government shutdown.<\/p>\n
Both have reshaped that side of free food.<\/p>\n
Unlike CalFresh, charitable food operators do serve undocumented people. \u201cNo questions asked\u201d is often a point of pride, and feeding people who are hungry \u2013 regardless of immigration status \u2013 is a non-profit industry standard.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also risky. A year ago, as ICE raids picked up around Southern California, food pantries lost clients. In some cases, charities changed their methods of distribution, bringing food to hungry families who feared being in food lines \u2013 or anywhere \u2013 in public.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t have any numbers to say exactly how many people were or weren\u2019t getting food. But I do know, from hearing in the general space, that people were and are spooked,\u201d said Claudia Bonilla Keller, chief executive of Second Harvest Food Bank, the Irvine-based nonprofit that serves as a wholesaler for more than 300 food pantries around the county.<\/p>\n
The shutdown, Keller and others say, was a different emergency. For 43 days, the federal government suspended and later reduced food assistance. That pushed hundreds of thousands of new clients in Southern California, and tens of millions nationally, to the doors of nonprofits.<\/p>\n
It was, Keller said, \u201can abyss moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
What\u2019s happening now, with changes to federal food, could be a slowdown version of the same.<\/p>\n
\u201cA year from now, we could have tens of thousands more people than we are serving now. We just don\u2019t know,\u201d Keller said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know how we can restructure to meet that. I do know, during COVID, we \u2013 everybody \u2013 answered. We had no volunteers and sketchy teams, but we did respond. So we\u2019re capable of rising to the demand.\u201d<\/p>\n
The question might be, \u2018With what?\u2019<\/p>\n
Last month,\u00a0\u201cBack Office,\u201d<\/a> a restaurant industry newsletter, suggested AI has already trimmed edible food waste by as much as 40% in many restaurants. As the cost of that technology goes down, smaller restaurants \u2013 along with groceries, farms and others \u2013 figure to see similar shifts.<\/p>\nIf that happens, it could end a brief golden age of corporate food donations to the charitable food world.<\/p>\n
A state law, SB1383, which took full effect in 2022, requires California residents and businesses to track and separate out organic waste, including edible food, from the rest of their garbage and recyclables. The idea is to make sure organics don\u2019t wind up in landfills and boost methane emissions.<\/p>\n
As part of the law, restaurants and groceries, among others, are required to give at least 20% of their disposable, edible food to agencies that can process the stuff for human consumption.<\/p>\n
During the tail end of the pandemic, those mandates helped keep food banks and food pantries stocked with product \u2013 everything from fresh veggies to proteins to dairy.<\/p>\n
But the 20% rule also caught the attention of food companies.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs they\u2019ve seen what they could save, a lot of companies have done what they can to get better, more efficient,\u201d Learakos said.<\/p>\n
\u201cExcess food is an anomaly,\u201d he added. \u201cWe need to act now, today, to backfill the food we\u2019re going to lose as the supply chain gets more efficient. We can ask more from philanthropy, and more from donors. But the reality is we\u2019re going to have to come up with something, and we better be doing it by the end of the year.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes, these kinds of stressors, these situations, push us out of our comfort level. I hope that\u2019s what happens now, and we figure it out. Or somebody is going to go hungry.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"People don\u2019t often starve in the United States. That\u2019s the theory, anyway. Sure, food insecurity is common. Roughly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242158,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,1752,1493,6103,100],"class_list":["post-242157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-congress","tag-homelessness","tag-hunger","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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