READING, Pa. – SNAP payments, the food assistance many families rely on every month, will not be paid in November. It\u2019s part of the ongoing government shutdown and state budget impasse.<\/p>\n
So today, we went to the Salvation Army in Reading to ask: What should families do now?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re still committed to help as much as we can,\u201d said Captain Hector Cid of the Salvation Army Reading. \u201cWe have here elements in place in our family services program, like walk-in assistance for food.\u201d<\/p>\n
The need, they say, is already growing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do see people coming to our doors,\u201d Captain Cid added. \u201cI will say probably 20 to 30 families over the week for these kinds of services.\u201d<\/p>\n
State Senator Judy Schwank shared flyers confirming the scope of the problem: 2 million Pennsylvanians are affected, including about 59,000 recipients in Berks County.<\/p>\n
If you already have money on your EBT card, you can still use it, but no new funds are being added for now.<\/p>\n
If you need food, this Friday is a good day to prepare:<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a massive food distribution where, large-scale, we serve about 400 to 500 households every month,\u201d said Captain Cid. \u201cIt happens the last Friday of the month, and we help out with food, any dry goods, any produce that we can acquire to eat as well.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. – SNAP payments, the food assistance many families rely on every month, will not be paid…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20204,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,1515,7096,14016,8667,14017,28,736,128,130,129,4508,7617],"class_list":{"0":"post-20203","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reading","8":"tag-berks-county","9":"tag-food","10":"tag-food-assistance","11":"tag-hector-cid","12":"tag-judy-schwank","13":"tag-massive-food-distribution","14":"tag-pennsylvania","15":"tag-reading","16":"tag-reading-city","17":"tag-reading-city-headlines","18":"tag-reading-city-news","19":"tag-salvation-army","20":"tag-supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}