SAN ANTONIO – Hundreds of cars lined up around the San Antonio Food Bank for food distribution Saturday morning, the first day that food assistance was not delivered to recipients.
Two-thirds of the 353 households that received assistance were there because they had been impacted by the government shutdown, said Michael Guerra, the Chief Sustainability Officer for the food bank.
“We’re seeing people who are either a federal worker, contractor, or who are just affected by the delay in SNAP,” said Guerra. “The distribution today is really, it’s been in the making for weeks and weeks.”
The San Antonio Food Bank estimates that around 286,000 people in the area rely on SNAP benefits every month.
“It’s just been, it’s been a little hard,” said Crystal, who was one of the many in line at the food bank. “Especially with the holiday season, like Thanksgiving. We don’t know what we’re going to do.”
To help amid the shutdown, the food bank is hosting multiple distributions throughout the week, at different times and locations.
“We’re gonna have food. If we have to ration and make maybe that benefit for a food a little bit smaller, we’ll do that, but we will have food for everybody,” said Guerra. “We just want our community to know that San Antonio’s gonna take care of them.”
Volunteers from groups like Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Selma and students from Trinity University showed up on Saturday morning to help those in need.
“As a person who utilized the food bank before, I definitely wanted to go back and help my community,” said Trinity student John Dehoyos. “I think that there’s a lot of resources out there that people can utilize in San Antonio, and I think being able to see the youth participate in that and able to distribute those resources is very enjoyable to see.”
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