Food stamp cuts raise D.C. area food banks demand ahead of Thanksgiving
Since the federal government slashed pandemic-era food assistance in March, Tahjae Pitt has been skimping on laundry. “I’ve got three bags of dirty clothes because I had to spend money on groceries,” said Pitt, 26, a single mother in Southeast D.C. “I had to make sure my son had food.”
Cutting the assistance, which had bolstered Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program payments, affected over a million households like Pitt’s in the D.C. area, according to a report from the nonprofit Food Research & Action Center. Now, as the country approaches its first Thanksgiving since such safety-net programs expired, some local food banks say the need is higher than it’s been in years.
“We are seeing unprecedented demand,” said Jackie DeCarlo, chief executive of Manna Food Center, a nonprofit food distribution center in Montgomery County.
Manna provided meals to 5,781 families last month, DeCarlo said, eclipsing its monthly high during the pandemic by about 1,000. Food for Others, a food bank in Fairfax County, has distributed 30 percent more food this year than last year, serving about 200 to 250 people daily, development and communications coordinator Hannah Brockway said.
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And Capital Area Food Bank, which provides food to around 400 partner pantries and distribution sites across the District and nearby suburbs, has distributed 31 percent more food since July 1 than what it had budgeted, president and CEO Radha Muthiah said — representing millions more meals that the food bank has had to buy or solicit through donations.
While inflation has begun to ease, the year has brought additional financial stressors, such as the removal of people who were kept on Medicaid rolls during the pandemic and September’s resumption of student loan repayments. For some, those extra $200 or $300 payments each month are “causing this elevated level of need when it comes to food,” Muthiah said, “because that is the part people tend to squeeze on.”
At So Others Might Eat, a D.C. nonprofit that distributes food, more people are coming in this year than last to compensate for their lost pandemic benefits and, more recently, prepare for possible government shutdowns, said Daryl Wright, its senior vice president of community outreach. The crowds also, he said, include migrants bused to D.C. from Arizona and Texas.
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Pitt, who began the pandemic living in a homeless shelter, said she got up to $375 a month from the expanded food stamp benefits to feed herself and her son. She got an apartment through rapid rehousing and a job earning about $15 an hour, though the end of that extra assistance means she’s left with $98 in food benefits.
Pitt stockpiles as much meat as possible, which she says is the most expensive part of her food budget. But it leaves little for starches, greens and other dietary staples.
“I don’t have extra money,” Pitt said, and food was still too pricey, she found, after she stopped going to the laundromat and started hand-washing her clothes instead. Combined with other rigid expenses like rent, she felt suffocated, she said. So she and thousands of others in the D.C. area increasingly have turned to food pantries.
A report that Capital Area Food Bank released in September found that the region had made no progress on food insecurity since the pandemic. Thirty-two percent of locals did not have enough to eat in 2023, the report said, compared to 33 percent in 2022.
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Though employment numbers remained high, many D.C.-area residents reported that they were struggling with the high costs of living even before the spring’s slashing of benefits.
Kim Lehmkuhl, 43, a D.C. resident who visits Rosedale Recreation Center for food once a month, has seen lines of people wrap around the block, she said. What was once an hour-long wait before March has become an hour and a half of late.
In the face of such demand, some food banks have experienced drops in donations from the community, leaders said. “We got 50,000 pounds of food, which was really appreciated. But that was 6 percent less than what we got last year,” said DeCarlo, of Manna in Montgomery County. “That just goes to show that … folks who have means [to donate], even they are feeling price pressures.”
Food for Others, the Fairfax food bank, has managed to keep up with needs so far thanks to early planning and generous community donations, Executive Director Deborah Haynes said. It collects nonperishable foods for Thanksgiving from individuals and local organizations in the summer, too, and stockpiles foods like yams for the holiday season. Last week, Haynes said, a local Catholic high school brought “a box truck of food a day for five days.”
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Taken together, “It’s a very high influx of food,” she said.
Donations to So Others Might Eat have been similarly strong, Wright said.
But in Northeast D.C., Lehmkuhl said she still sees unhoused people on her block going hungry. And she’s hoping to do her part, if only for a day.
Thanks to the monthly food pantries at the Rosedale center, the $291 in food stamps she receives monthly and careful budgeting, Lehmkuhl, who is unemployed, has amassed a small surplus of food. “I have some leftover cranberry sauce from last year, mashed potatoes, onions, stuffing,” she said, and she plans to use them to host a Thanksgiving feast for her unhoused neighbors.
The turkey, though, is still out of reach.
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