Food banks are filling gaps in the safety net this holiday season
Food banks are filling gaps in the safety net this holiday season
For food banks, the weeks around Thanksgiving and Christmas are always some of the busiest of the year. But food banks around the country say they’ve been contending with high need all year.
A lot of people stretch themselves financially during the holidays, buying presents and entertaining friends and family. “Which means that something’s got to give,” said Paco Vélez, CEO of Feeding South Florida.
He said for many low-income families, food is often the first thing to go. “That’s where we step in and try to make it easy for families to provide those meals,” Vélez said.
This year, the holiday increase is coming when the need was already high.
In Minnesota, Allison O’Toole said the food bank she runs — Second Harvest Heartland — has been breaking records for a while.
“Last year, we recorded 2 million more food shelf visits than the previous year,” she said. “And in 2023, we’re on pace to break that.”
O’Toole said inflation and the sunsetting of federal benefits are among the things driving that increase.
For the first three years of the pandemic, people on SNAP, or food stamps, were getting at least $95 extra every month. But that stopped this spring.
In Massachusetts, 1 in 3 people is experiencing food insecurity, according to a study by the Greater Boston Food Bank. The organization’s CEO, Catherine D’Amato, said that’s been true for two years now.
D’Amato doesn’t think the food insecurity problem will ease back to lower levels in the foreseeable future. “We expect the numbers are going to flatten at this very high rate,” she said.
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