It’s the first month families did not receive SNAP, non-profits embrace increased demand
Marina Garcia
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) – It’s the first day that SNAP benefits have not been distributed as the government shutdown continues. As a result, people are relying more heavily on food pantries and other resources, and KRDO13 witnessed it first-hand.
We visited various hunger relief programs in Colorado Springs and spoke to volunteers who are working to keep up with the increased demand.
At God’s Pantry, a volunteer, Mashana, tells me they took extra steps to make their food stretch.
“Today, we are giving away free food, and you can come in and get three items daily off the food shelf. Normally it’s five, but we’ve had a lot of people coming in for food, so we’ve had to drop it down,” says Mashana Reliford, God’s Pantry volunteer bookkeeper.
And in the parking lot of God’s Pantry was a food drive run by Compassion Food Distribution of Colorado, where families can get around $300 worth of food for only a fraction of the price.
“We have more cars today, but we try to service everyone. It’s already past 3:00. We normally just shut it down, but we have a lot of cars out there. So we don’t want to just turn everybody away,” says Donna Purvis, the supervisor for Compassion Food Distribution of Colorado.
And at Catholic Charities, they tell me more volunteers are needed.
“The calls have come in. They’ve increased significantly throughout October, with people concerned about whether or not SNAP was going to be available or not. And now we know it’s certainly not going to be available,” says Rochelle Schlortt, the Catholic Charities of Central Colorado chief communications officer.
This month, the non-profit says it’s looking at a fifty percent increase in recipients
“We’re going to see if we can get more volunteers to come in to help the people shop, to help get them signed in, and and more importantly, to help restock, during our open hours, so that the food is available so that they can shop for the things that their family needs,” says Schlortt.
On Friday, two federal judges ruled the government must use emergency funds to keep SNAP benefits available, but it’s currently not clear when or if assistance will be reinstated or how much.