‘Eating For Survival’: With November SNAP Delays, How Will Bay Area Families Cope?

When Em-J Staples heard that her family wouldn’t receive their food benefits at the start of the month through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, she was shocked.

“I guess I never thought it would actually come to the point that it says it’s running out,” she said.

The government shutdown, now in its second month, meant that the people using the federally funded SNAP program — sometimes still referred to as food stamps and known in California as CalFresh — would face unspecified “delays” in their November payments. Around the Bay Area, where more than 644,000 people receive SNAP benefits, households like Staples’ found themselves planning how they’d cope with not having enough money for food.

Staples, who lives in San Rafael and previously “worked in Big Tech and startups,” lost her job at the same time while she was pregnant with her second child, now 6 months old. While her husband still works as a teacher and musician, Staples describes her family as feeling like part of a “broken middle” — and CalFresh has allowed them to keep accessing fresh, nutritious food.

On Monday, President Donald Trump’s administration said it would use the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s contingency fund to provide SNAP payments in November, after two federal judges ruled Friday that the administration must continue to fund food benefits.

But the White House warned that payments would only be half of people’s regular benefits, and there could still be lengthy delays before EBT cards are reloaded, the administration said. And on Tuesday, Trump threatened to once again withhold SNAP payments entirely.

CalFresh benefits are paid to recipients over the first 10 days of the month, and Staples’ family was meant to receive theirs on the first. For Staples, the imminent impact on the holidays is something she’s already “grieving.”

“I’m still working through that, I guess, if I’m being honest,” she said. “Because I was excited about having a beautiful Thanksgiving … and I just don’t know now. That uncertainty is obviously really stressful, and I’m figuring out what I’m going to do.”

Staples said her family will use the services of nearby food banks, but “it’s the worst timing,” she said — not least because her 6-month-old child just began to eat solids a week ago. “I’ve been breastfeeding, but now I’m buying for another child,” she said.

“Tough times are temporary, and that’s what I’m believing in,” Staples said.

‘Using as little as I can’

Roughly 5.5 million Californians use CalFresh, according to June data from the state — including 2 million children. In the Bay Area, the highest share of SNAP recipients lives in Alameda County.

To be eligible for CalFresh, households must usually have a total gross monthly income less than or equal to 200% of the federal poverty level. For a family of four, that means a household income of $64,300 or less. A person living alone must earn $31,300 or less to qualify for CalFresh.

Many SNAP recipients describe difficulties securing the food they need that existed even before the November delays were announced.

Retired teacher January Handl, who lives in Glen Ellen, received CalFresh benefits of $200 a month before the delays hit. “But if my Social Security goes up with cost of living, they bring my CalFresh down,” she said.

Even with her regular CalFresh funds, Handl describes a constant state of vigilance over prices and stretching a household budget. Most people on SNAP “are really careful with our food budgets,” she said. “We have to be, right? So we do buy in bulk. We do buy on sale.”

And with ever-rising grocery prices, certain foods are rationed or off-limits for Handl. “I mean, forget eggs,” she said. “That used to be a cheap source of protein for me.” Coffee, as well, is “a luxury now” for Handl.

UC Berkeley transfer student LisaMarie Fusco, who is disabled, described herself as “broken-hearted” by the SNAP delays. Fusco already relies on home deliveries from the Berkeley Food Network. “I’m so amazed they do deliveries,” she said in praise of the food bank’s services. “My goal is to get through this somehow, with leaning on the Berkeley Food Network.”

But “the food stamp administration has been such a problem for me,” said Fusco, who described having “no access” to her online SNAP account for years due to technical issues in the system. “They don’t make it easy for you.”

San Francisco resident Helen Tran has been waiting for her CalFresh benefits to resume ever since she recertified her eligibility back in August — and was counting on SNAP backpayments from this period finally coming through in November. Having been told “about a month ago” that funds would soon appear on her EBT card, “then they said every time they try to process it, there would be an error, and they weren’t sure what the error was,” Tran said.

After her mother — who also uses SNAP — had a stroke in June, Tran quit work to care for her. With Tran in San Francisco and her mother in Oakland, “my money is going towards gas a lot more than it is anything else,” she said — and given her longstanding CalFresh payment delays, “I’m basically paying everything out of pocket.”

Tran is nervous that with her administrative issues, she won’t receive the grocery cards that San Francisco mayor Daniel Lurie has promised the city’s SNAP recipients this month — and the closest food pantries to her all have waitlists, she said.

So with three children of her own to feed, Tran said she’ll keep borrowing money from her siblings to make it through this period, “saving as much as I can by using as little as I can.”

“With our culture, the older siblings are supposed to be the ones to take care of the younger siblings,” she said. “I feel bad and a little embarrassed that I have to ask my sister for help. But at this time, anything helps at this point.”

‘We’re eating for survival’

Shantesha Fluker’s plan to get her family through November’s SNAP delays involves “buying foods that can stretch” —“a lot of beans and rice, a lot of spaghetti without meat,” she said.

Fluker, a West Oakland community advocate with two children, had to leave her job recently for medical reasons. And while she’s “pretty sure” her children are aware of this month’s lack of SNAP funds from social media, Fluker said she didn’t want it to impact them.

“I’m going to try to do my best to make sure that … it isn’t such a difference for them,” she said. “That means also utilizing local area food banks and just being creative with the way that we cook.

“If we have to eat beans and rice and cornbread for three days, that’s what we’re going to have to do — or don’t eat,” she said. “We’re eating for survival, not necessarily for, you know, the taste.”

SNAP recipients are already working out the other sacrifices they’ll make this month to be able to eat. Fluker anticipates she won’t be able to pay her cellphone bill. Handl plans to keep the heating off in her home, “because PG&E here is so expensive.”

“We wear sweaters and pile up the blankets, because that’s one way we can save a little bit,” she said.

Berkeley student Fusco plans to take out an emergency loan to cover her food expenses this month — a situation she feels is especially unfair.

“I shouldn’t have to be taking out a damn loan,” she said.

And while the Bay Area’s food banks have already become a lifeline for many during the shutdown, these places can’t answer every specific nutritional need — especially for those with medical conditions.

Fluker’s adult child is diabetic, “so obviously with that, I have to cook differently in a more healthy manner … the type of foods that I have to prepare for her are a little bit more expensive,” she said.

Handl also requires a specific diet due to her autoimmune issues — and using food banks is “not the same as getting to shop for what you eat,” she said. And while she appreciates the lack of judgment for being on SNAP, she’s felt that when using food banks in the past, “I won’t necessarily get the food that I need for my specialized diet,” Handl said.

‘Look out for one another’

San Rafael’s Staples said the anxiety and stigma SNAP users often feel can seem particularly acute in the Bay Area, with its high cost of living — and stark income inequality between CalFresh recipients and the highest earners in their region.

“It took me a month of feeling uncomfortable shopping at the farmers market with my [EBT] tokens and feeling judged, even though probably no one saw anything of it,” she said. “This is Marin County. There’s a lot of that floating around; it’s like this unspoken level hierarchy of who can afford what.”

Handl, who remembers weeping the first time she applied for SNAP, said she now wants to talk publicly about being a CalFresh recipient to raise awareness of just how widespread its usage is around the state. “To me, it’s trying to use my white privilege to get people to realize that the people on SNAP aren’t trying to cheat anybody out of anything,” she said. “They’re not lazy. They’re often working one to two full-time jobs, and it’s not enough.”

“I just want to shake people and say, ‘Any one of us can be disabled in a moment’ … ‘Any one of us can be bankrupted with medical fees,’” she said. “We more live on the edge than we realize,” she said.

Fluker also hears stereotypes about people on SNAP benefits, many of them directed at Black and brown people — like assumptions that “we buy a lot of processed foods and a lot of junk foods with them,” she said.

But “I frequent the stores just as much as other members in my community,” Fluker said. “We try to cook as best as possible.”

“What keeps me going is knowing that there are other people doing it with me,” Fusco, the Cal student, said. “It does help having a community.”

It’s a sentiment Fluker echoed. “It’s stressful,” she said. “But we, as a people, we just have to go through the motions and look out for one another — and do the best that we can.”