‘Everybody Needs Food’: How a Solano County Food Pantry Is Dealing with SNAP Delays

The ongoing federal government shutdown has reduced and delayed SNAP benefits this month. As a result, food banks in the Bay Area are bracing for an even greater surge in demand. We join Heather Pierini, the executive director of ⁠Food Is Free Bay Area⁠, on a donation day at the Solano County Fairgrounds.  

Links:

• The Bay Area restaurants offering free meals to families using CalFresh

Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco-Northern California Local.

This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:00:35] I’m Ericka Cruz Guevara, and welcome to the Bay. Local news to keep you rooted. It was a sunny Monday morning at the Solano County Fairgrounds when I went to meet Heather Perrini, the executive director of Food is Free Bay Area. On this day, they were receiving donations and getting ready to distribute things like produce, bread, and canned goods for the following day. Even the office manager was helping lift donations.

Heather Pierini: [00:01:15] We got two drivers and our office manager doing not office management stuff because everybody needs to do it. All hands on deck. Office manager lifting 50 pound bags of produce, right? Those are huge bags of carrots.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:01:32] Nearly 42 million Americans who rely on federal SNAP benefits are worried about how they’ll feed their families this month as the government shutdown continues into its 36th day, now the longest shutdown in U.S. History. And although the Trump administration said it would issue partial payments this month thanks to a court order, people like Heather don’t expect the lines to get shorter.

Heather Pierini: [00:02:05] It’s increasing every month with or without an emergency as more people are feeling the effects of inflation, as more are feeling of the rising grocery prices and all of the things that are happening in our community right now.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:02:26] Heather says the needs in Solano County are especially dire compared to other wealthier counties in the Bay Area. So today we take you to Food is Free’s distribution site in Vallejo as they prepare for another day of giving out food under the government shutdown.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:03:35] Can you introduce yourself for us, Heather? Tell us who you are, what you do, and where we are right now.

Heather Pierini: [00:03:42] Hi, my name is Heather Pierini. I am the executive director of Food is Free Bay Area, a nonprofit based here in Vallejo in Solano County. Right now we’re standing in McCormick Hall at the Solano county fairgrounds in Vallejo.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:03:56] This is an actually a familiar place to me. My family comes here every year for a fiesta, but I’ve never seen it in this form, which is like, it’s now, I mean, a food distribution, food donation space. I mean can you like describe for us what is happening here today?

Heather Pierini: [00:04:19] So we use this site for our Tuesday and Thursday food distributions. We distribute food on average to about 400 to 450 families before the EBT and SNAP shut down. 450 families would come here on a Tuesday and a Thursday afternoon each day.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:04:39] That’s a lot.

[00:04:39] Yeah, it’s a lot. Food is Free started as a idea put together that we all come together as a community and kind of share with what is available. I loved that idea many, many, many years ago and I put in a permaculture food forest with the help of sustainable Solano at my house in Benicia and we always would grow way too much food and I gave it away in our front yard. And Over the years, it became kind of a community sharing space. And then COVID hit and I saw people looking at our food stand for food in this little neighborhood in Benicia where you wouldn’t expect to see a lot of food insecurity and we were seeing it. You hadn’t seen anything like that before. I hadn’t see the volume of people. So what we did was we coordinated with a bunch of other organizations and neighbors and friends in the community to collect donations, to start finding food, to create more food stands. And so Food is Free Benicia all of a sudden became Food is free Solano and then all of the sudden became Food is Free Bay Area. So we go everywhere from Rio Vista, Dixon. All the way down to Contra Costa County for picking up food, delivering food. And we allow anyone anywhere to come and access food. People will ask me what the requirements are and I’m like, you’re an alive human. That is your requirement right there. You’re a live human asking for food and we will make sure there’s something for you.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:06:29] It’s hard to imagine that you started just like with a table in your front yard because now we’re standing in McCormick Hall on the Solano County fairgrounds. Like this is very much an operation. You have, I mean, dozens and dozens of pallets of food here. This electric vehicle van thing I mean, did you expect to?

Heather Pierini: [00:06:50]  Absolutely not. There was no expectation that this would grow. There, was for me, it was I want to try and make sure people don’t experience food insecurity during this huge pandemic issue because I grew up food insecure and I was a single mom for a long time and I thought, you know, I’m stable now. What if I weren’t? And then all of a sudden I’m… Learning about food insecurity in Solano County, I’m seeing that Solano County is the lowest funded county for non-profit money. So we are magnificently underfunded and we are extraordinarily high need. So right now what we’re looking at with this SNAP and EBT shutdown, we’re looking at kind of a perfect storm and once again we’re going into emergency response mode.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:07:42] I mean Heather, it’s been like a month now since the start of the government shutdown. I wonder if there was like a specific moment that things seemed to get bad.

Heather Pierini: [00:07:54] Third week of October was when things seemed to get bad, when people thought, okay, what if they don’t fund SNAP? We’d started seeing impacts from people from Travis.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:08:05] Travis Air Force Base.

Heather Pierini: [00:08:06] So we started seeing more furloughed workers and then as the shutdown continues, because of SNAP and EBT being halted, for the last two weeks we have seen a drastic increase in numbers. We distribute food on average to about 400 to 450 families before the EBT and SNAP down in mid-October. We started seeing a large amount of new families coming in at each distribution. So Tuesday the 21st, we served, I think, 573 families, which was a massive increase. Then that Thursday we served even more. And the next Tuesday we topped 600 families, which was record. And then Thursday the 30th, so day before Halloween, we served 673 families. In three hours here at the Fairgrounds. Had you ever seen anything like that before? At our regular food distributions, no. I personally do all the check-in because, truthfully, it’s one of the things I love about this work is talking with our community and being able to say, hi, I’m glad you’re here.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:09:23] So you’re presumably checking in folks who are standing in line to receive food. It sounds like many folks who came the last couple of days have been first timers. I mean, what have you been hearing from people about why they’re standing in line and just like what they’re experiencing right now?

Heather Pierini: [00:09:43] People are afraid. People are scared that they’re not going to have enough food for their family. We have seen everything from people crying in line, to people giving hugs in line to people seeing neighbors or friends. And then in the line, we have people telling the new people, kind of this is what information you’ll need to give when you get up there. They’re really nice, it’s okay. And we have this community supporting the new people, I feel like. There are a lot of elderly people, there are a lots of disabled people, there are lot of families with children who come through. So they come to the front desk where I’m set up and I ask the three questions. I just need a first name, a zip code, and how many people you’re feeding. Beyond that, any other information is a bonus. People will come in with their ID out and say, what do I need to qualify? Here’s my pay stub, and I’m like, no, it’s okay. We’re here to make sure that you have the food and the resources you need. I don’t need that from you.

[00:10:46] Do you get people who are, I mean, especially with the increase in immigration and customs enforcement actions around the Bay… I mean have you seen fewer people wanting to show up into the community, or people being worried

Heather Pierini: [00:10:59] Yes, we did see that. We saw a drop in our Latino population when there was a larger risk of ice coming out. One of the things I saw was children coming through for their families. And what the gossip was around that from other participants was that if the parents were undocumented, the kids had legal status and felt more comfortable sending the kids through to pick up food. And we have always allowed kids to come through and get food because we know that it’s probably a pretty hard situation going on. I get asked this very frequently actually, how do you know they need it? How do you they need food? And I asked them, well, how many times have you come out to stand in line at the fairgrounds for free food? Because if you’re coming and spending hours of your day waiting in line, in the heat, in rain, in wind, to come get food that someone else has provided that you have some choice about what you’d pick, but you don’t have choice like you would in a grocery store. You’re not doing that for fun. You’re doing that to scam the system. What you’re doing is trying to make it. You’re trying to survive. And… And that could be really hard to have to do. Oh yes. Could be a lot of shame associated with that, I imagine. Yes, there can be a lotta shame associated with that and so I really try, when we train our volunteers, we try and let them know, you know, if someone comes in here with a bad attitude. Our job is not to police somebody’s attitude. When people come here, they’re coming in the full gamut of humanity. Our job, is to be here to provide the food, to give them a smile, to hopefully help them make it through this day.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:13:05] We were talking earlier about how last week a federal judge actually ordered the Trump administration to begin redistributing SNAP benefits, mentioning a moral obligation to do so, but of course we don’t know how soon those benefits will come or how much people will actually be getting. So I mean, do you still have concerns?

Heather Pierini: [00:13:28] Yes, I definitely have concerns. Number one, there’s this erosion of trust in the system, and that erosion in trust in the system is what’s going to keep people in fear. I don’t know how fast the system can ramp back up. I don’t know how much will be paid, if any. And if I’m in that position of not knowing and I’m tapped into all of the email lists and I mean, food insecurity is my job, then someone who is working and taking care of a family, getting verifiable information is difficult right now. Even if EBT goes out, I don’t think we’re gonna go back to normal, whatever normal was before this. And the food bank sees the same thing. Once the numbers increase, they don’t really go back down to. Either pre-pandemic levels or pre-emergency levels. We have failed as a society to create a system where working a full-time job doesn’t pay for rent and basic necessities for a small family. It just doesn’t. This right here, I wish I didn’t have to do it. I would love to be worked out of a job. I think that nonprofits are bearing the brunt and bearing the weight of the failures of our social services system.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:14:58] Well, Heather, thank you so much for making the time to chat with me. I really appreciate it.

Heather Pierini: [00:15:04] You’re very welcome and thank you for coming and helping us kind of share about what we do, helping kind of let the community know what we, do and hopefully people who are able will be able to donate, volunteer, share the word. All of that is amazing. Thank you, Ericka.