Operators of a biweekly food pantry in Peoria say potential cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, are likely to increase food insecurity for lower-income households.
“A lot of our clients receive SNAP benefits and it’s one of the main ways they’re able to afford food,” said Nate Palm, the Community Impact Director for Neighborhood House.
“The food pantry itself is really just a supplement to that program. So if SNAP benefits were to be cut, the food pantry is just not going to be able to pick up what's needed in order to feed people in our community.”
The reconciliation bill under consideration in Congress calls for shrinking SNAP benefits, also known as “food stamps,” by $300 billion over the next decade.
Changes approved by the House Committee on Agriculture include shifting program costs to the states, adding work reporting requirements for individuals between 55 and 64 years old and for parents of school-age children, barring states from seeking work requirement waivers, and blocking future administrations from increasing food benefits during an emergency or recession.
Palm says while nonprofit food pantries will continue to help as much as possible, the changes will create sizeable gaps that may be difficult to overcome.
“There’s going to be no program in the nonprofit sector that’s going to be able to put food in people's bellies like SNAP benefits are able to do,” he said. “The best thing that we can do is just hope that we’re going to get more donations and more funding for our programs, and hopefully we’re able to fulfill whatever need that is required.”
Neighborhood House president and CEO Julie Bonar says they’ve learned from past experiences that reductions of benefits lead to an increase in demand for their services.
“When cuts were made after the COVID relief was taken away, we had individuals coming to us at that time that went from receiving enough SNAP benefits to support themselves to suddenly not having enough,” said Bonar.
Estimates from the Congressional Budget Office project the changes would see more than 3 million individuals lose all access to SNAP, and another 100,000-150,000 losing some benefits.
Palm said Neighborhood House’s food pantry has seen a 20-30% increase in clients over the past fiscal year.
“The need is rising, and it's going to continue to rise from what we've seen,” he said. “Especially in Peoria, 61605, 61603, and 61602 are some of the poor zip codes in the state of Illinois. So poverty is definitely a huge issue for us, and that goes to food insecurity as well.”
Bonar said any increase in food insecurity likely would result in a bigger burden falling on the public healthcare system.
“We’re going to have malnutrition, and we're going to have the related health effects as well, which just strains our nonprofit organizations even further,” she said.
