Oct. 22, 2025
The San Francisco-Marin Food Bank is extremely concerned about the potential impact to people receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and USDA’s Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) benefits should the government remain shut down and fail to take proper steps tomorrow to ensure benefits are issued. There are 90,000 working families, single parents, seniors, veterans, and more who rely on SNAP and WIC in San Francisco and Marin to feed their families – we are calling on Congress to ensure the payments continue during this Shutdown and reverse the devastating SNAP cuts they approved in July.
Food is a basic human right, and yet our community is already facing unprecedented levels of hunger. This is untenable. Having a pause in SNAP and WIC benefits during this shutdown foreshadows what will happen when devastating national efforts to slash critical social safety nets go into effect.
We appreciate Governor Newsom’s recognition that food banks are crisis response organizations. As with other emergencies, the Food Bank will continue to be on the front lines of ensuring our community can put food on the table should our federal elected officials choose not to take steps by tomorrow to ensure people can access the benefits they need.
We learned about the decision to deploy the National Guard to support food banks this morning at the same time it was announced to the press. At this time, we don’t have more information to share about if and how they will support our Food Bank, as we are waiting to learn more.
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