In an email sent to all employees of the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank on Thursday, Executive Director Tanis Crosby said that Mayor London Breed has recommended curtailing funding for the organization by 2025.
For the fiscal year of 2024, the mayor has cut funding to the city’s overall grocery programs by $10 million to $20 million, an email from Crosby warns. And, she adds in the email, the city’s food security budget will drop by another $10 million the following year, with a recommendation of “zero funding” for the Food Bank in 2025.
This includes a currently proposed $4 million cut to the city’s $10 million funding for the Food Bank, according to the email from Crosby. The Food Bank is facing an $8 million deficit next year, she added.
“We vehemently disagree with Mayor Breed’s budgetary decisions,” Crosby wrote in her email, going on to say that “the stark reality is, the current hunger crisis will only worsen, if local resources are not prioritized to prevent the Food Bank and its community partners from having to reduce critical anti-hunger services that serve thousands of low-income San Franciscans.”
The mayor’s office responded that the current budget invests $40 million to combat food security over the next two years. “Mayor Breed has delivered a balanced budget that maintains essential services for the City, building on her top priorities while closing a significant deficit,” the office said in an email.
According to the Food Bank, their staff hands out food for some 150,000 meals daily to hungry San Franciscans. They operate a host of programs, signing people up for the state’s CalFresh food stamp program, running food pantries across the city and Marin and delivering food to thousands of households weekly.
A Food Bank worker, who preferred to remain anonymous, said the organization will have to make significant reductions, like ensuring only one person per household is enrolled at a food pantry, and helping some of the 13,000 people who depend on home-delivery programs transition to walk-up grocery sites.
“We’re downsizing,” said the worker. “But we have so many talented, smart people here,” and they are working overtime to ensure those currently served by the Food Bank will stay fed.”
Much of the city’s Food Bank funding supported emergency programs set up during the pandemic, when tens of thousands of people enrolled in state and local programs.
Though budgets nationally are returning to 2019 numbers, rates of hunger have not: 30 percent of San Francisco families with children report food insecurity, according to the city.
And participation in Food Bank programs is 74 percent higher than in 2019, according to the Food Bank, serving nearly 60,000 families. The cost of food supplied to those families is also three times higher than it was pre-pandemic, the Food Bank says.
In April, Mission Local reported that, in anticipation of steep cuts, Food Bank staff closed their pantries to new applicants and started shifting people from imperiled programs to others with more stable funding.
For the next several months, the city will hear feedback on budget priorities. In Crosby’s email, she stressed that staff will be campaigning throughout this review period for a budget that places more emphasis on hungry residents.
San Francisco is looking at Massive Budget Cuts due to the destruction of Downtown Property Taxes, and the fact that Visitors to SF in 2023 are a fraction of 2019.
SF will need to triage how spends its limited funds.
The problem is the insane salaries being paid. With yearly increase for some that are upwards of 24%. Newspaper should be posting the most egregious ones in their papers for the people to see. Starting with the DPW, SFMTA, and the Mayor’s office. Then there are the countless number of employees making equal or more their pay in overtime!!!
* (2018 had 3 Mayors on payroll)
Last week London Breed said during her budget speech that not everyone will be happy with her budget and that “she didn’t care”. Really – it is literally her sworn duty to care. How about just humoring us and say you thought about all of the budget needs and “after careful consideration” some will be cut. The sentence still has the word “care” in it but leaves the listener feeling different. London Breed is a morally bankrupt person and needs to try living in this city without an eye-popping salary, health benefits and pension paid for by the People and cars paid for by Mohammed Nuru.
The food bank is a very inefficient model for addressing food insecurity. I tried to volunteer at the pop-ups and the meal deliveries. It was wasteful with a lot of food getting dumped, and often times I was delivering meals to folks in nicer houses and neighborhoods than mine. Adult highly paid professional children live in the homes with these seniors. The Food Bank has optics and a marketing machine on its side but in reality, it is a very poor way of addressing food security and gives companies opportunities to write of overproduction on its taxes. We should look at what the mayor’s $40 million is going towards. Probably more sustainable programs.
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Just unbelievable!
But plenty of cash for London Greed’s SFPD. And people wonder why broke folks need to steal or starve?
Criminalising poverty and homelessness: reason No. 2,582,913 to defund the police and fund the social services people actually need.
It’s mostly professional criminals that are stealing. I find it offensive the casualness with which folks talk assuming that poverty induces crime. If anything, high crime in poor neighborhoods keeps residents from escaping their situation. Why get something nice if you know a neighborhood criminal is going to take it away?
SF has a huge budget deficits approaching, so unfortunate cuts cannot be avoided. The SF/Marin Food Bank had $150 million in revenue and contributions last year and $50 million cash on hand at the end of 2022. The city’s $4 million reduction (it is still contributing $6 million) really shouldn’t move the dial. Yes, we all wish there were unlimited resources available. But cuts have to be made, and a small cut to a large organization with a lot of cash is not a bad move. Frankly, I’d rather see food bank funding maintained and cuts to the $700+ million SF spends on the homeless each year (which does not seem to garner very good outcomes and could certainly be directed more effectively).
Yeah maybe the political class should have thought two steps ahead when celebrating businesses and residents leaving and deteriorating the tax base. Those pensions are other post retirement benefits aren’t paying for themselves.
This is pretty disturbing news. The priority appears to be housing over food. We already have a lot of theft in the grocery stores. May we look forward to more and higher food costs and more market closures?
What was the City doing funding the food bank in the first place? I thought the Food Bank’s services were meant to be supplemental to other government programs like CalFresh. If the government is already providing food assistance, a duplicate program seems wasteful
While I don’t agree with everything in the Mayors budget proposal, she does see the value of neighborhood based solutions to food insecurity. The food bank has harmed many communities with its lack of choice and generally undignified service model. The food funding in this budget proposal helps keep BIPOC led and neighborhood based organizations feeding community. It sounds like Mission Local should talk to some of dozens of small orgs that do the heavy lifting of truly connecting to those they serve and nourishing with culturally appropriate, fresh, and regionally grown food. The food bank has millions of dollars and many more resources available (maybe read their 990s before you report on their funding needs).