![]() ![]() End of Pandemic-EBT For Kidsįood benefits known as Pandemic-EBT for school-aged children and young kids, who would have gotten free or discounted lunches at school but lost access because of COVID school closures, are also disappearing at the end of the school year in May. The county has a population of about 3.2 million residents, according to census data. In Orange County, there were over 304,000 residents receiving food stamp benefits in January, according to data from the state department of social services. Local food bank leaders warn that seniors – a population that is surging in Orange County – will be hit the hardest by the end of CalFresh benefits. For some older adults, benefits will plummet from $281 to $23 with the change, according to the state association of food banks. On average, households receiving the benefits will lose $200 a month. Now families on CalFresh food stamps will go back to receiving pre-pandemic allocations. Credit: HOSAM ELATTAR, Voice of OC The End of COVID CalFresh BenefitsĪlmost 5 million Californians received CalFresh benefits in January, according to the California Department of Social Services. “That, coupled with the end of Pandemic EBT, means that California is about to lose more than 30% of its food safety net.” People line up for food at the Santa Ana Unified School District office on Nov. There’s no way that food banks alone can fill the gap that the end of Emergency Allotments is going to create,” said Stacia Hill Levenfeld, CEO of the California Association of Food Banks, in a press release this month. “The end of emergency allotments is going to be catastrophic for California’s food insecure community members. “It will certainly be a major hit to vulnerable families.”Ĭombined, the increased food stamp benefits and the Pandemic-EBT cards provided over 3 billion meals in 2021 to millions of Californians, according to the California Association of Food Banks. “It might not be a side by side comparison to March of 2020,” he continued. ![]() “We’ve got nearly 300,000 people they’re going to be affected by these cuts,” Lowry said about the end of the CalFresh emergency allocation impact in OC. Mark Lowry, director of the OC Food Bank said in a phone interview, called the end of the assistance programs a “financial one two punch” for Orange County’s vulnerable families. The change will mean increased pressure on food banks who are not seeing the same funding levels that came in at the start of the pandemic and are being stretched thin. “We’re concerned we know that this has been just critical benefits in our community during this really difficult time.” “The end of these emergency allotments and taking this food assistance out of communities, it’s going to hit an already vulnerable population,” said Mike Edmundson, deputy director of the agency’s assistance programs division, in a Tuesday phone interview. The disappearance of both those forms of assistance this year is leaving food bank leaders across the state, who upped their efforts to feed people amid the pandemic, and local government leaders at places like Orange County’s Social Services Agency worried of a food cliff as inflation costs soar. ![]()
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