15,000 households may lose access to food services in cuts
The San FranciscoMarin Food Bank, which dramatically expanded during the pandemic to meet soaring demand, will scale back some services over the next 20 months due to funding cuts. About 15,000 households in need may lose access to the free produce, dairy, protein and other groceries the food bank provides, while about a fifth of the nonprofit’s 253 workers will lose their jobs.
“I’m really concerned about our community,” said Tanis Crosby, executive director of the nonprofit. “We will focus on doing all we can for our community with the resources available, and work on solutions to end hunger.”
The food bank will cut its home deliveries by about 40% by January. It provided door-front deliveries to about 13,000 households a week during the fiscal year ended in June. Home deliveries increased during the pandemic to help people most at risk for COVID, such as seniors, the immune-compromised and others who could not leave their homes.
Going forward, people who are pregnant, caring for infants or disabled children, or who have physical or cognitive disabilities will still qualify for home deliveries. The food bank will no longer automatically deliver to people over 65 or those who have health conditions that exacerbate COVID’s effects.
The nonprofit will end the pop-up food pantries that it started during the pandemic, by June 2025. It has 17 pop-ups a week in San Francisco and Marin, largely in parking lots. They are run like free farmers’ markets, with food displayed on tables for participants to select.
The pop-ups were created because the pandemic forced many shutdowns among the community groups and social service agencies that distributed the free groceries as they tried to avoid in-person congregating. In response, the food bank started its first direct distributions with the pop-ups, including drive-through sites that drew hundreds of cars filled with people desperate for food relief, because at least 2.4 million Californians lost their jobs early in the pandemic.
Now the food bank will switch back to distribution through local groups that run neighborhood food pantries. It’s taking 20 months for the transition, hoping that gives time for groups to increase their capacity.
The cutbacks will also affect the food bank staff, which will be reduced from 253 to below 200 through attrition, early retirements and layoffs.
The food bank is losing money from all levels of government — state, federal and local. It had $10 million in pandemic funding for grocery access during fiscal year 2022, which was cut to $6 million for the current fiscal year, and none for the 2024 fiscal year. (Its fiscal years end in June.)
In addition, food supplies from the U.S. Department of Agriculture have been sharply reduced, from 23.8 million pounds in fiscal year 2021 at a cost to the food bank of 73 cents a pound, to 6.5 million pounds in the current fiscal year, at a cost of $1.06 a pound.
“In the post-pandemic funding landscape, the unfortunate reality facing local governments is federal support for anti-hunger programs is dwindling,” San Francisco Mayor London Breed said in a statement. “We must develop new approaches to address food insecurity. The Food Bank is working collaboratively on innovative and coordinated food access initiatives to end hunger in our city, and I look forward to working together in strong partnership.”
Crosby said that innovative policy and program solutions are needed to address hunger.
For instance, CalFresh, the state’s version of food stamps, lost its emergency pandemic allotments, meaning that the minimum amounts per person are just $23 a month to spend at the grocery store.
Moreover, the program uses the same income criteria nationwide, not accounting for cost of living differences.
“That creates a lot of stretch and strain for people who live in expensive places in America like San Francisco and Marin,” Crosby said. “People are being hit from all sides. Benefits are going away, while inflation persists and safety nets are now really under strain.”
Food bank recipients are of modest and low income, but often hold down jobs.
The food bank surveyed about 9,000 people out of the 56,000 households it serves and discovered that 60% of them had at least one person in their household working. More than 83% said they worry about running out of food, but 96% said they worry less because of the food bank.
“That’s profound,” Crosby said. “The impact we can make is immediate, significant and it matters.”