On a Tuesday morning at one of the largest food banks in Lewis County, residents lined up in the lobby of The Salvation Army building to grab boxes of food for their families. While the shelves were mostly full, Salvation Army Captain Gin Pack said they are usually bare by the end of the week before being restocked.
An increase in traffic could be the latest impact of the recent federal government shutdown. The Salvation Army of Lewis County has already been working to help the families of furloughed workers, and now even more residents are showing up as food benefits through the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) are set to run out Friday without government intervention.
Starting Saturday, Nov. 1, SNAP benefits will become the latest and most far-reaching casualty of the current federal government shutdown after the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced earlier this week that there was no more money to fund the program without congressional action.
A banner notification on the USDA website blames Senate Democrats for the funding shortage and states “bottom line, the well has run dry.” According to an announcement from the Washington state Department of Social and Health Services, SNAP food benefits will no longer go out to recipients after Oct. 31 due to the federal government shutdown. Cash benefits are expected to continue as normal.
According to Salvation Army Captain Steven Pack, some residents coming through have said they are preparing for the benefit gap.
“Even just this morning, I was talking to a couple people that were here because they’re concerned for their SNAP benefits,” Steven said. “One gentleman said, ‘my SNAP benefits are supposed to get refilled on (Nov. 2). I’m not sure if I’m going to have anything, so I’m here being proactive.’”
It seems food banks and other state and local programs are likely to be the first defense against hunger in the state and the county as the benefits run dry. Frequency of their use here in Lewis County seems to be increasing, according to local food bank operators The Salvation Army of Lewis County and Gather Church.
Gin said she has received more and more calls from families asking what they need to do to sign up for the food bank. Apparently, that's not a regular occurrence.
“I have fielded more phone calls like that in the past probably 10 days … where they’re like, ‘What do I need to bring so I can get food?’ Which is not typical,” Gin said. “Most of the people have already signed up, you know. They’re familiar with it. And so people are being proactive because they recognize that there might be an impact to their household.”
Gin added that she tracks data points for the food bank each month and expects the numbers for new signups for the month of October will show a significant increase.
Washington state Gov. Bob Ferguson announced Tuesday that the state would send $2.2 million per week in financial assistance to food banks across the state ahead of the benefit shortage.
But Washington state, and more specifically Lewis County, will not escape the impacts of the shortage in benefits.
According to the most current data from the USDA, nearly a million people in Washington state will either see a reduction in benefits or lose them entirely. To be more precise, around 905,000 out of the state’s more than 8 million people — or just under one in eight Washingtonians — will be impacted by the change to benefits.
The most recent SNAP benefit data for Lewis County comes from June 2024 and shows more than 8,000 cases or households with around 13,750 individuals receiving benefits. When compared with Census and other population data, the SNAP benefit enrollment rate comes to around 16% of Lewis County residents, or a little more than one in six people in Lewis County.
According to U.S. Census Bureau data, Lewis County had more than 82,000 residents in 2020. A population estimate for Lewis County from the World Population Review and other online sources estimates the county’s 2025 population at around 87,000.
While the Salvation Army’s Hope Market food bank seems to be serving more individuals ahead of the gap in benefits, Gather Church employees say they’re also seeing a spike in people signing up for their food service.
Gather Church operates a mobile food bank, which delivers 500 to 600 food boxes a week to families across the county, from a dropoff in Packwood to home deliveries in Pe Ell and everywhere in between.
According to Gather Church employee Derek Shaughnessy, signups for the delivered food box have increased in the last couple weeks, from six or seven new signups a week to more than 20.
Since the food box delivery program has less contact with those signing up than a traditional food bank, he said he can't be sure that it's a direct impact of the SNAP cuts, but added that a spike like that is rare.
“I don't think I’ve seen a spike like this,” Shaughnessy said. “Not in that short period of time. Maybe COVID.”
Gather Church Pastor Cole Meckle said the uptick is a bit concerning as the program has already had trouble finding adequate sources of protein for its boxes. He added that it's unlikely that the church as a private religious organization will benefit directly from the additional state funding for food banks. However, he hopes the funding will go to some of its partner organizations, like its food supplier, to help make food more readily available.
“We've got the network to bring food to people. We need the food to bring,” Meckle said.
The issue with supply is seemingly shared by The Salvation Army, which recently announced an impromptu food drive with Walmart scheduled for Saturday, Nov. 1, to shore up its supplies. Gin said the Hope Market food bank is in a good place at the moment but is still looking for longer-term solutions to make sure it stays that way.
It's still unclear when the government shutdown that has caused the benefit shortage will come to an end or if other actions in the meantime could provide extra financial support for the program.
Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown joined a group of 22 other state attorneys general on Tuesday that is suing the USDA over the gap in SNAP benefit funding. According to a press release from Brown’s office, the states involved in the lawsuit are accusing the department of failing to use federal contingency funds allocated by Congress specifically to fill gaps in SNAP benefit funding.
The federal government maintains those funds are to provide food and emergency supplies during unforeseen disasters, such as major weather events.
The lawsuit adds that the government has already allocated additional funding to other programs experiencing gaps, such as the one provided to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women Infants and Children (WIC) earlier this month.
“Despite USDA’s claim of insufficient funds, the agency has access to billions of dollars in SNAP-specific contingency funds appropriated by Congress for this very purpose,” Brown said in the Tuesday news release. “Furthermore, USDA has funded other programs with emergency funds during this shutdown, but has refused to fund SNAP, leaving millions of Americans without the assistance they need to buy food.”
