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.
