SNAP food assistance will halt on Nov. 1 as a result of the ongoing government shutdown, deepening hardship for Boulder community members already facing hunger and food insecurity.
Boulder County is home to an estimated 19,000 SNAP recipients who will not receive money to pay for food next month. The lapse in assistance comes as local food banks are warning about rising food insecurity and surging demand for their services. In response, Gov. Jared Polis’ office submitted a request to the state legislature for $10 million to support food banks and extend emergency funding for WIC, a federal nutrition program for mothers and children younger than 5. The Joint Budget Committee will review the request Oct. 30.
“I am pretty sure we are going to approve the funding,” said state Sen. Judy Amabile of Boulder, who serves on the budget committee. “My understanding is the money will go out in three $3.3 million installments starting on Nov. 3.”
The aid, if it comes, would be welcome.
“With potential SNAP cuts coming, having individuals come to our pantries and food banks when our resources are already stretched is such a scary and heavy feeling,” said Kim Da Silva, CEO of Community Food Share in Louisville, at a meeting between Rep. Joe Neguse and local food banks on Oct. 21.
Debbie Pope, the executive director of Emergency Family Assistance Association (EFAA), added that in recent surveys, EFAA saw the number of people saying they are hungry and did not eat nearly double, from 31% to 59%.
A partisan fight
On Oct. 28, Colorado joined more than 20 other states in suing the Trump administration, arguing the USDA and Office of Management and Budget are unlawfully refusing to fund SNAP in November.
Polis and Neguse say the administration has other options, including tapping roughly $5 billion in contingency reserves, to prevent the $8 billion lapse in benefits. While the USDA previously said it could move money to prevent benefit cuts, it later reversed course, saying in a memo that the emergency funds cannot be spent until money is officially appropriated by Congress. The White House has also moved federal dollars toward other priorities in recent weeks, including paychecks for military and ICE agents.
“It is clear President Trump and his USDA are making a deliberate, illegal, and inhumane choice to not fund the SNAP program during the federal government shutdown despite the availability of contingency funds. The government is legally required to make payments to those who meet the program requirements,” said Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser in a press release.
The SNAP freeze has intensified pressure to end the shutdown. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson has kept the House on hiatus while seeking concessions from Democrats who are pushing to extend federal health insurance subsidies.
“We haven’t had votes in the House of Representatives since Sept. 19,” Neguse said. “It is absurd. It’s outrageous.”
Some analysts say Thanksgiving could force an end to the shutdown, as travelers would face disruptions and air traffic controllers would approach their third missed paycheck.
Food pantries brace for a surge
The impending lapse in SNAP benefits comes as new eligibility restrictions have already reduced food stipends for thousands of Boulder County residents. At a recent county meeting, local food banks estimated those reductions could increase demand by another 20% to 25%. They added that demand was climbing even before then, as families increasingly turn to food banks to offset rising housing costs.
Families receive an average of $332 per month from SNAP for food, or $574 for a household with children. Without this funding, more families will look to food banks and pantries that are already stretched too thin.
“Resources have plateaued. Need just continues to go up,” Chad Molter, executive director of Harvest of Hope said, reflecting a sentiment repeated by numerous food banks at the Oct. 21 meeting.
“We’ve seen a version of that movie before,” said Nate Broeckert of Coal Creek Meals on Wheels, describing how the end of a Covid-era extension of SNAP benefits caused visitation to double in 2023, placing the organization in a $200,000 deficit. After never turning anyone away, he said Meals on Wheels is considering its first-ever waitlist.
Betty Abel, executive director of the Nederland Food Pantry, said she is bracing for a surge in need as residents lose SNAP benefits while still reeling from the Caribou Village Fire, which destroyed about 20 local businesses.
“We’re just getting hit all at once with everything,” Abel told Boulder Reporting Lab. She said the pantry served about 250 clients in September and has been seeing 15 to 20 new clients each week.
“If demand spikes, that’s where I’m really nervous,” Abel said. “We don’t have funding like that.”
The lapse in SNAP benefits will also affect local farms. In Colorado, the Double Up Food Buck program matches what SNAP recipients spend on produce at farmers markets, dollar for dollar.
“Organizations like ours are going to continue providing food to these community members,” said Lauren Kelso, site director of Growing Gardens. “We aren’t going to leave our customers that rely on these programs without food. We’ll just donate that to them. But we only get to do that because we are a nonprofit. Most farms can’t take on that cost.”
She added that farms have already lost “a lot of funding for food access programs that our local food pantries used to purchase local products” due to federal cuts, a hit both food banks and farmers now feel.
State aid unlikely to fill the gap
“If the government doesn’t reopen and our worst fears materialized in terms of those SNAP cuts, the state government, local governments, are going to have to find a way to help bridge the gap,” Neguse told food bank representatives.
State and local government officials say they lack the resources to address the looming shortfall.
“We cannot fill the holes that the federal government is blowing in our budget, but we will do what we can to try to make things as good as we can,” said state Rep. Kyle Brown of Louisville, comparing his job to placing pillows at the bottom of a cliff as a train “careens” over the edge.
Even if the state legislature approves Polis’ request for $10 million for food banks, that represents less than half of the approximately $21 million of food assistance that was supposed to go out to Colorado families in November, including about $3.75 million intended for Boulder County residents.
Por Jaijongkit contributed reporting to this story.
If only there was a way to stop paying federal income tax and have it go to states instead. Why play by rules or laws when trump administration does not. Why pay if it isn’t coming back to the states that pay the most because trump illegally diverts billions to ICE thugs and the national guard deployments in American cities to terrorize residents and citizens, and prefers huge bail out to Argentina. Now he wants $230k from the Treasury for being personally inconvenienced during the classified documents FBI raid at Mar a lago. He’ll just take the money and we’ll find out way after the fact. Incompetent, unethical robber baron ripping our country to shreds.
The House of Representatives passed the clean CR that would have kept the US government open for normal business back in September. The Senate has voted 13 times so far to approve the bill which didn’t put any demands on Democrats to keep the government open for normal business. Two democrats voted yes but 5 more are needed to add up to the 60 votes required in the Senate to pass a CR. As a party policy they have refused to pass this clean bill because they (in their own words) are using it as their leverage to extort trillions of additional dollars for payments of Medicaid for non-citizens and extension of emergency “Affordable Care Act” subsidies which were approved during COVID pandemic as a temporary help for people out of work.