A line stretched out the door of the Covenant Food Pantry and Soup Kitchen in Willimantic on Nov. 10, with more than 75 families, hundreds of individuals, each rationing a week’s worth of groceries.
Inside, Covenant’s Executive Director Kimberly Clark and Manager Anya Walikonis scrambled to keep shelves stocked and spirits lifted.
For Clark and Walikonis, the surge had begun even before November’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) crisis arrived.
“It started in October, the end of October, just because people were expecting to be struggling this month,” Walikonis said.
This sudden wave of need wasn’t limited to repeat visitors.
“We’ve had more than double or so increases to both repeat visitors and new visitors,” Clark said.
About 360,000 Connecticut residents in the SNAP program had their benefits denied since the start of the federal government shut down on Oct 21., according to Jason Jakubowski, President and CEO of Foodshare.
Walikonis and Clark watched as the state’s emergency banners directed people to pantries like theirs, while the state and town provided little to no new funds. Instead, the local community stepped up, individual donations arrived in droves, small businesses organized food drives and social groups rallied support.
“The groups that we rely on are the ones who have our backs, and primarily that’s individuals, families, small community groups and then other agencies who reach out and do food drives for us,” Clark said.
The food pantry shortage has reached beyond canned goods.
“People are having a hard time because we don’t have enough meat, milk and eggs. We don’t have nonperishables,” Clark said. “We went long periods of time without milk and vegetables, and we’re sending people to the store to buy at retail cost, because Foodshare didn’t have those things available to us for purchase.”
Clark added that non-food items are running out as well.
“We provide a lot of other essentials, like toiletries, shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste, tampons, a diaper bank and pet food,” she said. “All of those things have been in heavy demand, and we’ve been out of a lot of those for periods of time.”
Since Covenant has had trouble getting certain products and foods, they have had to limit the amount people can get from their food pantry.
“When this happens and you don’t have the resources available to meet the needs,” Clark said. “Then we start having to have conversations about limiting product, which we’ve already had to do.”
Walikonis also said that many residents in the area panicked when the SNAP benefits were no longer funded in November.
“We got calls about people saying, I’ve never had to go” to a pantry, Walikonis said. “How do I do it? What do I do? Where do I go?”
She added that she has taken calls from people who never had to go to a food pantry or soup kitchen before.
“I’ve taken a number of calls from people who are suddenly thrown into maybe a world that they’re unfamiliar with, at least for this organization,” she said. “I think it’s mainly just a stress on already limited resources that people have.”
Connecticut Foodshare is trying to help the food pantries and soup kitchens it supports in Connecticut, Jakubowski said that they have 600 local pantries they give money to while giving them tips on helping them get through the days.
“We are providing them with more food than ever before and are offering them tips on how to deal with long lines,” Jakubowski said.
Jakubowski added that about 324,000 Connecticut residents use one of the Foodshare pantries.
“There is no concrete number, but I imagine 90% of the 360,000 people on SNAP also use one of our pantries,” Jakubowski said.
Jakubowski saw unprecedented demand since SNAP benefits stopped being funded in November.
“We are seeing longer lines than we did during the pandemic and it was not easy to prepare for because of the man-made nature of the shutdown,” Jakubowski said.
Jakubowski added that many of the people using their pantries and soup kitchens are new faces.
“We have seen so many new faces over the past two weeks, people who have never used our services before,” Jakubowski said. “These are working people who never thought they would have to use our services.”
Jakuboski also said that there isn’t just one demographic of people using the pantries.
“It is pretty even across the board,’’ he said. “College students, young families, senior citizens, and everything in between use our pantries.”
Due to the increase of CT residents using the food pantries Foodshare supplies, Jakubowski said they have had to use the money they have gotten over two weeks instead of one year.
“The additional funds doubled what the state typically gives us, but instead of spreading it across the year it concentrates it in two weeks,” Jakubowski said.
On the other end, Dan Giacomi, the SNAP director for the state Department of Social Services, said that every day, the info they were getting kept changing.
The loss of SNAP affected the state’s economy, he said.
“For every dollar that goes in, it could be up to $1.50 that it gives back to the community for individuals,” Giacomi said. “The economic reverberations hit small grocery stores, bodega shops, corner stores, Connecticut farmers and independent retailers hardest.”
Giacomi said that the lessons they have learned during this shutdown have been eye-opening.
“We never expected in the 50-plus years that the SNAP program was operating, that we would have a scenario where we weren’t able to get out benefits,” Giacomi said.
Jakubowski said that there are many ways to get involved and help out with the SNAP crisis.
“The best way is to go to www.ctfoodshare.org and make a monetary donation or sign up to volunteer at soup kitchens and pantries,” Jakubowski said. “If you collect cans of food, you can give them to your local pantry or if you want to donate money, it is best to donate to food banks like ours because we purchase our food by the truck load.”
The federal shutdown ended on Nov. 12 after 43 days due to a deal that passed Congress and was approved by President Donald J. Trump.
