But there are parts of the state that rely far more heavily on the federal food aid.<\/p>\n
In Apache County \u2014 where Rajca has lived and worked for decades \u2014 nearly a third of individuals and 44% of households rely on SNAP, according to state data and census counts.<\/p>\n
In Navajo and Yuma counties, a quarter of residents receive SNAP benefits.<\/p>\n
In Santa Cruz and Gila, it\u2019s more than one in five.<\/p>\n
By comparison, 10% of Maricopa County residents receive SNAP.<\/p>\n
In counties with especially high food insecurity, the potential loss of food aid this month \u2014 or even the loss of half the usual benefit \u2014 has struck fear.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t see why they can\u2019t provide the full amount,\u201d said Steve Knutson, director of the White Mountain Community Food Bank in Lakeside, 130 miles northeast of Phoenix near the Fort Apache Reservation.<\/p>\n
He denounced the use of food aid as a \u201cpolitical football.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe food that we hand out is not going to be sufficient to meet their needs,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In the 60-year history of the food stamp program, benefits have never been interrupted during a budget standoff, including the 35-day shutdown halfway through President Donald Trump\u2019s first term.<\/p>\n
Before the shutdown that began Oct. 1, the U.S. Department of Agriculture promised to keep food aid flowing no matter what. But the USDA reversed itself ahead of the Nov. 1 monthly distribution of benefits, asserting since Congress hadn\u2019t approved its fiscal year 2026 budget, it had no choice.<\/p>\n
Last Tuesday, Arizona joined two dozen other states in asking a federal court to force the USDA to tap a $6 billion SNAP contingency fund. The administration refused until ordered to do so Friday by federal judges in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.<\/p>\n
\n
The USDA told a court Monday it had already spent some of the contingency fund, and will provide $4.65 billion to states \u2014 enough \u201cto cover 50% of eligible households\u2019 current allotments\u201d for November but not for any new applicants.<\/p>\n
The USDA refused to tap a separate, much bigger reserve fund supported by fees on imports, arguing doing so would take funding away from the school lunch program that serves 29 million children and other childhood nutrition programs.<\/p>\n
Rajca has long relied on a mix of Medicaid, church donations and SNAP to make ends meet. For decades, he has maintained the mission site his parents founded in the 1990s. He also runs a children\u2019s program through his church.<\/p>\n
Without a full monthly SNAP allotment, he plans to tap into donations he would rather use for his ministry.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they have to feed me at $300 a month, that means that\u2019s probably $300 that doesn\u2019t go for the kids program,\u201d he said. \u201cSo I\u2019m going to try and cut back as much as I can so I don\u2019t steal all the money from the kids.\u201d<\/p>\n
East of Phoenix, floods last month washed out roads and destroyed homes in Globe and nearby communities.<\/p>\n
The SNAP crisis has made the suffering worse, said Roberta Loyd, who has volunteered at the Gila Community Food Bank in Globe for 14 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf people can get here, we are feeding them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Since Monday morning, she said, the bank has been \u201cslammed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ahead of the Nov. 1 funding cliff, governors in both parties scrambled to make up the shortfall and avert widespread hunger.<\/p>\n
In Virginia, with a SNAP roll about the same as Arizona\u2019s, Gov. Glenn Youngkin said the state was prepared to spend about $37 million this month on SNAP benefits. Another Republican, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, said he would find the $150 million his state\u2019s recipients would need.<\/p>\n
In California and New York, Democratic Govs. Gavin Newsom and Kathy Hochul said they would set aside $80 million and $62 million, respectively.<\/p>\n
In Arizona, Gov. Katie Hobbs announced<\/a> $1.8 million in emergency state aid, mostly to help food banks statewide. She conceded that was only a \u201cdrop in the bucket\u201d<\/a> compared to Arizonans\u2019 needs.<\/p>\n The governor\u2019s plan includes $300,000 to cover $30 food vouchers for 10,000 people.<\/p>\n At that level of state support, said Punam Ohri-Vachaspati, a professor of nutrition who leads the Arizona State University Food Policy and Environment Research Group, \u201cPeople will have to go without meals, and food insecurity rates will increase extensively\u201d until full federal payments resume.<\/p>\n Adrienne Udarbe, executive director of Pinnacle Prevention, an Arizona nonprofit group that works to reduce food insecurity, said USDA funds could hit recipients\u2019 debit cards early next week.<\/p>\n \u201cThose contingency funds should have been activated to prevent this from even happening to begin with,\u201d she said. \u201cLuckily, the court ruling has cleared that up, so I hope we don\u2019t see a repeat in a future shutdown.\u201d<\/p>\n This article<\/a> first appeared on Cronkite News<\/a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Isabella Gomez and Nick Karmia | Cronkite News WASHINGTON \u2014 For people like Jeffrey Rajca, who runs…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":362138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,5643,1587,1589,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-362137","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-arizona","10":"tag-az","11":"tag-phoenix","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-united-states-of-america","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115508356570585858","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}