The SNAP funding mess highlights LA’s food insecurity crisis

A strange scene unfolded last week at the Adams/Vermont Farmers Market near USC.

Pomegranates, squash, and apples were in season, pink pomegranates were so ripe you could smell them from afar, and nutrient-dense yams were ready for the holidays.

But with federal funding for the 1.5 million people in Los Angeles County who depend on food assistance from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — or SNAP — the church parking lot that hosts the market was largely devoid of shoppers.

Although the market accepts payments through CalFresh, the state’s SNAP program, there was hardly anyone in line when the doors opened. Vendors often stand alone at their stalls.

A line of cars stretched more than a mile as people waited to receive free food boxes provided by the LA Food Bank in downtown Industry on Wednesday.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

As thousands of people in Southern California line up at food banks to collect free meals, and the struggle to deliver federal allocations creates uncertainty, it seems that fewer aid recipients are spending money at outdoor markets like this one.

“So far we’re doing 50% of what we normally do — or less,” said Michael Bach, who works with Action for Hunger, a food relief nonprofit that partners with farmers markets in the greater L.A. area, offering “market match” deals to customers paying with CalFresh debit cards.

This deal allows shoppers to buy up to $30 worth of produce for just $15. Skimming a ledger on her desk, Bach’s colleague Estrelita Ekor noted that only a handful of shoppers took advantage of the offer.

All week at the farmers markets where the workers were stationed, the absence was evident, she said. “I was in Pomona on Saturday — we only had six transactions all day,” she said. “Zero at La Mirada.”

CalFresh customers looking to double their money on purchases the next day largely disappeared in the downtown L.A. market, Ecker said.

A volunteer loads a free food package for a family at a drive-thru food distribution site in Industry City.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

“This program usually attracts a lot of people, but they either take what’s left or they don’t have anything on their cards,” she said.

The disruption in aid comes in the wake of the Trump administration’s decision to deliver only partial SNAP payments to states during the federal government shutdown, defying a court order to restart funds for November. On Friday night, Supreme Court Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson temporarily blocked the order pending a decision on the matter by the US Court of Appeals.

But by then, CalFresh had already started charging 100% of the November allowance to users’ debit cards. Even with this strike for food aid recipients in California, lack of access to food is a persistent problem in L.A., Cala de La Haye said. Institute for Food System Equity at USC

A study published by her team last year found that 25% of residents in LA County — or about 832,000 people — experience food insecurity, and that among low-income residents, the rate was even higher, at 41%. The researchers also found that 29% of the county’s residents experienced food insecurity, meaning they lacked options to obtain healthy, nutritious food.

Those figures indicated a slight improvement over data from 2023, when the end of the pandemic will boost state, county and nonprofit aid programs — along with rising inflation — to keep hunger rates the same as they were in early 2020, LaHaye said.

“It was a big wake-up call – we had 1 in 3 people food insecure in 2020,” De La Haye said. “We had huge lines at the food pantries.”

But while the USC study shows that immediate delivery of food assistance through government programs and nonprofits can quickly reduce food insecurity in emergencies, researchers found that many vulnerable Angelenos do not participate in food assistance programs.

Despite the county’s strides over the past decade to enroll more eligible families, De La Haye said, only 29% of food-insecure families in La County are enrolled in CalFresh, and only 9% WICFederal Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children.

De La Haye said participants in her focus groups shared a mix of reasons why they didn’t enroll: Many didn’t know they were eligible, while others said they were too embarrassed to apply for help, intimidated by the paperwork or afraid to disclose their immigration status. Some said they didn’t apply because they got less than the cut-off amount to qualify.

Even many of those receiving assistance have struggled: 39% of CalFresh recipients lack an affordable source of food and 45% face food insecurity.

De La Haye said hunger and problems accessing healthy food have serious short- and long-term health effects — contributing to higher rates of heart disease, diabetes and obesity, as well as higher rates of stress, anxiety and depression in adults and children. What’s more, she said, when people are unsure about their finances, highly perishable items like fresh, healthy foods are often the first things to sacrifice because they can be so expensive.

The USC study also revealed clear racial disparities: 31% of black residents and 32% of Latinos experience food insecurity, compared to 11% of white residents and 14% of Asians.

De La Haye said her team is analyzing this year’s data, which they will release in December. This analysis will look at investments in LA County’s food system over the past two years, including the allocation of $20 million in federal funding to 80 community organizations working on everything from urban agriculture to food supply, and the recent creation of the county’s Office of Food Systems to address challenges to food availability and increase healthy food consumption.

“These things that are disrupting people’s ability to get food, including and especially cutting these key programs that are so essential to 1.5 million people in the country — we’re not weathering these storms,” ​​De La Haye said. “People live only in fire.”