See inside River City Food Bank as change in SNAP benefits drives increased demand

This October, we are starting to see a real uptick in people experiencing food insecurity. At River City Food Bank, we're serving 30,000 people each and every month, but we anticipate that rising. October was the first month that folks were losing some of their CalFresh benefits as a result of some of the changes to work requirements. People who no longer meet those requirements at their annual appointments are removed from them and therefore coming to food banks like ours to get healthy fresh food for their families. Right now people are struggling to make ends meet. They're really having to make difficult choices between putting food on the table and paying for rent. And as much as we would love to, food banks like River City cannot make up the gap that is lost by CalFresh. We are here for our neighbors, we've been serving the community for more than 50 years, but to continue operating at this level we are going to need more food, more volunteers, and more resources. So right now we're seeing an increase in need and a decrease in resources. Kind of a perfect storm really for food insecurity in our area.