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| Home Front: Politix | |
| ‘It's scary': SNAP recipients brace for fallout as benefits vanish during shutdown | |
| 2025-11-02 | |
For residents like Lisa Weaving of Springfield, the loss of food aid is more than a political standoff – it's a looming crisis. "It’s scary because I’m a cancer survivor. I’m in remission. My doctor has not released me to go back to work yet, so I’m on disability, and I really need the extra for food, because by the time I pay all the bills, there’s really nothing left," Weaving said. She said her apartment building houses veterans, seniors and others on disability. "The entire building right now is in an uproar because they don’t know where they’re going to get their food from. We have the bread line across the street, but that’s only one meal a day." Weaving said many neighbors are turning to multiple pantries. "We have a pantry that’s open on Wednesdays from 12:30 to 3, and it’s once a month. You can get about 10 items per person. If you have kids, more. So it’s really a help for many, but their food doesn’t last an entire month. So you’re hopping from pantry to pantry." At Washington Street Mission in Springfield, director Jarid Brown said demand in Central Illinois has surged sharply since benefits were frozen. "Yesterday I got a call from one of our churches who has a large food pantry, and they had twice the number of people there that night and actually cleaned everything out. If we double that number, it’s only going to last a few weeks. If we see triple that number come in, we’ll be cleaned out within a couple of weeks." "If you’re living in poverty, if you are in that lowest income, it’s hard enough to climb out of poverty as it is. But now you add in rising food prices and you add in rising utility prices. It makes it nearly impossible for anyone to get out of that hole," Brown added. | |
| Posted by:Skidmark |
| #1 |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2025-11-02 09:03 |