“Our neighbors need food now,” says the South Louisiana Second Harvest Food Bank website.
Amid uncertainty over SNAP funding, food banks across the country are scrambling to pick up the slack for the 42 million Americans who rely on the program for food assistance.
SNAP payments have been suspended since November 1st due to the government shutdown. On Thursday, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to fully restore funding to the program by Nov. 7. The administration immediately appealed the ruling and on Friday sought an emergency injunction to block the order.
Amid the massive legal battle, several states have announced they have begun the process of fully disbursing food stamps, The New York Times reported.
CNBC Make It spoke with several food bank leaders about how they are responding to the challenges caused by SNAP cuts and the government shutdown.
Brian Green, president and CEO of the Houston Food Bank, describes the situation as “a series of disasters.”
Green said Texas typically distributes SNAP payments on a staggered monthly basis, meaning an additional 125,000 Texans will run out of EBT funds each day starting in early November.
As the government shutdown drags on, more furloughed federal workers in Houston are turning to food banks for assistance, Green said.
“If this continues, the damage will get worse day by day,” he says.
Faced with “significant increase in needs”
Leslie Bacho, CEO of Silicon Valley’s Second Harvest, said the effects of the SNAP disruption are already being felt.
More than 168,000 people use CalFresh, California’s version of SNAP, within the Santa Clara and San Mateo counties service area, Bacho said.
Bacho said more than 1,500 unique users visited the bank’s online food search tool on Monday alone. The tool connects people to nearby food distribution sites. It’s almost double the normal amount.
Their hotline has seen a 200% increase in referral requests, she says.
“We have ordered additional food and are working hard to increase the amount of food we expect to see a significant increase in demand,” Bacho said.
John Toops, CEO of Second Harvest Food Bank of South Louisiana, said his organization was “under stress” even before SNAP was postponed.
He said the Louisiana Legislature stepped in to help provide backup funding to SNAP users, but cuts to the Department of Agriculture earlier this year were already causing food banks to be undersupplied.
There’s “no question” that demand for food assistance has increased over the past week, Toops said, “and there’s a lot of anxiety going around.”
For every meal a food bank provides, SNAP provides nine, creating an even bigger gap for banks to fill, Toops said.
“The closures are putting additional strain on food bank networks at a time when they can’t afford it,” he says.
Food bank response
About 425,000 households in Houston rely on SNAP, and the Houston Food Bank would need to double its production to meet typical levels of need, Green said.
They are currently using all available resources to increase output by about 50%, and Mr. Green has given the bank’s procurement team the green light to “spend what[they]need to spend.”
Right now, Houston food banks are in “disaster response mode,” Green said.
They set up special distribution sites in parking lots around the city, including Houston’s NRG Stadium, specifically targeting federal employees and SNAP users.
Houston residents line up in their cars for a special free food distribution by the Houston Food Bank at NRG Stadium on November 1, 2025 in Houston, Texas.
Mark Felix | AFP | Getty Images
Green said it costs about $15,000 to set up these “supersites,” and “we’re recruiting more volunteers and paying a lot of extra money.”
At Second Harvest Food Bank South Louisiana, Toops asked to use a “substantial amount” of the bank’s reserves to buy more food, he said.
He also works to spread the word about food banks.
“Our community has really stepped up, not just financially, but over time, donations have increased, which means a lot to us,” he says.
Still, “we’re overstaffed right now,” he says. “I feel like I’m asking people to work 24/7 right now to survive this.”
“We always do our best,” Topps said, but the current situation is “not sustainable.”
Second Harvest Silicon Valley is in “drop everything mode” and is working to allocate 15% more food to each distribution site, Bacho said.
Importantly, the charity’s food system is already “very strained,” but the last thing Bacho wants is for people in need to worry about running out of food in the bank.
“Whether it involves putting money into our preserves, whether it involves getting more funding from our community, whether it involves getting more funding from a greater partnership with the county, we’re going to do everything we can to meet the increased needs,” she says.
The crisis has only just begun
Both Toops and Green liken the current situation to the aftermath of a natural disaster, in which “the federal government has come to the rescue,” Green said.
“In this case, the federal government is the cause, not the solution,” he says.
Green said many food banks and aid organizations are now kept afloat through local donations.
“If philanthropy continues, we can continue to do this for quite a long time,” he says. However, “philanthropy goes up all at once during a crisis, but then quickly goes down.”
Toops said there are several ways people can support food banks at this time.
Primarily, food banks need monetary donations. That’s the “most efficient” way to help, he says. “Because you can actually use that money to do exactly what you need in that moment.”
Volunteers can also help at food banks with tasks such as sorting donations, packing boxes, and distributing food.
But at the end of the day, “we have to get back to some level of normalcy,” Toops said.
For now, Bacho said, “we are only at the beginning of this crisis.” The more days that go by without SNAP funding, she says, the more demand on food banks grows.
“The man-made problems in Washington, D.C., need to take care of themselves,” Toops said.
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