SNAP, Food Bank Funding In Limbo

Connecticut’s primary food bank is preparing to lose at least $800,000 in federal funding, as food pantries and soup kitchens across the city brace for a dual storm of federal budget slashes and an expected rise in hunger.

President Donald Trump’s administration has frozen several federal funding sources that help to stock the fridges and fill the shelves of at least 80 food pantries and soup kitchens in New Haven.

The funding includes an $800,000 grant originally promised under President Joe Biden to Connecticut Foodshare, the state’s food bank affiliated with Feeding America, that appears to have been all but canceled under Trump. The federal government has also interrupted $376,373 from the Emergency Food and Shelter Program (EFSP) slated for New Haven County, either canceling or postponing every information session about how to access those funds. 

All the while, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) helmed by Elon Musk has fired a yet-unreleased number of employees from the agencies that distribute those grants. And the House of Representatives has resolved to cut $230 billion through the Agriculture Committee, which allocates a significant majority of its funds toward Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, also known as food stamps).

While local food assistance remains available, much is uncertain in the long term — and anxiety is high — for New Haveners in need of food, and for the local non-profits that help them stave off hunger. 

“I am a woman of faith and I know that God has got me, but you know, it is scary. It is scary because I receive SNAP and go to the food pantry,” said Kimberly Hart, who runs New Haven’s chapter of Witnesses to Hunger. ​“The cost of food is going way, way, way up, and my income has not changed one iota.”

Hart also receives healthcare from Medicare and Medicaid, for which funding is currently under debate. ​“It is just a period of uncertainty that I’ve never experienced in my life, and I am 63 years old,” she said.

“I have to just know that everything’s gonna be all right. I have to just know. I have to know that for myself. Because if not,” she said, ​“I would lose my ever-loving mind.”

Hart isn’t alone. According to a DataHaven report, nearly 13,800 households in New Haven — 27 percent of the city — received SNAP benefits in 2021.

Meanwhile, Feeding America estimates that 20.2 percent of New Haven residents — 27,380 individuals — are food insecure, meaning that they do not have consistent access to sufficient food.

“That number feels even a little bit low,” said Steve Werlin, the executive director of Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen (DESK).

Across the state last year, according to Feeding America, food insecurity rose by 23 percent.

"The Funds Are Not Likely To Come"

A significant majority of food distributed to New Haveners by way of pantries and soup kitchens comes from Connecticut Foodshare, a branch of Feeding America, according to Connecticut Foodshare President Jason Jakubowski. 

The organization provided the equivalent of 3.4 million meals to New Haven-based pantries and kitchens last fiscal year — 8 percent of the 44.6 million meals it provided throughout the state.

According to Jakubowski, 20 percent of those groceries comes from the federal government through the Department of Agriculture (USDA) — not by way of a grant allocation, but in the form of a direct food supply through a program called The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP).

So far, Jakubowski said, the TEFAP program has not been a target of DOGE’s cost-cutting efforts, though he’s not sure whether that might change.

“I can’t imagine how or why the federal government would cut the program completely, but I do think we do have to expect at least some reductions in the program,” he said. 

An internal analysis found that the TEFAP contributions would cost about $40 million to replace, Jakubowski said. ​”I can tell you,” he said, ​“we don’t have $40 million additional dollars that we can spend on food purchases.”

While TEFAP has so far remained intact, at least two smaller-scale programs that fund food aid in New Haven and across the state are now in limbo. 

One is the Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) grant, a relatively new program established by former President Joe Biden’s administration in 2021 to specifically fund food aid purchases from local farms.

Last year, Jakubowski said, the food bank received $1.2 million from the LFPA program to purchase produce from Connecticut farmers.

In 2025, based on determinations in October 2024, Connecticut Foodshare had been expecting nearly $800,000 from USDA through a LFPA grant. 

“Now we’ve been told that the funds are not likely to come,” said Jakubowski. ​“We are proceeding as if we are not going to get the money for the LFPA program. We have an obligation to budget conservatively and to be upfront with our farmers.”

Due to the finite growing season in Connecticut, the food bank has to communicate with farmers well in advance about expected purchases at that scale.

So if the administration decides to restore the LFPA program a few months from now, Jakubowski said, it will likely be too late to affect this year’s growing season.

A number of additional grants promoting access to nutritious, locally farmed food are also at stake. 

CitySeed, which organizes New Haven’s farmer’s markets, is currently waiting to see whether 20 percent of its operating budget — more than $700,000 over three years, allotted through the USDA in Fiscal Year 2023 — will remain intact.

That funding supports CitySeed’s food business incubation programs, which includes connecting local farms to food businesses. The grant primarily covers staffing as well as some organizational expenses. 

“We were able to process reimbursements through the 19th of January,” said CitySeed Executive Director Sarah Miller. ​“They’ve told us that they can’t process anything from Jan. 20 forward until a determination has been made about whether we are in compliance with the [anti-Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion] executive order.”

Right now, Miller said, CitySeed is ​“proceeding with everything that doesn’t add new costs, but we’re not gonna make any new investments” until the funding is confirmed.

CitySeed is also hoping that a USDA-funded Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Program (GusNIP) grant will be renewed in the coming year — enabling the organization to double SNAP benefits at its farmers markets. That grant enables low-income New Haveners to purchase farmers market produce while broadening the customer base and compensation for local farms.

An additional grant currently in question comes from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) known as the Emergency Food and Shelter Program (EFSP).

According to Adam Sendroff, who chairs the board that administers the grant in the Greater New Haven area, the EFSP grant was supposed to provide $376,373 to New Haven and surrounding towns this year.

Since Trump took office, every planned information session or webinar about how to access that funding has been either postponed or canceled, said Sendroff. 

Several other news developments — including Trump’s stated desire to eliminate FEMA altogether, cuts to staffing within the agency, and the since-reversed executive order freezing all federal grants in January until the administration’s review — have added to Sendroff’s concern that the program may not survive.

That EFSP funding supports shelter and food provision at organizations like Columbus House (which received $30,000 last year), Youth Continuum ($14,500), Loaves and Fishes ($11,250), BH Care’s Center for Domestic Violence Services ($9,039), and DESK (which received $4,500 last year), among 37 local recipients in total. 

"We Will See Our Lines Longer"

At Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen (DESK), which serves about 4,000 people each year, Executive Director Steve Werlin said the organization’s ability to provide food will not change, even if federal funding diminishes.

“We get food out the door. That is core to what we do,” said Werlin, who explained that DESK has the ability to rearrange funding if needed in order to compensate for any federal cuts to food provision.

What may suffer as a result is some of DESK’s other programs. A reduction of funding could impact, for instance, the organization’s ability to coordinate with other agencies on addressing the root causes of housing and food insecurity.

DESK would prioritize meeting basic needs over work to improve government and inter-agency policies to better address the sources of hunger and homelessness, Werlin said. It would focus on stopping the bleeding, without doing as much to heal the wound.

Werlin said that the organization will likely not need to change much in the short term. ​“It’s the six-month mark, it’s the 12-month mark, it’s the 24-month mark that worries me,” he said. ​“The damage that’s being done to these programs is not gonna be so easy to turn around.”

Meanwhile, cuts to public benefits like SNAP would lead to significantly more demand for food assistance. ​“We will see our lines longer,” Werlin predicted.

"It's Hard To Shop With The Prices So High"

For Tammy Imre, uncertainty about SNAP funding — a frequent topic of debate in Congress — is all too familiar. 

“It worries me. It also angers me,” said Tammy Imre. ​“There’s so many people affected. There’s a lot of people that need that assistance.”

Imre, a 59-year-old New Haven resident, grew up as the daughter of a single mom of two, and remembers going to food pantries since she was a child.

She’s relied on SNAP for about six years and currently receives about $291 per month from the program. She is currently out of work, and that monthly budget is ​“hard to stretch.” So she gets by with the help of multiple food pantries in the city.

“It’s hard to shop with the prices so high,” Imre said. ​“I can’t even really afford the really good food, like the vegetables and produce and stuff like that.”

While Imre is anemic, she said she isn’t always able to afford the best diet for her health. ​“The doctors tell me to eat this, this, and that, but it’s hard to just go out and buy it.”

As a member of Witnesses to Hunger​’s New Haven chapter, Imre has joined Kimberly Hart in writing to congressional representatives in an effort to provide them with ammunition as they advocate for food funding. (Those interested in joining their efforts can email kimhart224@gmail.com to get involved, Hart said.)

Thinking about the funding cuts pushed for by Trump (who is estimated to be a multi-billionaire) and Musk (who is the wealthiest man on Earth), Imre wonders: ​“What would they do if everything went away? If all their money just went away, and they had nothing?”

“They’re always doing something to the poor,” she added.