Most days, Mary Jane Winsted and her adult daughter with a disability only have one meal a day.
That’s all the 54-year-old can afford with the $298 she gets monthly from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, she said, augmented by visits to food pantries.
Winsted, who lives in Plainfield, doesn’t know what she’ll do if funding isn’t restored to allow the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration to disburse November benefits.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture sent a letter Oct. 10 informing states there were insufficient funds to pay full SNAP benefits for November if the government shutdown continued. FSSA has not responded to IndyStar questions about potential contingency plans.
Hearing the news was heartbreaking, she said, because she and her daughter don’t have the ability to work or drive. Her daughter receives disability benefits from the government, but Winsted has not yet become a payee, which would allow her to receive and spend the money on her daughter’s behalf.
More: Senators voted for the 12th time on government shutdown. How did it go?
Though she doesn’t blame a particular person or political party for the shutdown, she feels abandoned by government leaders.
“I just feel like they should step up and do their job,” she said.
Winsted is just one of nearly 600,000 Hoosiers who could go without the program in November because of the government shutdown, which is close to becoming the longest in American history. It would be the first time qualified Hoosiers wouldn’t receive disbursements for the program because of a shutdown, said Indy Hunger Network Director of Advocacy Mark Lynch.
Meanwhile, food pantries already facing record demand are scrambling to prepare for an unprecedented level of need.
Ultimately, children will likely miss meals, advocates told IndyStar.
“If this happens next month, then you’ll see more and more kiddos whose only meal is their free school lunch,” Lynch said.
Food pantries strained by record demand
For most recipients, SNAP funds only last for part of the month. Many already rely on food pantries to fill the gap.
“These families that are already standing in line at food banks at the end of the month now have to stand in line at the beginning of the month,” Lynch said.
But already rising demand, coupled with furloughed federal workers, have created a perfect storm. Food pantries across Indiana are running out of food and limiting hours, Lynch said. Now, they may be one of the last remaining options for Hoosiers losing access to SNAP.
Meanwhile, Indiana’s 24,000 federal civilian workers missed their first full paycheck today.
Mid-North Food Pantry in Indianapolis served 243 people on Oct. 20, Executive Director Kelsey Burton said, the most in more than 40 years of operation.
She’s now sending out a plea for donations and volunteers so the pantry can respond to the expected demand from SNAP disruptions. She’s developed a slogan to rally the community for help.
“When the government shuts down,” she said, “we show up.”
But the support food pantries can provide is not infinite, she said, because they rely on government assistance, too. A portion of food received by food banks and pantries come from The Emergency Food Assistance Program, another U.S. Department of Agriculture program. The money for November is already in the pipeline, Burton said, but it won’t last forever.
“December is kind of where the question mark comes,” she said.
The federal government provided more than three-quarters of Marion County food assistance in 2022 through programs like TEFAP, free and reduced school lunch and SNAP. Relying solely on donations to feed Indianapolis’ hungry is not possible, Burton said.
There’s a lot of work ahead for the employees and volunteers that run food assistance programs in the city, Burton said. But she cautioned against losing hope.
“There are a lot of people that care,” she said. “I see them every single day at my pantry showing up week after week to help people that they’ve never met, people they may never see again.”
Can the state fund SNAP?
It’s unclear what the state can and cannot do to fill fast-approaching funding gaps.
Lynch said it was his understanding that FSSA has a small reserve fund for this kind of scenario. Rep. Gregory Porter, D-Indianapolis, has proposed the state transfer money to FSSA at the upcoming State Budget Committee meeting.
But as of Oct. 21, FSSA is “not authorized to distribute benefits for November unless funding is restored,” a spokesperson wrote in an email to IndyStar. The agency did not respond to questions asking whether USDA had given permission for FSSA to use other funding sources.
It’s possible aid could be coming from the federal government. The White House announced they would use tariff revenue to fund the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children through October. Now, WIC is in danger of running out of money as early as Nov. 1, the National WIC Association warned in a press release urging more emergency funding Oct. 21.
The Indiana Department of Health did not respond to an IndyStar question about the program’s status in Indiana.
Contact Marissa Meador at mmeador@gannett.com or find her on X at @marissa_meador.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana food pantries are running out of food ahead of SNAP funding lapse
