SNAP — you’re out

People line up outside Resurrection Lutheran Church just before its weekly food pantry and community meal begin at noon on Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2025. (Mark Sabbatini / Juneau Independent)

By Michelle Bonnet Hale

“People are scared.” 

“We don’t know what we’ll do.”

“Three pillars — food, housing, and medical care — when people lose one, they cope. When people lose all three, chaos ensues. All bets are off.”

You have to feed your children. You have to care for your disabled parent, or child, or partner. You need to provide a warm home with a roof over their heads. You actually need to feed yourself, every single day.

An elderly and beloved friend of mine receives $8 a day via SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as “food stamps”). This covers most of her food costs. She is gravely concerned about the impending loss of SNAP funding, if the government shutdown continues through Nov. 1 and the State of Alaska cuts off all SNAP funding. She’s planning what she won’t eat: Fruit, meat, cheese, vegetables.

It's hard to find the words to describe the significance of this loss of funding to an individual or family who relies upon it. Breathtaking comes to mind. Shocking, that this would be allowed to happen in this wealthy nation of ours. And for those in the crosshairs, so very frightening.

Approximately 7% of Juneau residents — or roughly 2,200 people — receive SNAP benefits, in the form of a debit card used at grocery stores. It’s loaded with the monthly allowance on the first of each month. Without a resolution to the Congressional budget standoff, that won’t happen on the first of November.

Because the allowance is so small, many if not most SNAP recipients use all of their allowance up each month. Local food pantries are overwhelmed on the distribution day right before the end of month, because people have simply run out of food. People are using the last of October’s allocation right now.

This terrifying hit to food security comes at a time of unprecedented need. Demand for food at the Southeast Alaska Food Bank has almost doubled in the last year, with record participation numbers at food banks broken week over week.

Yet food banks don’t even begin to cover the need for food in our community and across the country. It is estimated that SNAP provides eight to nine times more assistance with food than food banks and food pantries. If the program is cut off in a week, there is physically no way that our food assistance networks in Juneau and Southeast Alaska can cover the need.

What can be done? First and foremost, the decision-makers — in this case Sens. Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski and Rep. Nick Begich — need to put people first. Hunger in our country is present for many reasons and it won’t serve us to get into those reasons now. When people are hungry, they need food, not policy. The policy needs to be fixed, but the food must be provided first.

So, yes, we’re tired of hearing this, but we need to appeal to our Congressional delegation. We need to tell them the real stories, of an elderly Alaskan relying on $8 a day for her food security, and then losing that.

SNAP recipients are hidden in plain sight in our communities. They are our friends and neighbors and relatives. Because of the prevalence of poverty-shaming in our culture, though, we often don’t know who needs or uses these benefits. We don’t know of their struggles getting by month by month, week by week.

We do know people and groups and organizations that provide food, though. If you are a member of a church or synagogue with a pantry, you can donate your time and your money and food to your pantry. It is needed right now. If you don’t know how to help, ask. If there is a church on the list of food pantries, but you don’t go to church, please show up anyway and help. Kindness knows no denominations.

We all can drop off food or money to pantries or to the Southeast Alaska Food Bank at the end of Crazy Horse Drive. Pantries in Juneau are listed at https://www.seafb.org/schedules/.

If you need food, please find a pantry or food bank with a schedule that works for you. Please apply for SNAP if you don’t yet receive it, even now in this time of uncertainty. A resource guide is available at the same website.

Our food system in Alaska is a fragile one. Our food distribution system for those in need is peopled with amazing and dedicated volunteers and a very small staff, but it too is a fragile and cobbled-together social support system. That’s on all of us to solve in the long term, but right here, right now, let’s feed people.

Footnote: I visited the Food Bank twice while working on this column. On my second visit, I gave a ride to a man carrying a heavy grocery bag back along Crazy Horse Drive. He was walking back to his small apartment at St. Vincent de Paul behind the Nugget Mall. We learned that we’d gone to Auke Bay School at the same time, possibly separated by one grade. I asked him if he knew of the impending SNAP shutdown and he said he did. I asked what he thought of it and he said, “It’s devastating.” I asked what he would do if SNAP didn’t come through and he was speechless, finally saying, “One day at a time, one day at a time.”

We went to school together. There but for the grace of God go I.

• Michelle Bonnet Hale’s roots go deep in Juneau and Southeast Alaska. She and her partner share their household with various relatives and three dogs. She served for six years on the Juneau Assembly.