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Andrea Collins (left), a volunteer with Feed More, and staff members Haleigh Grimes and Sarah Dovel prepare food for distribution to federal workers during a pop-up event. (Photo by Jay Paul)
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Staff members and volunteers at Feed More wait for federal workers to come pick up supplies. (Photo by Jay Paul)
As the federal government shutdown hits the one-month mark today, local organizations across the region are pitching in to help workers who have gone unpaid since Dec. 22.
Of the 800,000 federal employees nationwide affected by the shutdown, more than 350,000 are considered “essential” and must report to work without pay. In the Richmond metro area, there are more than 12,000 federal workers making up 1.9 percent of the region’s workforce.
“We know our agency near Fort Lee has had a big uptick in need,” says Doug Pick, the CEO of Feed More, a nonprofit that prepares and distributes food to 34 localities in Central Virginia through a network of 300 participating agencies.
Last Friday, Feed More’s Richmond distribution center hosted a two-hour, drive-through style “pop-up” event for furloughed federal employees. After the first hour, the volunteers had supplied nearly 60 families with packages, which included a resource card for the hours and days of nine other agencies around town that Feed More is providing with extra support during the shutdown. Officials with Feed More plan to repeat the “pop-up” distribution this Friday, Jan. 25, from 2 to 4 p.m. in the parking lot at 1601 Rhoadmiller St., providing each household with fresh produce, nonperishable foot items and lean protein. Feed More also offers a Hunger Hotline, 804-521-2500, that families in need of emergency assistance can call, or they can fill out an online inquiry form.
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Doug Pick, Feed More's chief executive officer, said he learned from an airport supervisor that the shutdown has disproportionately affected TSA workers who are single mothers struggling to make ends meet. (Photo by Jay Paul)
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“These are people who have never had to use us before,” Feed More CEO Doug Pick says of the furloughed federal workers seeking help during the shutdown. (Photo by Jay Paul)
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“We know our agency near Fort Lee has had a big uptick in need,” says Doug Pick, the CEO of Feed More. (Photo by Jay Paul)
“These are people who have never had to use us before,” Pick explains, “so we wanted people to know we're here, that we care and with each of those packages what they're getting is a list of nine agencies who we are giving additional extra support to — extra produce, extra everything — that way they've got a ready-made support system.“
Last Tuesday, Pick made a trip to the Richmond International Airport to assess the need among the 155 furloughed local Transportation Security Administration employees who fit the “essential” category, but have now missed two consecutive paychecks.
The airport supervisor Pick spoke with said the burden has disproportionately affected the “inordinate amount of single moms here who are doing their best to make ends meet,” and that he worries he will lose some of his employees as an increasing number of such employees across the country have begun opting for alternatives such as government programs or other jobs, like substitute teaching in Fairfax County.
“It's a really tough decision on a mom,” Pick says noting that many employees the Richmond airport, for example, already were working a second job to make ends meet, and are now grappling with whether it would be better to apply for unemployment benefits or other government programs, particularly when it comes to questions of child care and other costly, but necessary, expenses.
As the shutdown entered week four, Virginia Employment Commission officials said that more than 550 furloughed federal workers had applied for unemployment benefits in Virginia, and the number was growing.
Furloughed workers and “essential” employees working without pay can apply for unemployment benefits, which range from $60 a week for three months to upwards of $300 a week for about six months. If and when the government reopens and employees receive back pay, they will be required to repay any unemployment benefits they received during the shutdown.
Politico reported that nearly 9,000 federal employees and contractors in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia had applied for benefits by mid-January.
Last Thursday, Virginia’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients received their February food benefits early because of the federal government shutdown.
“Families having access to food and children going to school without being hungry is a basic and critical need that transcends politics,” Virginia Department of Social Services (VDSS) Commissioner Duke Storen says in a statement. “The SNAP program ensures food security for many of our nation’s most vulnerable citizens and we are pleased to be able to provide benefits to our clients for the month of February.”
Toni Blue Washington, the department’s director of benefit programs, noted that the early issuance of food benefits is still intended to sustain households throughout the next month.
“SNAP recipients are encouraged to proactively plan their food shopping for the month of February using these early funds,” Washington says in a statement.
While next month’s food allowance has already hit EBT cards in Virginia, social services officials say the status of future benefits beginning in March is uncertain.
Bags of items await pickup by federal workers at Feed More's pop-up event. (Photo by Jay Paul)
Pick says the Feed More team has been carefully assessing the situation, too.
“From everything we understand, SNAP should go through February,” Pick says, adding that he had been worried about Women, Infants and Children (WIC) benefits, “but WIC is fine — they've approved the money to go through February. Now, if this goes into March and they don't give us more money — that'll be a disaster; that'll be really tough.”
Of all the meals people eat using SNAP or food bank items, only one in 12 comes from food banks such as Feed More or one of their partner agencies, Pick explains, noting “we're here for emergency purposes.”
Emergencies of less than $500 are precisely the type of situation that more than 50 percent of the country is not equipped to handle financially, he says.
“That's exactly who our clients are — they're folks who had a $350 car bill, they didn't have it, the car didn't get fixed [and] they lost their hourly job,” Pick says. “Or, I’ve got families who've got three or four kids, they're both making minimum wage and one gets laid off — so over 60 percent of our folks are the working poor. They have money [but] they don't have enough.”
For many of the furloughed federal employees caught between a rock and a hard place as the shutdown stretches on, living paycheck-to-paycheck just became an emergency situation. Some families have dipped into savings accounts; others may not have had a savings to dip into.
“On average, we provide a client in a year 171 meals, versus the [90 meals per month, or about 1,080 per year] we'd all like to have,” Pick says. “So we do a great job with that and we have a lot of support from the community — but we just couldn't manage the SNAP program ending.”
Even for an organization that serves more than 200,000 people each year – moving 28 million pounds of food with a fleet of 17 trucks — collaborating with 280 other nonprofits in the Feed More distribution network – the volume of need would simply be too huge if SNAP benefits were to cease in March.
“And I don’t think, personally, that this will last into March at all; the pain would be so tremendous,” Pick says. “And we try to remain very neutral politically — but both sides would really have a hard time defending that.”
