Demand spikes at Fresno-area food banks as SNAP stalls. ‘Almost everything was gone’
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- SNAP funding freeze boosted Central California Food Bank demand and lines.
- USDA contingency cut halved SNAP payouts, leaving CalFresh recipients without payments.
- City and food bank mobilize funds, volunteers, and expanded pickup days to cope.
Since she was in grade school, 19-year-old Citali Arredondo and her family have made weekly visits to their local food bank in the small west Fresno County town of San Joaquin. The family, which does not receive CalFresh assistance, has long turned the food bank for essentials such as chicken, eggs and milk.
On their weekly food bank trip Tuesday morning, Arredondo’s family encountered much longer lines and wait times — ripple effects from the disruption of CalFresh payments to hundreds of thousands of needy Central Valley families.
“It was so packed the last time my mom went that almost everything was gone,” Arredondo, a Fresno State nursing student, said. “She told me she’d never seen so many people at a food bank. Some didn’t even get items like chicken or other essentials because there just wasn’t enough.
“If more people keep coming because they’re not receiving their SNAP benefits, that means sometimes we won’t get certain items. In the end, I think it’s actually going to hurt us economically,” Arredondo said.
Fresno-area food banks are grappling with a surge in demand as an influx of recipients of CalFresh, the equivalent of SNAP in California, turn to the banks for help.
Kym Dildine, co-CEO of the Central California Food Bank, said traffic on its website, which includes a search tool to find food banks, spiked threefold this week. A flood of calls crashed the organization’s phone lines one recent morning. Most of the callers on the other line, Dildine said, have been people who previously didn’t use the Central California Food Bank because they received CalFresh benefits.
The delay in SNAP funds have led to longer lines and wait times across the region’s network of food banks.
Thursday morning at Saint Rest Baptist Church in west Fresno, a line of more than 200 people snaked around the building shortly before the church’s food bank opened.
“People who call us are concerned about how they’re going to be able to feed their family,” Dildine said. “We’re here to serve, and we have been able to help increase access.”
Dildine said the organization is extending its hours of operation at its First Fruits Market on East Dakota Avenue, from three days a week to five, at least through November. The food bank, which has several locations across the five-county Central Valley, typically serves about 320,000 people each month.
That number could double, Dildine said, given that roughly 720,000 people in the regional are affected by the interruption of CalFresh benefits.
Many SNAP accounts went unpaid on Nov. 1 after the U.S. Department of Agriculture froze funding. The department said in a recent filing it miscalculated the SNAP benefits it would pay out through the program’s contingency fund and will pay out 65% of what participants normally receive, up from the previous estimate of 50%.
A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to fully fund SNAP benefits for the month of November, which the U.S. Department of Justice said it will appeal.
In California, SNAP benefits are distributed through the state’s CalFresh program, so delays or reductions in SNAP payments directly affect CalFresh recipients, leaving many families without the assistance they normally rely on to buy groceries.
It’s unclear when CalFresh recipients will receive their fully funded benefits, and it could take California weeks to distribute CalFresh fund to recipients because the state lacks the technology to issue partial payments and must manually determine allocations.
Dildine said the Central California Food Bank is able to provide short-term emergency food relief, but can’t serve the demand caused by a long-term SNAP freeze.
For every meal that the food bank distributes, SNAP provides nine.
“We have food in our warehouse that we’re able to distribute. How long we can maintain these elevated levels of service really depends on how long SNAP benefits are delayed and how the public responds through donations and volunteer support,” she said. “We’re reevaluating what we’re able to do and how we can deploy additional resources every single day.”
The City of Fresno is expected to approve a $250,000 funding package for the Central California Food Bank to help address the surge. Councilmember Nelson Esparza pledged $50,000 from his office’s budget toward that total.
Arredondo, the Fresno State nursing student, grew up in the farmworker community of Tranquility and has noticed that many residents rely even more on food banks during the winter months, when work opportunities slow down.
She said the SNAP payment delays have affected her neighbors and family friends.
“I have a neighbor who lives across from us—she’s an older woman who recently broke her hip,” she said. “She told us she didn’t receive her monthly benefits and was really upset. Seeing that made me feel sad because she’s elderly, injured, and now can’t access the support she depends on to eat.”
Seeing the growing need in her community and at the San Joaquin food bank, Arredondo said she plans to volunteer there more often.
“There were so many people that it took a long time to distribute the food, so they really need more help to make the process faster,” she said.
This story was originally published November 7, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
