St. Mary's Food Bank traffic back to normal after government reopens. But normal is still high

Traffic at Arizona’s largest food bank is starting to decrease after the government shutdown and a pause on food stamp benefits led to a surge in demand earlier this month.

The Arizona Department of Economic Security said payments for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, resumed in the state after the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history ended Wednesday.

Nearly 900,000 Arizonans — about one in eight people in the state — rely on SNAP benefits, which had been on pause since Nov. 1. Lines for emergency food boxes at St. Mary’s Food Bank had stretched for several blocks in the weeks leading up to the end of the shutdown.

“We’re down from those all-time record highs we were seeing two or three weeks ago and we’re back down more to normal,” said St. Mary’s Food Bank spokesperson Jerry Brown.

But “normal” is still very high, Brown said.

Even before the shutdown, St. Mary’s had been seeing about 50,000 visits a week across its sites as a result of high grocery prices and other rising costs, Brown said.

And, Brown said, now the food bank is entering one of its busiest times of year.

“We were hoping against hope that this didn’t drag into Thanksgiving and really have a perfect storm. And it didn’t, but it’s close enough that it’s really going to keep us on our toes to get through this time,” Brown said.

Brown notes St. Mary’s has seen a big influx in donations over the last few weeks.

“We actually ran out of food drive boxes at the food bank because we had so many people who wanted to come and do food drives for us,” Brown said.

But Brown said the organization is still short on Thanksgiving turkeys. He expects the organization will provide a record number of Thanksgiving meals this year.