Phoenix food bank still seeing uptick in demand despite end to government shutdown

A Phoenix-area food bank says it has continued to see increased demand for help, even after the end of the government shutdown restored funding for federal food assistance.

Earlier this week, Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego stopped by Nourish, an organization that provides food, clothing and other assistance at its facility south of downtown Phoenix, in Gallego’s old congressional district.

Gallego helped package carts full of food for residents that included turkeys for Thanksgiving and other staples.

He also met with Nourish volunteers to find out more about what needs they are seeing. Gallego said the visit was part of a tour of food banks he took recently throughout the state to get a first-hand look at community demands for food assistance.

“And unfortunately, we're hearing yes, that demand is up,” Gallego said. “They're able to meet demand thanks to a lot of great support, corporate, nonprofit support and volunteers, but it's scary that there's a lot of people who need these type of food boxes.”

Jensina Sethi, a volunteer coordinator at Nourish, said the federal government shutdown resulted in the temporary pause in federal funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also called SNAP.

Food banks like Nourish fill the gap for Arizonans who don’t qualify for that assistance but still struggle to afford food. And, during the shut down, their resources were stretched further by families looking for a way to supplement their missing federal benefits.

“Typical is about 200, but after the SNAP thing, it jumped to 250 right away,” Sethi said, referring to the number of families served by Nourish every day.

Demand didn’t drop back down after the end of the shutdown, though.

“Yesterday, we did 306 50-pound food boxes, plus turkeys,” she said.

Gallego encouraged Arizonans in need of help to seek out assistance from organizations like Nourish or St. Mary’s Food Bank.

“You deserve to be comfortable and your family deserves to have a meal,” he said. “You deserve to have a good Thanksgiving meal, too. And that's why we're here to hand out turkeys.”

Both Sethi and Gallego also encouraged anyone with the means to continue supporting those organizations.

“St. Mary’s said they would keep sending us food as much as we can, and we've seen a lot of donors step up and give us the money to purchase food, because we can purchase it a lot cheaper,” Sethi said. “So we just encourage people, if you have the means, to donate money to us, and we can buy food, and we will feed as many people as we can.”