Hundreds of people waiting on SNAP benefits, delay causing surge for food bank services

More than 113,000 Wake County residents serviced the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina last month. That's the most people from the county served in a single month over the last two years, data shows.

"Food is a basic right that everybody should have access to," said Jennifer Caslin, the Director of Communications for the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina.

That's something people across the area are struggling to have access to though. It's a compounded issue, according to Caslin.

Anecdotally, people with the Food Bank are hearing about inflation and pandemic recovery issues as a reason why they're accessing services. People are also receiving fewer benefits now than they were over the last few years. But it's more than that. There's a backlog in SNAP benefit distributions in Wake County.

For three years, due to the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency, the federal government extended food benefits for households. During that time, recipients didn't have to file paperwork to get those recertified. That began changing in March. At that time, the emergency allotments ended, reducing how much people were receiving. That was just one month after the government began requiring people to turn in their recertification paperwork.

Then in June, most households needed to start filling out those forms every six months, instead of annually as they had done during the public health emergency.

All of those factors and changes in a short window created a surge in recertification applications the Wake County Social Services office received. To address the issue, the county is bringing on more staff and hiring temporary team members from smaller nearby counties which aren’t seeing this issue. It’s helped a bit. The number of pending applications is down from more than 2600 last month when we began looking into this.

On average it takes about a month to get through the eligibility process, but there are some applications that can take 60 to 80 days, according to the county's communications officer.

It’s a never-ending volume, county officials said, so as the team is certifying about 1,200 applications weekly, but at the same time, they’re continuing to receive more than 250 new applications and certifications.

They’re also working with agencies, like the Food Bank, to fill in the gap until all of the applications are processed and recertified.

"We know that when people are food insecure, they’re making choices that they shouldn’t have to make," said Caslin. "They’re making choices between food or medicine, food or rent, food or utilities or food and gas. Nobody should have to make that. You can’t grow and thrive as a person if you’re hungry. So we want to make sure food insecurity isn’t a problem for people here and anywhere in eastern North Carolina."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you need assistance with the process, reach out to Wake County here.

To find a No Cost Pop-Up Market, visit this website.

And if you'd like to donate to the Food Bank during their matching window, check it out here.