CASPER — Food pantries in Wyoming are struggling with high demand and low donations as Wyoming recovers from the pause to SNAP benefits earlier this month.
A drastic increase in need, combined with a decrease in food donations pushed Casper food pantry Joshua’s Storehouse to limit the number of visits to once per month, Executive Director Debra Davis said.
Joshua’s serves around 3,000 people per month, from single mothers to elderly people to double-income families, she said.
“We see a lot of people that do get food stamps come in, and then we see a lot of people that make too much, just a few dollars too much, every month that come in,” Davis said.
Less to go around for Thanksgiving
Donations became less frequent around July, Davis said, because everyone has less to go around. Joshua’s saw more people coming in for food beginning in September and made the decision to limit visits starting Oct. 1.
This year, Joshua’s had to buy hams, turkeys and pies with money donated from the community. In the past, Joshua’s Storehouse has had enough in food donations to hand out without making its own purchases, Davis said.
Joshua’s and The Salvation Army teamed up Tuesday to distribute 250 boxes of food each to families in need, up from 200 last year, Salvation Army Maj. Evadne Wright, said.
Even before the SNAP benefits pause during the government shutdown, The Salvation Army also saw an increase in need at the beginning of fall, Wright said.
The Salvation Army has been seeing up to 40 new applicants in a week — both people who have not been to The Salvation Army before or who have not received assistance in a long time, she said.
Wright said the demand has increased significantly since her arrival in Casper in August of last year.
“It was a crazy day if we did 65 households. That was a big, big day. We have been averaging over 100 on most food days,” she said.
The Salvation Army’s food pantry is open on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.
Because of the SNAP benefits pause for the first two weeks in November, families have not been able to prepare for Thanksgiving in advance as they would in a normal year, Wright said.
“Even just a couple of cans of extra food to any food bank in town makes a big difference when we’ve got sometimes nothing on the shelves to provide to people,” she said.
The Food Bank of Wyoming places orders in a national system, meaning food has to be ordered a few weeks before it is delivered, Executive Director Danica Sveda said.
“We don’t have any food now because it’s the holidays, and we’re stocking stores, so there’s less for us to purchase that’s donated,” Sveda said. “We are really scraping the bottom of the barrel right now.”
Food Bank of Wyoming has been receiving plenty of trucks bringing food over the last few weeks, but it goes out to partners and mobile pantries as soon as it arrives.
“I think this is a time in America, especially coming up on Thanksgiving, to really take a pause and understand that our truth and our reality in the world that we grew up in, that we know, may not be the truth for everybody else,” Sveda said.
SNAP doesn’t fill the gap
Wyoming’s food insecurity rate is 15.4%, according to Feeding America’s 2023 Map the Meal Gap.
Food insecurity is a term applied to households that lack adequate access to food because it is not affordable or easily accessible. Food insecurity includes people who receive SNAP benefits, as well as a sizable chunk of the population who make too much money to qualify for aid, but not enough to meet the cost of living, Sveda said.
If someone makes a low enough wage to qualify for SNAP and Medicaid, but a raise bumps them just over the eligibility limit, that extra money is not enough to make up for the lost benefits, she said.
Wyoming could close this gap by extending SNAP benefits and increasing the gross income threshold and asset limit, according to a 2024 report from the Wyoming Survey and Analysis Center at the University of Wyoming.
Sveda said she suspects the figure for food insecurity will be higher in the next report based on the demand from Food Bank partners, like Joshua’s Storehouse and The Salvation Army.
“The old adage is ‘rent eats first,’” she said. “Food is the most flexible thing in a family budget.”
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