Local food pantries may soon see a surge in demand for their services after pandemic-era SNAP benefits come to an end.

A temporary boost to SNAP benefits, also known as food stamps, was put in place to help low-income individuals and families during the COVID-19 pandemic. That increase ended at the start of March and now over 14,000 Portage County residents face a loss of at least $95 a month in SNAP benefits.

To lessen the burden for community food pantries, the Portage County Board of Commissioners recently allocated $1 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds, originally intended for area nonprofits, to food assistance programs.

Applications for the funds will be distributed by the board to local pantries, though the criteria and process for receiving the money has yet to be determined.

Along with the rising cost of food due to inflation and the approaching end to SNAP’s expanded eligibility for college students who qualify for work study or have an expected family contribution of zero, more people in Portage County may find themselves seeking assistance from programs such as Flashes Fighting Hunger, which operates a pantry open to both students and community members on Kent State’s campus.

With this potential increase, Tiera Moore, program coordinator for Community Engaged Learning, said she is worried about the program’s capacity to fight food insecurity.

“The concern is that it’s going to become harder for people to get appointments,” she said. “We’re going to have to turn, obviously, more people away.”

Appointments for the pantry already fill up within 24 hours of being listed and from October 2021 to October 2022 the number of unique individuals served rose from 220 to 308. Even as partnerships with the Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank, Trader Joe’s and Meijer sustain the pantry for now, the demand for services may grow too large, Moore said.

“My immediate reaction is I’m concerned about my citizens, I’m concerned about kids going to bed hungry, I’m concerned about seniors, I’m concerned about veterans, and then just parents in general that are going to opt to maybe have their electric turned off so they can feed their kids,” said Sabrina Christian-Bennett, a Portage County Commissioner. “It’s not a good place to be at all.”

Still, the ARPA funds will only provide a short-term solution to what could be a long lasting issue of food insecurity in Ohio.

“One government entity, one group cannot fix this all,” Christian-Bennett said. “We’re all going to have to pull together our resources.”

For now, pantries like Flashes Fighting Hunger will have to adapt to the change in demand.

“It’s just going to be a matter of being creative with our options and maybe expanding our partnerships also to try to get more food,” Moore said. “We are working with dining services to start recovering foods, so I think that will be an exciting opportunity to be able to serve more people.”

Alton Northup is a reporter. Contact him at [email protected].