Millions of people across California rely on SNAP benefits, known in the state as CalFresh, to help combat food insecurity.
Hundreds of thousands of them live throughout the Sacramento region, where enrollment in these food benefits has increased over the past five years.
A new report from the UC Davis Labor and Community Center found the region’s enrollees as a percentage of population increased by 3.2% between 2019-2024, for a net growth of more than 90,000 people.
But this month brought a big shift to CalFresh after new restrictions were enacted under H.R.1, the major federal budget reconciliation bill signed last year.
As of April 1 many lawfully present immigrants no longer qualify for these benefits including refugees, asylum seekers, victims of trafficking and other non-citizens with legal status. Green card holders are still eligible.
According to the center’s report these restrictions are set to kick tens of thousands of people off CalFresh in the seven-county region, which includes El Dorado, Nevada, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties.
Marcos Lopez is the center’s research director, and spoke with Insight Host Vicki Gonzalez about what the impact of these new restrictions could look like across the region.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Interview highlights
You and your colleagues looked at the seven-county region, and at the heart of this is getting a better understanding of food insecurity. How do you go about doing that?
Tracking food insecurity from a social scientific standpoint is difficult to do. We started looking at CalFresh usage rates because we wanted to understand how specific it was to our region. What we found is in the greater Sacramento region, the rates of usage tend to be higher than the state average. There are a few counties in our region that trend a little bit lower, but for the most part they do consistently go higher.
How has CalFresh usage grown in recent years?
What we've seen is right around COVID, you see a spike in CalFresh usage, and quite a bit this has to do with the economy. CalFresh usage tends to trend with the unemployment rate and also poverty.
Because of the economic impact COVID had in our local area and just general across the board, we did see CalFresh usage spike and it hasn't gone down since then.
How do the counties stack up against each other?
At the very bottom in terms of CalFresh usage we in our area we do see that El Dorado and Placer tend to trend lower than the state average. The ones that tend to trend the highest are Yuba, Sacramento, Sutter. That, as I mentioned before, typically has to do with the fact that there is either a combination of high unemployment or [an] increase in poverty.
What interested you most or surprised you most when looking at this data? Who are the people that we're talking about using CalFresh?
It's a wide age range. I think the thing that surprised me the most is the fact that we have a very diverse community here in Sacramento County, for instance. What we have here in Sacramento is very different [from] our neighboring region in that we do have a quite large population of lawfully present immigrants that will be losing their coverage.
Out of the roughly 79,000 of lawfully present immigrants in the state of California that will be losing coverage, 30,000 or so are residing here in Sacramento County. Roughly 40% of all lawfully present immigrants living in the state live here in Sacramento County.
What would you like people to better understand about how that number ultimately trickles down to the broader community?
In the months moving forward, I think this means that as a community here in Sacramento County, per se, we have to be creative in terms of how we can get food to people. It'll be challenging. For instance, there was a data point that I heard from the food bank here in Sacramento County… for every meal that the food bank is able to provide, someone can have purchased nine meals with CalFresh benefits. So we cannot rely on the food bank to provide food for populations that lose access to CalFresh. They simply don't have the capacity to do that; the food banks weren't designed to do that type of work. So we have to be really creative in terms of being able to provide food to people who need it.
What I would say is, in terms of a solution or an opportunity, is just using data to identify which neighborhoods in the county or in the greater Sacramento regions are the ones losing CalFresh and then finding ways to make investments into those neighborhoods.
If we just focus on CalFresh recipients in Sacramento County, nearly one in four are children. How will children be impacted by these changes?
With children it's really difficult. Some of the things that we've had here in the county have also deteriorated. For instance, Sacramento City Unified School District has a local procurement program where they've been purchasing food from local producers. Part of the funding cutbacks that have happened at the federal level have also meant that those school districts have also lost the opportunity to purchase food through using those funds. What this means is that it will be increasingly difficult not just simply to feed kids but also to bring nutritious food to kids.
How will someone find out that they're no longer eligible for CalFresh?
This happens at the recertification process. When it's the time for them to go recertify, it's something that happens at the county level. If they're a lawfully present immigrant that is unable to recertify, then they'll be notified that they're no longer eligible for benefits.
Starting June 1, there's another population that will be losing benefits; able-bodied adults without dependents. Able-bodied adults refer to anybody between the ages of 18-64 who do not have kids, or do not have kids between the ages of 15-18. For those populations there's certain workforce requirements that they have to retain to be able to maintain their benefits.
I also think about businesses that rely on customers who use CalFresh benefits and they seem to be impacted as well, like the Market Match program at the farmers market. What do you want people to know about these ripple effects?
The Market Match program is incredible; it does incredible things not only for providing food but also sustaining local production. So in terms of ripple effects, here in Sacramento County we've lost approximately 18% of our farmland within the past 20 years. That 18% is equivalent to the size of the city of Sacramento, 90 square miles of farmland that we've lost here in the county. It's pretty significant.
What that means is that we have fewer producers, and producers who are really struggling. Here in the county, roughly 40% of all farms are farming on less than nine acres… the total of acreage that they're producing on is less than 1%. So we have a number of small farms that are struggling to make it, but these are the farms that are also producing for our local food system.
Now, if you take CalFresh out of the system for them, one repercussion is that people are not getting access to healthy fruits and vegetables. The other repercussion is that you're losing out on that local foodshed. We're going to be putting a lot of local farmers out of business.
H.R. 1 was signed last year, so there was an awareness that these changes were coming down the pipeline. What kind of steps can counties or the state take to help solve food insecurity issues that may likely arise now?
Education, letting people know in advance of whether or not they will be able to recertify. But the other thing too is just making sure that you're able to connect local production with local consumption. Really investing in local agriculture and making sure that you create that pipeline of local food to the people who can consume it locally.
For me as a social scientist, my response would be to use data to make decisions. Identify which neighborhoods or which populations are going to be the ones that are going to be losing access to CalFresh, whether it being Del Paso Heights or North Highlands, or if it's going to be population-specific such as kids, working adults, or seniors. That's something I think needs to be done.
