‘Big Beautiful Bill’ cuts to CalFresh could double demand for SLO Food Bank meals
President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act is now law, ushering in a budget that prioritized mass cuts to social safety net programs such as Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — and San Luis Obispo County’s most vulnerable residents will be at a higher risk of falling through the growing holes in that safety net, experts say.
Among a host of cuts across the federal budget — including more than $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts that deprive more than 10.5 million people of their healthcare by 2034, according to an analysis from the Center for American Progress — SNAP was hit particularly hard, with a 20% funding cut of $186 billion set to impact around 22.3 million families who receive some or full SNAP benefits.
In San Luis Obispo County, the SLO Food Bank — which directly supplies around 44,500 people with meals — is bracing for an “unprecedented” level of new demand across San Luis Obispo County in the next year, SLO Food Bank CEO Molly Kern said.
“It’s not something that the SLO Food Bank, or really any food bank in the United States, is built to withstand,” Kern told The Tribune.
How much will SNAP cuts hit SLO County?
While SNAP goes by many names depending on the state, in San Luis Obispo County, the state Calfresh program is administered by the county Department of Social Services, which currently provides SNAP benefits to 31,000 people countywide.
According to data provided by the Department of Social Services, in 2024 the county’s CalFresh program received more than 25,000 — of which 60% were eligible to receive an average of $281 per case or household.
In June, the county’s CalFresh operations came out to around $6.32 million, according to the Department of Social Services.
Under the Big Beautiful Bill, SNAP benefits are set to worsen as time goes on, with some immediate changes included upon the bill’s passage.
Most prominently, some traditionally at-risk groups are now more restricted in how long and when they can receive CalFresh benefits.
The program previously guaranteed three months of benefits every 36 months for able-bodied adults, with the option for states to waive the limit for veterans, foster youth, people experiencing homelessness and adults between the ages of 55 and 64.
Now, however, states are restricted in that waiving ability — a move that Kern’s analysis of the bill found that could cause 428,000 California children and 243,000 adults to lose some or all of their CalFresh benefits.
In the next two years, even more substantial changes are coming.
On Oct. 1, 2026, administrative costs will shift mostly over to the states — a $661 million increase in California — while on Oct. 1, 2027, states will take on a 5-15% benefit share of SNAP costs if their payment error rate is higher than 6%.
Those two changes will cost California — a state with a 10.98% payment error rate last year — around $2.5 billion.
And with the state already reeling from deficit issues, that’s a price the Golden State can’t pay, Kern said.
“The previous design was that SNAP covered nine out of every 10 meals, and that emergency food support like food banks and our local pantries were taking up the slack for that last one meal, and this changes that quite considerably,” Kern said. “We are really looking forward to working with our community and our partners to ensure that no one in SLO County goes hungry, but it is a big change in what we will need to do to make that possible.”
SLO Food Bank expects demand to double
The SNAP cuts are the latest in a line of cuts to nutrition programs across the United States, even as demand for services continues to rise.
In 2023, SNAP benefits through CalFresh were reduced by around $95 per month as expanded benefits introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic came to an end, creating uncertainty for some California food banks.
While the SLO Food Bank’s distribution efforts were not defunded by these cuts, the increased volume of people relying on their services grew steeply, Kern said.
New work requirements for people between the ages of 50 and 54 also shrank the number of people who could receive CalFresh benefits, further increasing the load on food banks.
Since 2023, demand for the SLO Food Bank’s services has only grown, Kern said.
In the 2023-24 fiscal year, 39,000 individuals were relying on the Food Bank for meals each month. In the current fiscal year, demand is expected to reach 44,500 individuals per month, she said.
Though the number of individuals relying on the SLO Food Bank by 2027 — the year that most of the Big Beautiful Bill’s SNAP cuts will go into effect — is unknown, the amount of food the SLO Food Bank will need to deliver each month is expected to double as benefits cover less and less of a month’s meals for SNAP recipients, Kern said.
“We are definitely all hands on deck, committed to showing up for our community and looking forward to working with new partners in San Luis Obispo County, working with new volunteers, donors and people who share our conviction that food is a human right, and that no one deserves to go hungry in our community — especially when we’re a place that grows such incredible food,” Kern said. “We have such a proud and impressive agricultural tradition, and we’re looking forward to working with new people, being creative, coming up with new ways to make sure that SLO County residents stay fed.”
Can local programs pick up the slack?
Outside of the SLO Food Bank, other nutrition nonprofits are already feeling the shock of the cuts, including groups that don’t rely on that don’t rely on funding from SNAP programs.
Meals That Connect, a nonprofit that delivers free meals to San Luis Obispo County seniors and hosts nine dining sites for its clients, is set to experience more demand with less funding this year, board president Alissa Maddren said.
Earlier this year, cuts in the federal government by the Department of Government Efficiency resulted in a $600,000 funding decrease for Meals That Connect when those cuts forced California to end $111 million in funding for the Modernizing Older Californians Act — a program that created more funding streams for senior-specific aid programs.
Already at a funding disadvantage, Meals That Connect will have to do more with less as older San Luis Obispo County residents lose CalFresh benefits and rely more on the nonprofit’s services.
“The bill causes a ripple effect where one organization doesn’t get funding for something, and so there’s scramble to get funding for some other source, and then that source isn’t available for another organization,” Maddren said. “That’s kind of where we are.”
While the extent of service reductions isn’t yet known, Maddren said Meals That Connect will need to narrow its definition of who can access its nutrition program, even as the nonprofit prioritizes cutting staff to keep funds for food available.
“There were times when we could provide meals to caregivers who were also vulnerable and taking care of the seniors who are homebound; that will have to change,” Maddren said. “Our eligibility is is going to be a lot stricter, and our delivery is going to have to be a lot more specifically tailored to people who are at the highest level of need.”
This story was originally published July 24, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
