October 30, 2025
Local Food Banks Plead for Help as Shutdown Cuts Off Food Stamp Funding
By Frank Stanfield
Local Food Banks Plead for Help as Shutdown Cuts Off Food Stamp Funding
Food banks are scrambling to serve their hungry clients with the November suspension of food stamp money during the ongoing federal government shutdown.
“It’s affected us,” says Don Diamant, director of the Leesburg Food Bank on 13thStreet. “We’re serving 60 families a day. That’s up from 40 to 50. Most of my recipients are on food stamps. Three organizations are holding food drives for us.”
Matt Pasco awaiting food at Leesburg Food Bank. Photo by Frank Stanfield.
Nearby, on U.S. Highway 441, the Christian Care Center’s Benevolence Center, is also planning for the crisis.
The Benevolence Center, associated with First Baptist Church, gets its food from Second Harvest, but director Glenn Shires said he has received an email from the charity saying there will be no donations in November.
“We normally serve 40 to 50 families a day, but we’re planning for 80 per day,” he says. Plans include bringing in more volunteers.
The Center will have to buy food from Save-A-Lot and Aldis, he says. Some of the grocery chains are working with the Center to reduce costs, including Walmart. “They’re selling us turkeys for 87 cents per pound,” Shires says.
The Center routinely gives out 40,000 to 60,000 pounds of food per month.
“We need money.”
Donations can be made at Christiancarecenter.org, clicking on “Give” and selecting Benevolence Center or any of the other missions.
For the Leesburg Food Bank, got to Leesburgfoodbank.org.
Not all food bank clients are on food stamps.
Matt Pasco, 43, for example, awaiting his turn at the Leesburg Food Bank, says he is homeless after failing to find work as a handyman or landscape worker.
One woman putting groceries in her trunk has a job at a retail store, but it doesn’t pay much. “I’ll have to get another job.”
The food stamp program had its flaws even before the government shutdown, says Leesburg Food Bank client Gary Hickson.
Hickson, who is disabled, said three years ago the government cut his food stamp allotment from $180 to $23 per month. “I never got an explanation.”
He has an 8-year-old son. “How can people live without it? By the time you buy groceries and pay rent it’s gone.”
“I understand some people take advantage of the system,” he says. But the thing that upsets him the most is “kids going without food.”
The problem is complex, he says. Inflation, the continuing loss of farmland due to over development, international trade wars, and then there is this: “We elect people to do a job.”
Democrats in Congress have refused to pass a spending bill until Republicans agree to extend health care benefits under Obama Care. GOP members are demanding their rivals agree to fund government operations first, saying the health care issue does not expire until December.
Some states have filed suit in federal court, claiming the U.S. Department of Agriculture can fund food stamps with contingency funds. GOP Senators say there is no way to legally do it.
In the meantime, an elderly woman in the Leesburg Food Bank parking lot was helping another senior woman into a wheelchair. They are on food stamps.
If the government doesn’t fund food stamps in November, the answer is cut and dried, the elderly woman says. “We’ll go hungry.”
Frank Stanfield has been a journalist for more than 40 years, including as an editor and reporter for the Daily Commercial, Orlando Sentinel and Ocala Star-Banner. He has written three books, “Unbroken: The Dorothy Lewis Story,” “Vampires, Gators and Wackos, A Florida Newspaperman’s Story,” and “Cold Blooded, A True Crime Story of a Murderous Teenage Cult.” He has appeared on numerous national and international broadcasts, including Discovery ID, Oxygen and Court TV. He maintains a blog at frankestanfield.com. Stanfield graduated with a political science degree from the University of North Florida and a master’s in journalism at the University of Georgia.
