Brookline’s food providers are anticipating increased need as the federal government shutdown threatens to interrupt Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits this week.
More than 1.1 million Massachusetts residents rely on SNAP to help buy food, including 2,613 in Brookline , or 4.1% of the town’s population, according to state data.
The town is home to several efforts to aid food insecure residents, including the Brookline Food Pantry, which serves over 600 families across three locations, said Executive Director Elizabeth Boen. The pantry has seen a “small uptick” in clients over the past few weeks since the government shutdown began Oct. 1, Boen said, and it is anticipating increased need in November.
“We are ready to listen to [families] and hear from them in terms of what additional help they need, and prepare for that,” she said. “There’s a lot of great unknown out there, and it’s really just trying to be prepared as best as possible for whatever can happen.”
The pantry is open at United Parish at 15 Marion Street on Wednesday, Thursdays and Fridays and at 226 High Street on Tuesdays. It also has a location at 55 Egmont Street which is only available to Brookline Housing Authority residents.
President Donald Trump had said SNAP funding would lapse if the shutdown continued into November, which it has. Two federal judges ruled Friday , however, that the Trump administration cannot cut off benefits and ordered the U.S. Department of Agriculture to distribute money owed to SNAP recipients “as soon as possible.”
Trump later posted on social media that he needs guidance from the courts on how to proceed and indicated there would be an inevitable delay in distributing benefits. He did not say whether he would appeal the rulings.
It is unclear whether benefits will be cut off and when they might flow again.
Mary, a 71-year-old retiree who didn’t want to give her last name, said she has been a patron of the Brookline Food Pantry for two years. Mary is not a SNAP recipient, but she has no income and is not on Social Security.
During her visit to the pantry Thursday, Mary said the number of patrons was a “huge difference” from the previous week. However, she noted the pantry began signups for clients to receive chickens or turkeys for Thanksgiving, which could contribute to increased traffic there.
“This is a real busy time at food pantries,” Mary said. “Even with SNAP coming out as normal, they do get swamped.”
Jacob Walters, a 76-year-old retired attorney, has volunteered at the Brookline Food Pantry since 2020. He regularly works on Brookline Thrives, a Brookline Food Pantry program that sends public school children from low-income families home with extra meals and snacks for the weekends.
The loss of SNAP benefits could be especially taxing on families, Walters said. Parents may opt to feed their children over paying their rent, leading to housing troubles, he said.
“The circle gets wider and wider of the problems that it causes for these families, and so that’s the thing that breaks my heart,” he said.
Paul Epstein, a social worker at Brookline High School, said the students he’s spoken to are not always tuned into political news, but the SNAP impacts have “permeated through.”
“They know what’s going on,” he said “They’re angry and horrified at the administration, but that’s the case even before the SNAP benefits ran out.”
The impact of the SNAP cuts is simply that “food insecure families will be more food insecure,” Epstein said. He said it’s important not to lose the sense of urgency should the cuts stretch for weeks and months.
Beyond the Brookline Food Pantry, residents struggling with food insecurity can access groceries through “Jennifer Coolfridge,” Brookline’s community fridge located at 7 Station Street. The fridge is powered by community partners, including Brookline For the Culture, Brookline Muslim Friends and Bowls4Boston.
Zahriyannah Karakashian-Jones, a 27-year-old nonprofit manager and co-founder of Brookline For the Culture, has volunteered with the community fridge since 2020.
While the fridge has been successful, volunteers have struggled to raise money to stock the fridge each week, Karakashian-Jones said. Need has increased in the past year or two, she said, with the volume of elderly, homeless and disabled individuals in Brookline and coming from Boston who rely on the fridge to eat.
“There’s a number of ways that we’ve seen the needs grow, and we just can’t sustain it right now,” Karakashian-Jones said. “In a town like Brookline that has so many resources at its disposal, I just can’t imagine that about 6,000 people in our community are potentially going to go hungry in a couple weeks.”
Community fridge volunteers are raising money to provide immediate relief to families in need, and they are working on creating an updated website with links to donate or sign up to clean the fridge, said Hajar Delshad, a 46-year-old physician assistant who volunteers with the fridge.
“Many people are doing this in a ‘love thy neighbor’ type of way, that we just feel like we are obligated to help others, and nobody should really be going to sleep hungry in Brookline,” Delshad said.
Even if the freeze is undone, the timeframe for when residents will get their SNAP benefits back is unknown, Karakashian-Jones said.
Delshad called on Brookline community members to help residents in need but also on the Trump administration to restore SNAP benefits.
“My hope is that the community at large steps up to help and fill these needs, but in a bigger picture I’m hoping that the government does its job to serve the needs of the people that they’re elected to serve,” Delshad said. “It’s really dysfunctional when people’s lives are at risk in this way.”