Assembly Select Committee Calfresh Enrollment And Nutrition

I'm like, I'm sleepy too.

Hi.

Good morning. We need to continue to open and lead in these areas that we can. So let's get it going. And thank you very much, Assemblymember Shavka Collins.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Ryan Wolsey with the Legislative Analyst's Office. I've been asked to provide a little bit of background and overview of changes in HR1 and CalFresh. I'll be speaking from a handout that was just distributed to you. starting on page one CalFresh as you know is California version of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program It provides federally funded food assistance to about 5 million low Californians The state also provides state-funded food assistance to about 60,000 additional low-income legally present non-citizens who don't qualify for federal CalFresh benefits. Total benefits across those two populations are estimated to be over $13 billion. dollars in 2025-26, with an additional $2.6 billion for program administration, of which the state is covering a little over one-third. H.R. 1, also known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, was signed by the president in July 2025 and makes major changes to CalFresh and other programs. These changes are phased in over time. Some of them have already taken effect. Others will happen in the near future. I'll discuss three main groups of those changes relating to work requirements, narrowed eligibility for legally present non-citizens, and program financing. On page two, the work requirement is not in itself new. CalFresh currently has a three-month time limit for a work requirement for certain enrollees, but until recently had a statewide waiver from this requirement. HR 1 expands the requirement in terms of who it applies to, and it also effectively ended the statewide waiver. These changes are expected to begin implementation in California in June of 2026. At a high level, the work requirement focuses on able-bodied working-age adults with some exemptions that are, in general, targeted to those that would have a difficult time meeting the requirement. The table on page two outlines what some of those exemptions are. For example, pregnancy, receiving substance abuse treatment, caring for dependent children under 14, living in a high unemployment county, and we actually do have temporary waivers in seven counties under that exemption. Notably, there are three exemptions that were available for the work requirement prior to H.R.1 that have now been eliminated. These include a specific exemption for homeless individuals, former foster youth, and for veterans. So while previously those groups would have been automatically exempt, they now would have to see if they can be exempt under a different provision. Ultimately, the impact of this provision is uncertain, but it's estimated that about 845,000 individuals will not qualify for an exemption, And of those, approximately 665,000 are at risk of being discontinued from CalFresh assistance.

I'll defer to my colleague from the Department of Social Services.

Good morning. Alexis Fernandez-Garcia with the Department of Social Services. So under H.R. 1, the thresholds for a waiver were limited. Previously, there were two options, general unemployment data over a series months and a lack of sufficient jobs that option has been eliminated and that is the option that we had previously used to Be eligible for a statewide waiver the option that remains is an unemployment rate above 10% and the Threshold for that is defined by the USDA It's a look back period of a minimum of three months up to 12 months And that is based on data from the BLS and so when we submit our waiver we look at all counties and determine who is eligible and if there is an eligible county the state applies on their behalf so for this last round only seven counties were eligible for the federal requirement and what we'll do as we look ahead is reapply as we are eligible to determine if additional counties can be added that sounds like a lot of paperwork yes sorry truth thank

Not at all. That's perfectly fine. Turning to page three, the next major provision is a narrowing of eligibility for legally present non-citizens. So today, some legally present non-citizens do qualify for federal CalFresh assistance. To be clear, other groups, such as undocumented immigrants, are not eligible and do not receive benefits. H.R. 1 disqualifies some legally present non-citizen groups from eligibility for federal assistance, primarily asylees and refugees. It's estimated that approximately 72,000 individuals currently enrolled in CalFresh will lose benefits due to this change, and this began to be implemented this month, April 2026. Turning to page four for program financing changes, the most fiscally significant is that while today CalFresh benefits are completely funded by the federal government, depending on a state's error rate, states may have as much as a 15% share of benefit costs beginning in October 2027. And the table on page four shows what the impacts to California could be depending on our error rate. Our most recent error rate was for the 2023-24 federal fiscal year, and it stood at nearly 11%, which is incidentally very close to the national average. But at that rate, we would be liable for approximately $2 billion in annual ongoing CalFresh benefit costs. Turning to page five, there's also a shift of administrative costs from the federal government to the state. Currently, the federal government covers 50% of CalFresh admin costs with the state and counties covering the remainder. But beginning October 2026, HR1 reduces the federal government's share to only 25%. And under current law, that would mean the state's share grows to 52.5% and the county's share grows to 22.5%. This is equivalent to about $480 million in additional annual general fund costs and about $190 million in annual county costs. Turning to page six, we'll provide some commentary on these changes and what they can mean for the state. As you likely know, the state is facing a structural budget deficit. Both our office and the Department of Finance have identified significant structural budget deficits starting in 2027-28, and addressing these will require difficult tradeoffs HR1 adds to these And in view of these fiscal challenges it will not be possible for the state to backfill all of the losses related to H.R. 1 without identifying billions of dollars in increased revenues or programmatic reductions elsewhere in the state budget. H.R. 1 also puts significant strain on county finances. Counties are taking on increased costs related to administrative costs in CalFresh as I mentioned but they also have increased pressures due to HR1 provisions unrelated to CalFresh that will increase county costs related to indigent care health care coverage due to changes in Medi-Cal. There are other sources of support for individuals that may lose CalFresh coverage due to HR1. For example, food banks and other community organizations provide additional food assistance. However, their capacity is limited by their infrastructure but also by the amount of funding that they receive from the federal government, the state government, and private sources. Turning to page seven, we identify a few key issues for the legislature to consider as we're supporting implementation of HR 1. First, one of the greatest risks of HR 1 is that individuals who are in fact eligible for assistance will lose their assistance due to administrative burden associated in particular with verifying compliance with the work requirement. Processes that are manual or require interaction with the program beneficiaries increase complexity and are a risk point for people losing their benefits. As a result, linking to existing data sources and making verification automatic wherever possible is going to be important to minimize the risk of disenrollment and this is something that the administration has spoken about as something that they are pursuing next while the state oversees CalFresh eligibility determination and enrollment functions for CalFresh are performed by the counties counties are on the front line of implementing HR1 and will play a key role in in various aspects of HR1 implementation including efforts to reduce the payment error rate and limit the state's exposure to benefit costs, but also in working to limit administrative burdens on program enrollees. The governor's budget provides some additional funding for counties to implement changes in HR 1, particularly the work requirement. However, because the caseload and isn't anticipated to decrease because of HR 1, those additional funds are offset by reductions so that overall there's minimal additional funding provided. As it weighs its priorities in a constrained fiscal environment, the legislature could consider providing some additional funding to counties to try to help them prepare for working with enrollees and avoid those disenrollments due to administrative burden. However, if additional funding is provided, we would recommend that any augmentations be temporary until the ongoing workload related to HR1 is better understood. And finally, clearly there are large trade-offs associated with HR1, and we would recommend that the legislature take steps to ensure that key decisions are memorialized in statute where appropriate and also set up mechanisms to have ongoing engagement with the administration to see how the implementation proceeds. And that concludes my comments Thank you Question to you really quick When we talk about the A who are disqualified and they phase out over three months is that the same case for the refugees and the asylees as well There's no three-month limit for the refugees and asylees. However, there is a phase-in of the disenrollment for both of those populations, but it's related to the 12-month recertification cycle. What that means is that it's not the case that on April 1st, 2026, all 72,000 of the asylees and refugees and related non-citizens will lose coverage. Instead, what the state and the counties are doing is looking at roughly one-twelfth of that population every month as they come in for their annual recertification. And if an individual falls into that population at that time, they would then be disenrolled. The same thing happens with the ABOD population. It's tied to the 12-month cycle of recertification.

Yes.

I'll start. I'll allow my colleague from the department to add on if needed. But CalFresh is a federal program. And so there are regulations to govern where the funds can be spent. And the federal government, in fact, is responsible for working with food sellers to become locations where CalFresh benefits can be used. It's not something that the state really controls. and as far as I know, there's not the ability for the state to control exactly where the benefits can be used.

I think that would be in the purview of Congress.

Again, Alexis Fernandez-Garcia, Deputy Director with the Department of Social Services. It has been said, but we'll say it again, H.R. 1 makes very significant changes to federal funding and eligibility for CalFresh. And I want to emphasize again that CalFresh remains one of the most effective tools we have to combat poverty and food insecurity. To your comments, the power of CalFresh is those benefits are spent almost all in the month that they are received, and they are spent locally, and more of our panelists will speak to the power of those benefits for individuals and local economies. Each month, the program serves over 5.3 low-income individuals across California, helping them meet their basic needs and free up limited resources for other essentials. Ryan spoke to some of the specifics related to HR1, so I'm going to adapt my comments a bit to focus on our implementation efforts. So bear with me just a bit as I go through this. I'll briefly outline or focus on two significant policy provisions related to humanitarian immigrants and able-bodied adults without dependents, And then I'll talk a little bit about the cost shifts and how we're preparing to mitigate harm as as much as possible as we approach HR 1 implementation. We do so with three core commitments mitigating harm whenever possible, including through timely decision making clear guidance to our county and local partners and communication to clients making evidence-based data driven decisions and maintaining transparency with our partners including counties, the legislature, those with lived experience and more. So beginning with the changes to non-citizen eligibility, as was already articulated beginning this month, CalFresh eligibility will be restricted to U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, Cuban or Haitian entrants, and individuals present under what's called the Compacts of Free Association, or COFA. So that means that most lawfully present humanitarian immigrants, refugees, parolees, and others will no longer be eligible. As we discussed, these changes will apply at recertification for ongoing households, so that distributes the change across roughly 12 months. And for new applicants, it will apply beginning April 1st. It was mentioned that we do offer a state-funded food benefit program through the California Food Assistance Program, or CFAP. That is in place for certain non-citizens who are ineligible for CalFresh due to the 1996 welfare reform law. H.R. 1 does not change CFAP eligibility, including the federal option under the state. which we operate it. And so most people losing CalFresh under HR1 will not qualify for CFAP as it is structured today, unless their immigration status later changes. To support implementation, we've of course issued guidance to our county partners, but we've also been providing extensive technical assistance. We just hosted statewide trainings and had more participants that our Zoom account can handle. So we'll be looking at sharing that information again more broadly and template communication materials are now also available. I will next discuss changes to the CalFresh time limit. We mentioned already that H.R.1 keeps the basic framework of the time limit, but major changes include expanding the age range from 18 to 54 to 18 to 64, lowering the dependent child exemption from under 18 to under 14, eliminate exemptions for people that are experiencing homelessness, veterans and former foster youth, and limiting waivers. And so what this means practically is that the rule is now in place for many more people than it would have been prior to HR1 and at a much larger scale, practically statewide versus under previous rules where we had a waiver for the entire state. I want to talk a little bit about some of our estimates to give you a sense of who will be impacted. So currently we have about 2.7 million adults ages 18 to 64 receiving CalFresh. We estimate that about 1.8 million or two-thirds of those people are likely already exempt, and that is based on information that we already have available to us in the system, the eligibility system. So that leaves roughly 955,000 adults who may be subject to the time limit or who don't have an exemption that we know of today. And so as we roll out and implement, we will screen them for exemptions, and these numbers may change. But as of right now, we don't know whether they would be exempt. Based on early estimates of those 955,000 individuals, about 110,000 are expected to be exempt based on that additional screening. About 179,000 are anticipated to meet the work or community engagement requirement through a qualifying activity. And an estimated 665,000 may be at risk of losing their benefits or they are anticipated to lose their benefits. And you've heard that number earlier today. We will begin implementation on June 1, 2026. As with the changes to non-citizen eligibility, existing recipients will be screened at their next recertification over roughly a 12-month period. There are some exemptions, 24 and 36 months. Our implementation approach emphasizes three steps. First, accurately identify that someone is actually an ABOD. Then screen thoroughly for exemptions. And we have built that into the recertification process when there is an interview and an opportunity to have a conversation with someone about that. And then, excuse me, assist non-exempt individuals with connecting to qualifying work or community engagement activities. So employment and training, volunteer work, workfare, and other options. To support counties and clients, we have undertaken some of the following. Maximizing exemptions using available data and automation so that there is a less need for screening, less workload for counties, less burden for clients. Provide statewide training. We've had office hours, partner engagement sessions. We meeting a couple times each month and we continue to do that We developing outreach toolkits and county resource kits in coordination with DHCS who implementing the Medi work requirements expanding our employment and training program. Additional options are being explored, such as workfare, and strengthening cross-system workforce partnerships to maximize what's already available through things like the WIOA programs, the local workforce boards, and whatnot. Even with these efforts, many Californians will lose CalFresh and will face increased food insecurity and difficulty meeting their basic needs. Now I will transition to the significant cost shifts to states under H.R.1. As we mentioned, administrative costs have been split 50-50 between the federal government and states historically. In California, the state pays 70% of the state share and the counties pay the remaining 30%. Historically as well, food benefits have been 100% federally funded. Beginning October 126, the federal share of administrative costs will drop to 25%, leaving California responsible for 75% of every dollar spent on admin. The budget does include nearly $532 million in additional funding for this purpose, but you can imagine the challenge that the state and the counties will face given this change. Even more consequential is a new benefit cost-sharing structure. We talked about this a little bit. For the first time, states may be required to pay up to 15% of food benefits based on what is called our payment error rate. In California, total benefits are about $13 billion annually, so this shift poses a significant fiscal risk. To prepare, we've engaged in a multi-year accuracy improvement initiative grounded in data and informed by counties and our partners. For example, some of our early analysis shows that unreported income changes account for about 25% of the dollar value of payment errors. So we're linking the analysis of what is driving the errors to the solutions that we are prioritizing as a state. So to continue in this example where income is a primary driver, we are supporting implementation of new consent-based income verification tools that will be available to recipients, recipients, expanded use of verification sources for real-time hours and wages, again, to help workers, but clients and providing less documentation, automating some of our back-end matches. This is very wonky, but there's a match called the Payment Verification System. It's data from the Social Security Administration. We're automating action on that income information to become more timely and accurate. These tools are set to launch throughout 2026 and just some of the examples of what we're working on. We're also piloting things like proactive communication strategies to prompt clients when reporting or action on their part is needed, and we're tying that to data so that the timing of those messages are just right, right when you owe us a report, right when you should report a change in income to remind folks of their responsibilities. And then future investments could include additional system automation, training tools, enhance quality assurance practices so that we catch errors before they become part of our payment error rate. So we continue these discussions matching our data analysis to prioritize solutions. In summary, these changes are profound, and millions of Californians we serve are relying on us collectively to minimize harm and to continually improve our operations, and we are as committed as you all are to doing that. Thank you for holding this hearing on this important topic.

some may be eligible under CFAP. So prior to H.R.1, certain lawfully present humanitarian immigrants were eligible for federal CalFresh. There was another group who was eligible for the state-funded program, and the difference had to do not so much with their immigration status, but the length of time they had been in that status. So people prior to a five-year threshold were on the state-funded program, and after that threshold, they were on the federal program. H.R. 1 eliminates eligibility for federal CalFresh, but those were lawfully present humanitarian immigrants.

That is prior to H.R. 1.

That's current. And so what we've done in our estimates is we've looked at the total number of CalFresh recipients just based on age who might be an able-bodied adult without a dependent. And then looking at our data, we've eliminated people from that group by applying exemptions based on data we have. So we may already know you're receiving a disability payment and therefore would be exempt. Or we may already know that you are self-identified as American Indian and therefore exempt. And so we eliminate those people from the pool of 2.7 million, and we're left with about 955,000. Right.

So the state eligibility system will actually identify them as exempt. And so at the time of that person's recertification, the worker will look at that case and see that the person has already been determined exempt. They will not show up as a potential ABOD in the system. And so the worker will know they can proceed with determining eligibility without applying the time limit to that individual. So that's the automated one aspect of the automated process that you're talking about?

That is not a function that has been performed at the scale that we are asking our counties to perform right now and other community-based organizations and others who will be involved in that.

Yeah, and I will answer your question. Let me just take one step back. So the 955 are the people who are not exempt based on what we know today And so in the governor budget there are certain assumptions applied to that 955 110,000 are expected to be exempt.

and another group expected to already be either working or connected to a qualifying activity.

Let me go back. Well, I know the number, but how are you doing?

Yes, let me, yes. So on the 110, that assumption was informed by research from other states that have implemented the time limit. And we looked for states with somewhat similar policy interpretation to California. And so we found in those states that they had been successful exempting I think it's about 11.5% of their population now of course things could be different in California this is an assumption for budgeting methodology we have continued to have conversations with the counties heading into May revision about what those numbers might look like given their preparation to implement the 179,000 number is based on a set of data from our quality control sample where we looked at the number of people who were already engaging in paid employment we did some math on that wage and determined that they would could have been working 20 hours or more and we applied that percentage to our entire caseload and so again it's an assumption based on the data we have available about people who are working it does not include people who might go to community college engage in a community service activity like at their food bank or something like that so these are just based on best available information and we continue to refine them.

you said your budget assumptions

Correct.

A sample of cases from California.

I have to go back to my notes. I believe it's about 18%.

Are you... 18.8%.

Well, I don't have a specific variance number available right now, but we continue to have conversations with the counties about their assumptions, how they are similar or different than ours, and where we may make some adjustments.

I don't know if Carlos wants to speak to CWDA's assumptions, but there are differences related

How are you all navigating the fact that this is new activity and you use retrospective information?

Do you have a different average cost per case depending on the profile of the beneficiary?

who is expected to be exempt will be different than the average cost per case for somebody who has a profile of being at risk of losing benefits?

in your methodology, in the state's methodology?

Okay, my last question, apologies. Actually, I'm not gonna apologize. Is the methodology that DSS uses determined by the agency or through legislative intent or by statute?

And you all are not planning to do another?

So we start in the fall potentially It on a three cycle So you not doing a kind of sky has fallen interim reassessments

So you're just going with the, you did one three years ago, or when was it?

Three years ago, you're going to be doing another one. Just in short order. In short order. But in the meantime, we have obviously a lot of mitigating. So, and we continue to talk about what some of these similarities and differences are. I will just name that one of the challenges related to moving at this scale is that we do not have counties that have implemented the time limit. And so, even if we were to do a survey right now, there's very limited California data. We're all kind of working from best available information and the assumptions, similar activities and data from other states, right? The time limit has been suspended since prior to the pandemic. And so there just isn't real California data at this time.

Yeah, I hear that. And we continue to have those discussions going into May revision. But again, the reassessment, it was statutorily required. That is statutorily required, yes.

I think that would be up to the legislature.

Okay. Assemblymember Majority Leader Agra Curry, she had to step out, but there were a couple of questions from her as well. And what I did want to say is going back to the conversation, about providing additional funding to the counties for CalFresh, you know, the admin portion of it. I did put a budget as for that. So we are going to keep our fingers crossed in regards to that aspect. But, you know, her, myself, and others, we want to highlight the importance of navigating this process and working with our community partners and just trying to make sure that the outreach you're doing is in collaboration with our community partners, just to make sure that we help people who are applying for and those who work on to continue to keep their CalFresh benefits. For many families, seniors, and others facing the barriers that support can make the difference between getting help but also going without. And so the main question for that particular statement is how can the state best support your outreach process in working with the community partners so that way those that are eligible, once again, can remain eligible and then keep these particular benefits. And then when we had a little smaller brief hearing, well, not hearing, but just a dialogue, we kind of dove into that in regards to the cost of what that would be and different partners that are already doing that work But there parts of these states or different counties that are not able to do that work right now If you can dive in a little bit more on how we can help support I would appreciate that.

Thank you. Because from what I remember, the food banks, and I know that they're here, and they'll be able to talk a little bit more about it. And we're going to go into the second panel about being able to overall to really sustain as they're moving forward with that funding declining over the years. And then it was a question about the county support. I know that, as you mentioned, a number of counties haven't been able to obviously address the timeline and so forth. But can you talk a little bit more about from what you're hearing dealing with the counties trying to implement this process and their staffing issues? I know you talked about caseload, but their staffing concerns and helping us understand what their financial need is going to be.

Sure, so you all have, have been probably aware of some of the headlines that we're reading about layoffs that are either going before Boards of Supervisors for consideration or those that have already been approved. And we're even seeing those types of developments in resource-rich counties because they're also preparing for the compounding cost shifts and additional workload associated with other parts of HR1 on the health side. and of course the looming CalFresh administrative cost shift that you heard a little bit about earlier. So at the time when we're really imploring county leadership to really hold the line and push back some of those cost cutting measures until the state can act, some feel such level of desperation that they have to move forward now. Other counties, as you have heard, are also putting revenue raising measures on the ballot, but even in counties like Santa Clara County, they're only even able to meet a third, we're just shy of a third of the Delta that's being created by HR one cuts and cost shifts after even accounting for some of the revenue that they're raising. I would just say for the partnership that we have ongoing with CDSS, you know, for their part, We are grateful that they've used time ultimately and the design of the implementation as their levers for advancing harm reduction. They could have certainly implemented or told counties we need to implement upon enactment like the statute said. And ultimately, I think we're grateful for the design of the implementation and the timeline of the implementation. But now what we're insisting upon is that we fund the implementation. And the final thing I would say is we still have some way to go in terms of what we believe is maximally achievable on the automated side. When it comes to reducing the administrative burden on workers and clients alike, we know that when you use automated solutions, like when work requirements have been tried in other states, you can dramatically reduce discontinuance rates. and so we embrace those solutions, but we also have a fair degree of skepticism about how much of the caseload is going to be able to benefit from those interventions and how much will be left behind for the county eligibility workforce, which we believe will inherit the most complex of cases for those who actually don't have much of a data footprint at all.

Latissi? Hi. Hi, how are you?

Okay thank you Hi good morning and thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak today My name is Lauren Keltz and I a mother I a small business owner and I an advocate with the Contra Costa and Solano County Speaker Series And I have lived experience navigating the public assistance systems. I want to begin by sharing a piece of that experience with you. Several years ago, my daughter was going through a major medical crisis that required our family to travel back and forth from Vallejo to Palo Alto while caring for three young children. During that time, we relied on CalFresh to make sure that our family had food while we focused on getting through.

During that time, we relied on CalFresh to make sure that our family had food while we focused on getting through. CalFresh was not just extra support. It was essential. Many nights, CalFresh was the thin line between our family eating or not. While staying at the Ronald McDonald House, we were able to use their kitchens to cook healthy and nutritious meals for our family. It allowed us to feed our family and children and maintain some sense of stability during an incredibly difficult time. We also relied on cash aid to help cover bills and the cost of traveling back and forth to Palo Alto. These supports work together to help us stay afloat. Due to a clerical error within the system, our entire family lost access to all of our benefits at once. We lost our Medi-Cal coverage, we lost our CalFresh benefits, we lost our cash aid. Losing CalFresh did not just mean losing assistance. It meant losing access to food during one of the most critical moments of our lives. It also meant my daughter being temporarily removed from a transplant waiting list. She was five months old. When you're already under stress, you're already trying to survive, losing access to food, it just adds another layer of instability that families should not have to carry. For many families, there is no backup plan. There is no cushion, and there is no room or margin for error. In communities like mine, where rent alone can take up most of a family's income, There's very little left for food once you factor in the everyday costs of raising a family. A delay, a mistake, a disruption of benefits. It doesn't just create inconvenience, it creates real consequences. It means empty refrigerators, parents skipping meals so that their children can eat. It means families falling behind in ways that are so hard to recover from. In our case, the loss of that stability contributed to us falling behind and eventually us experiencing three years of homelessness. We stayed in shelters. We stayed in other people's garages. We stayed in tents. We did everything in our power to stay afloat. And then we reapplied for assistance. What was not factored into the requirements at the time was that we had one shared family vehicle that was constantly breaking down. We had a medically fragile infant who required constant care and multiple appointments each week when she was not being hospitalized. And we also had two other children under the age of five. And because of that, we were deemed ineligible. It forced my husband and I to go days at a time without food, waiting for food banks to open, or ration just enough to get by.

That is what happens when systems that families rely on are not reliable As of April 1st more than 70 Californians are at risk of losing CalFresh In my community food banks in Contra Costa and Solano counties alone have already seen demand increase by more than 50,000 people in just the last several months. That kind of increase reflects on how many families are struggling to maintain consistent access food right now. With HR1 and ongoing changes, many families feel like the requirements keep shifting. It's making it harder to stay enrolled in or to even qualify for benefits. I've spoken with other parents in my community who rely on CalFresh also, and their experiences reflect this reality. One mother shared that even with CalFresh, her benefits only cover about half of what her family needs for the month. She describes she stretches every dollar, shopping very carefully, and still relies on food banks to get by, and when those benefits were delayed, even briefly, she found herself driving from place to place just to find enough food for her children. This is the reality that families are living in right now, today. I sit here today not only as someone who has lived through this, but now as someone who serves her community and continues to see these challenges in real time. Families are doing their parts. They are applying. They're submitting documents, and they're trying to follow all of the rules. But when the system breaks down, they are the ones who carry the consequences. So we must ask, how do we ensure that public assistance is truly assisting our communities rather than creating barriers that push families further into crisis? As changes under HR1 are already taking effect and more are expected in the coming months, the impacts are already visible. Families are already losing access to food. Food banks are already seeing increase in demand. And in moments like this, the decisions made here carry more than policy weight. They reflect what we value. They reflect how we respond when families are struggling. As policymakers and as our state agencies, you have the ability to ensure that these systems function in a way that protects dignity, stability, and access to basic needs. So I ask you directly, what steps are being taken now to prevent disruption and benefit access for families across California to ensure continuity of coverage and to put safeguards in place so that delays, errors, and administrative barriers do not result in families losing access to food and health care? Because prevention does matter. Systems should be strong enough to hold families steady, especially in their most vulnerable moments. and I believe that choices made here can reflect the kind of care, responsibility, and integrity that our communities are counting on because families like mine and families like the ones I shared with you today, this is not about policy. This is about whether or not there's food in the kitchen, and that is something that no family should have to wonder about. I thank you for your time and your consideration.

Thank you, Chair and members. Leticia Garcia with the California Retailers Association here representing grocery stores all throughout California. Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this critical role that CalFresh plays, not only in supporting food access for millions of Californians, but also in sustaining a stable and resilient grocery retail sector across the state. CalFresh serves approximately 5.2 million individuals and 3.1 million households, generating more than $13 billion annually in economic activity in California. Whether benefits are redeemed at restaurants, convenience stores, or grocery stores, CalFresh is a significant driver of the state's food economy. CalFresh represents one of the most effective public-private partnership in our food system. Grocery retailers serve as a primary access point for food benefits for families, seniors, children, and unhoused individuals. In doing so, retail grocers function as an essential infrastructure in the successful delivery and impact of this program. From the retail perspective, CalFresh provides three key benefits. The first one is economic stability for communities and local businesses. CalFresh benefits are spent locally generating consistent economic activity in neighborhoods across California. For many grocery stores, particularly independent and neighborhood markets, CalFresh transactions represent a meaningful share of overall sales. That steady demand helps retailers maintain operations, keeps stores open in underserved areas, and helps retain employees. In rural and low-income urban communities, this can be the difference between a local grocery store or becoming a food desert. The second key benefit of CalFresh is the operational predictability in a volatile market. The grocery store industry operates on thin margins and faces consistent volatility from supply chain disruptions to inflationary pressures. CalFresh provides a reliable revenue stream that helps offset fluctuations in consumer spending. This predictability allows retailers to better manage inventory, invest in workforce, and continue offering fresh and healthy food options even during economic downturns. And the final and most important benefit of CalFresh is the food access. Retail grocers care about the communities they operate in. Many of them sponsor local sports clubs, are active members in local philanthropic efforts, and support their local food banks and other charitable food providers. I would really love to highlight the independent grocers and their participation in the food access programs like the CalFresh Fruit and Vegetable EBT pilot project. Through this program, CalFresh recipients can receive a dollar-for-dollar match up to $60 to purchase fresh fruit and vegetables from participants. painting independent grocers. These three key benefits of the CalFresh programs have made grocery stores an integral part of the communities they serve. As essential as CalFresh benefits are to the food economy, any disruption in benefits has a significant impact on the grocery store. The retail grocery community experienced the impacts of benefit reductions firsthand following the expiration of the COVID-19 supplemental SNAP benefits allotments in early 2023. Customers who had previously relied on enhanced benefits were faced with significantly reduced purchasing power. In California, households saw an average reduction of $163 per month, while individuals experienced an average decrease of $84. When these benefits declined, CalFish recipients often turned to alternative sources to meet their needs, including food banks and other charitable food providers. Similarly, during the most recent federal shutdown, disruptions in benefit issuance further highlighted the importance of program stability. Retailers observed notable shifts in consumer behavior as many customers began stretching their benefits over long periods, moving away from consistently weekly shopping patterns to more intermittent purchasing. This began disrupting inventory planning and reducing the predictability that retailers depend on to stock fresh, perishable, and nutritious foods. At the same time, reliance on charitable food networks prompting retailers to expand donations and deepen partnerships with their local food banks and community food access organizations to help address growing demand. For these reasons, efforts to increase CalFresh enrollment and ensure continuity of benefits are essential. Streamlining enrollment, reducing administrative barriers, and preparing for federal disruptions through contingency planning all contribute to a stronger, more reliable system for both families and retailers. And I'll wrap up by saying CalFresh is not only a nutrition program, it's a cornerstone of California's food economy. Grocery retailers are proud to partner in its delivery and stand ready to support policies to strengthen participation, protect access, and ensure long-term program stability.

Good morning. Good morning, chairs and member. My name is Paul Towers, and I'm the executive director of CAF, the Community Alliance with Family Farmers. We represent some 8,000 small and mid-sized farmers all across California, including in all of your districts. You know, at a time when federal officials are promoting the consumption of more fruits and vegetables, sort of more whole foods, and buying from more American farmers and producers, they're actually making these foods further out of reach. And, you know, that's the kind of conversation that we want to have with you today. For over 50 years, we've worked with small farmers to make sure that they have the tools to succeed in the California marketplace. There are over 400 different crops grown in California, fruits, nuts, vegetables, including some grown by the majority leader. But we're really at a threatened point here in California. We're losing over four farms per day, some 7,500 small and mid-sized farmers in just the last five years on record. And when you look at it, the majority of our farmers are actually operating at a loss. And so we expect these trend lines to continue. Now the federal administration has continued to advance policies that harm California farmers and food systems. We see these as a death by a thousand cuts with HR1 is a gaping wound We see tariffs that are making farming equipment and inputs more expensive fuel prices that are driving up the cost for transporting goods and to marketplaces more expensive immigration raids that terrorize our farm workers and communities, and a lack of a federal farm bill that actually provides the necessary resources for our conservation programs to keep farming. And in addition to those, we saw very significant cuts in just the past year to many of our local purchasing and support programs, some that Co-Chair Bonta spoke to. We saw $100 million in cuts just last year to food purchases for schools, daycares, and food banks. And so just building on top of those cuts, we see very little in terms of relief and support for the state's majority of small and mid-sized farmers. We do see support reaching many farmers outside of California, these commodity growers, corn and soybean growers, but very little reaching the folks here. Now we come to the impacts of HR1 in particular. The cuts of SNAP to our family-scale farmers are significant. We see that one in every four SNAP dollars spent on food eaten at home actually go to farmers, and research suggests that when families have fewer dollars to spend, they end up resorting to more processed foods, less fresh fruits and vegetables, more purchasing for farmers outside of California, and particularly less purchasing of small, organic, and sustainable farmers. They're hit hardest. And that economic impact, as you've heard from my colleague, is quite significant. For every dollar we spend with local farmers, there's a multiplier effect of nearly double in our local economies. That goes to hardware stores, employee wages, machinery, veterinarians, compost, that list goes on and on. This multiplier effect ripples through the agricultural regions in the state. So how do we see these impacts in particular on farmers and impacts on hunger efforts, anti-hunger efforts? Well, we already heard about grocery stores. We estimate that about 30 to 70 percent of produce you see at most grocery stores comes from California producers. You look at an initiative like Saba in Oakland, a really impressive corner store initiative, where in just the past five years, they've distributed over $100,000 in purchasing from local farmers into 120 different corner stores. These are all directly from CalFashion recipients. We look at the impacts on farmers markets and farm stands that the co-chair spoke to earlier. These are incredibly significant. We look at just here, just down the street, Alchemist Community Development Corporation. I spoke to the executive director yesterday. They operate nine farmers markets in this county. They average about a million dollars a year in purchasing of just CalFresh dollars, and with those market match dollars that you spoke to earlier, it's almost double. So nearly $2 million. It's $14 million in CalFresh purchasing at local farmers markets all across the state. For farmers I talk to, this is the difference between being able to afford a vehicle for their family to actually support their farm, to actually drive their produce to marketplaces. I talked to a farm stand owner just yesterday. He said, while the number is small, 5% of sales from his farm stand are just to CalFresh and recipients. That's the difference in his ability to buy new shoes for his kids. You'll hear more from my food bank colleagues and about other anti-hunger efforts.

I just wanted to, I think we were all, thank you for being able to speak to the testimony from Lauren Keltz earlier today. I think we heard very clearly from her that one of the things that we needed to focus on was ensuring that we have followed the mandate of ensuring that we are providing dignity, stability, and access to basic needs through continuity of coverage and through supporting innovative solutions. I appreciate the fact that we then were able to hear from our local farmers and our retailers about the ways in which we should be better optimizing every single food and nutrition program to be able to support our local economies and the economy of the state. so that we actually having all of those dollars retained and amplified here in the state of California for our growers our farmers and others So I just wanted to rename the program that was referenced the California Nutrition Incentive Program CNIP I believe Oakland is the second largest site of success for that program, and works with farmers throughout the state of California, particularly in the Central Valley. So I'm very supportive of that and just appreciate that we already had these opportunities to maximize every single dollar and we don't need, we didn't need HR1 to help us do that. But we should certainly be thinking more strategically about how we do that moving forward. And thank you for your testimony.

We're now going to move to our panel number two. This panel will be led under the direction of my co-chair, Assemblymember Bonta.

Good morning, Chair. Thank you for the opportunity to join this panel and discuss the critical role of CalFresh and our state's food programs. My name is Benjamin Chow. I'm the supervising health and public benefits policy manager at the California Immigrant Policy Center, and I'm also here on behalf of the Food for All Coalition. Since CIPC was founded nearly 30 years ago, we have advocated for policies that uphold the humanity of every human being, regardless of where they're born. Therefore, we reject all of the policies recently that increase the exclusions that allow us to deny someone access to food because of their immigration status. You already know what CalFresh is. It's a means-tested program that is designed to provide support when someone has demonstrated a need based on their income. For those of us born outside of the U.S., your immigration status may be used as a reason to deny you CalFresh when you have that need. CAPC is a co-sponsor of the Food for All campaign with Nourish California and have united with diverse stakeholders in the Food for All Coalition from San Diego to Humboldt, from LA to the Bay, to advocate for the end of exclusions within our safety net based on immigration status. We are grassroots organizations, service providers, and immigrants' rights leaders that believe that everyone in California should have access to programs like CalFresh. No exceptions, no exclusions, and no delays. As you heard earlier, the federal government has unleashed an assault on CalFresh access, placing particular attention on ways to limit eligibility for immigrants and also discouraged eligible families from enrolling and increased administrative barriers to enrollment. Benefits of benefit cuts, threats of sensitive enrollment data being shared with ice and the unmitigated hostility towards immigrants we are seeing has resulted in immigrants increasingly being locked out of pathways to stability like CalFresh or choosing not to participate over fears of their own safety. I would like to focus primarily on one of these pillars of anti-immigrant policy, which is tying eligibility to immigration status. Immigration-based exclusions effectively create two tiers of food assistance access for Californians, where Californians who are immigrants are less able to tap in. The most recent exclusions went to effect exactly one week ago. As a result of HR1, nearly 72,000 Californians will no longer be eligible for CalFresh because of their immigration status. and HR1 stripped eligibility away from the humanitarian immigrants that other speakers have touched on. These are people who have arrived in our state and were promised safety and are now being denied the most basic support, which is food. These are people who have assisted the U.S. government abroad. They have fled countries impacted by war like Ukraine and Afghanistan and have resettled in our state and whose families will contribute to the future fabric of California. According to data from the California Budget and Policy Center, which will be available in a forthcoming publication, 36% of the impacted population of these humanitarian immigrants are children, and 10% are seniors or adults with a disability. These changes will also have a significant impact on U.S. citizen and permanent residents who share a home with these newly excluded individuals. For example, a four-person family where two of the parents have been granted asylum and two of their children are U.S. citizens could see their monthly food assistance drop from $994 on average to $546 on average, nearly cut in half. This analysis found using samples of SNAP enrollment data that about 29,000 U.S. citizen children and 13,000 other family members who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents will be indirectly impacted by this cut. If we don't backfill these benefits, that means about 114,000 Californians and CalFresh households will feel the impact in some way and be at higher risk of hunger. We believe state action is essential. California has a powerful tool in the California Food Assistance Program, otherwise known as CFAP. This program was created nearly 30 years ago to respond to a similar federally induced crisis when federal welfare reform laws created new eligibility restrictions for immigrants. Three decades ago, elected leaders in similar shoes as yours created the program to protect the integrity of our food safety net and prevent a hunger crisis. We've worked to modernize this program. And in 2021, the state of California began planning to modernize CFAP so that it can deliver state-funded and state-administered EBT benefits to any income-eligible Californian, regardless of their immigration status. In 2023, we established a timeline for those ages 55 and over. and this original plan was set to be completed by October 2025, but it was unfortunately delayed to October 2027 And I want to bring this up because if the CFAP expansion was kept to its original timeline we would be in a much better position today to respond to HR1 because the same system changes that would have allowed us to administer these benefits 100% by the state would allow us today to respond to these new exclusions put in place against humanitarian immigrants. And so with renewed urgency, we continue to advocate for food for all in order to prevent the costs and consequences of hunger induced by HR1. And as part of this platform, we've requested the legislature to protect and implement the planned CFAP expansion for adults age 55 and older, and do that no later than October, 2027. Expand CFAP to include those newly excluded under HR1 and move towards a full expansion for all Californians. And we're asking for this because the data is clear. California produces nearly half of the nation's fruits, nuts, and vegetables, yet half of Californians who are excluded from food assistance due to their immigration status report experiencing food insecurity. 64% of immigrant Californians without legal permanent resident status are living in or near poverty. This is according to the California poverty measure. So 64% compared to 35% statewide. The data tells us what we already know, that exclusion causes hunger. I would like to comment on one other provision of HR1 that will limit CalFresh access for Californians who are immigrants, and that is the implementation of work time limits beginning in June this year. About 665,000 people we estimate will lose federal food assistance simply because they cannot meet the work or community engagement reporting rules because counties lack sufficient resources to process these exemptions or because their exemption was eliminated by the federal government. These new harsher time limits for CalFresh recipients deepen existing inequities for people who already face discriminations and barriers to full-time employment, and this would include immigrants. Looking at the data, while foreign-born Californians have a lower unemployment rate than their U.S.-born counterparts, their disparities exist in educational attainment and language ability. That can make it challenging to secure employment. According to U.S. Census data from 2024, 18% of foreign-born Californians who are college-educated are either unemployed or employed in a low-skilled job, which is higher than those who are U.S.-born. We are aligned with other anti-hunger advocates in modernizing CFAP even further, so that we have the ability to deliver state-funded benefits to households impacted by the time limits. At the California Immigrant Policy Center, we believe that no Californian, no human being should have to face hunger. These cuts were designed to fuel other federal priorities. This includes tax breaks that disproportionately benefit the wealthy, and increased funding for immigration enforcement. These cuts pull resources away from CalFresh, our survival, and funnel our tax dollars into systems that inflict violence in immigrant communities. We all just want to live without fear, and that includes the fear of going hungry. California must protect its progress, restore the harmful HR1 cuts, and move forward with expanding food access to CFAP, because we need to feed families, not fear. We need to feed children and not separate their families. And we need to feed our neighbors and not turn our backs on them. Thank you.

and a senior eligibility worker for San Francisco County. I've been in this field for nine years. I'm one of the 13,455 eligibility workers represented by SEIU across California. We help people apply for and keep benefits that help them keep their families, keep their dignity, keep their life opportunities, and in many ways stay alive. Today I'll be talking about the impact of H.R. 1 on our communities and across the state. They proudly serve in the leadership we need from this assembly members, along as with Governor Newsom's administration. In my job, I handle intakes of new clients for CalFresh and Medicaid, as well as renewals of benefits. I typically work with 50 to 100 clients per day, both in person and on the phone. We have really been overloaded with new clients and our existing clients in San Francisco. We do our best to meet the need. But unfortunately, a few days ago, the mayor of San Francisco handed out over 100 pink slips. So we're already losing our coworkers to H.R.1. This is going to make it so much harder for us to do our job. And along with the restrictions that have not been imposed on our clients yet, but are yet to come. The hurdles that HR1 puts in front of people who are in desperate need will add more work for us and create more bottlenecks if we don't act now to build up our capacity. I am scared of what will happen when the restrictions do come and access truly becomes impossible for our clients. Many of the clients I serve are Californians experiencing homelessness. They have substance abuse problems, behavior health issues, and dealing with disabilities. I also work with families of small children in the household. Lately, our clients have been coming in to share with us the terror about HR1 and how it will impact them and their children. I became an eligibility worker because I was a recipient of CalFresh and Medicaid when I was younger. We relied on these programs to survive while my mom put herself through school. And there were days when I remember eating hot cereal three meals a day, but I didn't go hungry. That experience has made it clear to me that no child should ever go hungry in America. That's why I'm so proud to play a part in giving families access to CalFresh. CalFresh is a great program. It meets the needs of a lot of people. I don't see how any leader can decide to cause harm by taking the food away from a hungry child and they can sleep at night. When I'm talking to the clients that live out in the streets and are homeless, they have no stove, they have no kitchen. CalFresh is a literal lifeline to them. As someone who is very familiar with all the angles of this issue, my biggest fear is what losing CalFresh would do to our communities. I'm old enough to remember or to have at least heard about the old days when many people were so desperate that they felt they had to resort to the extreme measures like stealing or eating out the trash can just to survive I'm terrified of how HR1 will hurt my clients and neighbors especially during this time of food inflation caused by the war in Iran because it doesn have to be this way How can tax cuts for the ultra be worth all this suffering Their wealth should not come at the price of our health. And any other food services, food banks that they are trying to put in place, we need our CalFresh to collaborate with them so we can meet the need of the people. I love my job. I love my clients. And it hurts to know how they will negatively be impacted by HR1. Excuse me. I'm blessed that I get to make a difference every day. But with your leadership together, we can make a bigger difference for people whose well-being has been disregarded by federal lawmakers in this dark time. Thank you for your opportunity to let me share. I'm looking forward to finding solutions for Californians who need them now. Thank you.

Good morning, Chairs. I am Albert Banuelos, Interim Director of Self-Supergency Services for the County of San Diego. My department administers CalFresh eligibility and our local CalFresh employment and training program among other social services programs, including Medi-Cal and CalWORKs. San Diego County is the second most populous of California's 58 counties and the fifth largest county in the United States. We are extremely diverse. 46% of residents under 18 years of age are Hispanic, and the Hispanic population is expected to continue to grow at a rapid rate. Approximately 23% of the county's populations are immigrants, including refugees who speak 68 different languages and have a variety of needs as they live and adjust to a new environment. Currently, San Diego region is home to over 800,000 medical recipients, 24% of the county's population. And my team serves as the entry point of nearly 530,000 San Diego CalFresh recipient annually, or 16% of our county's population. My agency is responsible for determining eligibility, providing employment and training referrals, and ensuring households maintain consistent access to nutrition assistance. Our eligibility workforce plays a critical role and improving food security and reducing disparities in access to nutrition. I come before you today to underscore the urgency and stakes of what comes before us in just 54 days. Beginning June 1st, this very same workforce will have to support over 93,000 CalFresh adults in my county alone, as part of nearly 1 million Californians statewide to navigate the increasingly challenging SNAP work requirements in order to maintain access to essential food assistance beyond three months. We estimate that per impacted client, this could require up to four additional eligibility worker hours per year above our current funding level and depending on the client's need these hours are absolutely essential to engage in in the direct and to direct clients to work client to worker conversations that could allow workers to build trust and engage in these sensitive details necessary to identify exemptions therefore ensuring claims are aren't at risk of losing their food benefit to begin with. Moreover, eligibility workers need the time to conduct outreach, educate clients, and help distangle the complexity that comes up with similar but different work requirements between both CalFresh and Medi-Cal. And for those vulnerable clients who may not need any exemption criteria, yet struggle to maintain consistent employment, our workers need the time to connect them to employment opportunities in our community so that they can maintain their food benefit. Partnership from state is vital support to county workers in managing this extraordinary workload in order to minimize the harms of H.R.1 and to support those in our community who rely on these critical services. Aid by policy is complex as individuals may be meeting several different types of exemptions that must be screened. Some exemptions such as unfit for work are not straightforward. ABODs may also be working or engaged in an activity, but not at the required 80 hours per month, so staff may need to work with some individuals to help them find additional activities to meet these hours. Updated CalSOS automation in both the system and Benefits CalPortal are critical for staff to properly assist customers in work and work these cases. In addition, automated services such as TRUF that the administration is working on implementing are critical to have in place and integrated into CalSAUS as soon as possible. Automation is necessary, but on its own won't fully mitigate the risk. Investing in our county eligibility workers offer a proven client-centered and cost-effective path to mitigate the worst of the harms from HR1's attacks on our social safety net. Historically, when the state has adequately funded California well-trained, time-tested county eligible workers and county human service agencies, California's county-run safety net have delivered or are most vulnerable, making significant progress in reducing hunger and poverty. For example, as investments in our CalFresh administrative allocation increased to meet demands over time, statewide counties were able to increase CalFresh take up rate from 66% in 2014 to 81% in 2022. For example, when SSI cash out was implemented, the administration included extra funding for counties and San Diego County currently has nearly 100,000 seniors enrolled in CalFresh, an increase of over 340% since implementation of the policy in June of 2019. This underscores the critical importance of worker led approach to build trust and engaging thoughtfully with clients to prevent benefit losses. As mentioned in San Diego, we estimate that over 93,000 adults currently receiving CalFresh benefits will be impacted by HR1's work requirements. San Diego County has served many college and universities since 2020. College student enrollment has increased by over 270 and currently nearly 17 college students are receiving CalFresh That is another example of funding being made available to four counties to solicit and retain our college liaisons so that we can target this population. In addition to CalFresh work requirements, San Diego County currently serves over 320,000 adults who may be impacted by Medi-Cal work requirements, including nearly 18,000 adults who are over the age of 50. Without direct engagement and trust built by an eligibility worker, individuals may not know whether to report certain exemption factors that could help them maintain coverage or may not be aware that certain life circumstances, such as caring for an ill family member, may provide them with temporary relief from the work requirements. Moreover, the evidence is robust that when, that even for those clients who are working sufficient hours, they are likely to face significant barriers in dealing with the documentation and paperwork requirements and still be at risk of losing their benefits. For example, San Diego County is a large metropolitan area and serves many individuals encountering unstable housing or homelessness that may be unfit for work. Currently, nearly 17,000 individuals could be potentially impacted by the ABOD rules. Individuals who are employed part-time, gig workers and students may need to be further engaged by staff to maintain their eligibility. Hiring staff for this demand work takes time under the best circumstances. Now we are trying to hire and retain people at high stakes when at times when many people will be under the stress and trauma of keeping their critical benefits. Typically, it takes approximately six to nine months to recruit, hire, and fully train new staff in my county. This means that the time for state investment was months ago. In addition, it takes new staff anywhere between nine to 12 months from initial onboarding to be able to manage full caseload. Yet fully aware of the ramifications of our most vulnerable residents, my county is moving forward with HR1 implementation with both urgency and careful attention. With only weeks on Torella, we are working diligently to be ready. We are currently hiring and training new staff and providing HR1 training to existing staff, working with our agency, board, and our community-based organizations to educate the public and with food banks and 201 San Diego to provide information on food resources for individuals who may lose eligibility. The ABOD handbook is critical for staff training and customer education. Oftentimes, individuals may assume they are no longer eligible to the program and fail to apply or renew their benefits. Eligibility staff hiring and training is a complex process that requires new staff to be trained in multiple programs, policy rules, system and data entry, customer service skills, and caseload management skills. Not having enough staff who are properly trained and onboarded can result in workload backlogs, increased appeals, incorrect eligibility, and higher error rates. Investing in county capacity to implement CalFresh work requirements is essential to prevent disruption in food assistance. By funding, training, worker time, and outreach, the state can help vulnerable Californians maintain access to critical nutrition and reduce the risk of hunger. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Hi Good morning Trin Fawn with Justice and Aging And as you been hearing CalFresh is important for all Californians and this includes older adults CalFresh helps with food costs, which for older adults and people with disabilities can include things like special diets due to a medical condition, and it is our first line of defense against senior hunger. In addition, and in a broader context, CalFresh is one part of how people manage their household budgets, balancing between housing, food, and especially for older adults and individuals with disabilities, health care costs. For older adults with low income, CalFresh is part of that broader network of support that keeps people housed, fed, and well. We still have a ways to go to get to that goal for everyone. Fifteen percent of California seniors today live in poverty. Hunger remains high among older adults. Food banks are seeing a lot more people than even during the height of the pandemic, including many seniors and people with disabilities. For low-income older adults and individuals with disabilities who also depend on SSI SSP grants, those grants continue to trail significantly behind housing costs. The fair market rent for a studio apartment is more than half of the individual SSI grant in every single county,

Director of Programs at the Jacob and Cushman San Diego Food Bank.

Good morning, thank you Chair Ponta and Chair Sharp-Collins. My name is Amy Ielts and I'm the Director of Programs at the Jacobs and Cushman San Diego Food Bank. The San Diego Food Bank is the largest hunger relief organization in San Diego County. Each month we serve more than 400,000 people via direct distributions and through a network of more than 450 nonprofit partners. This efficient system enabled us to distribute over 52 million pounds of food for about 44 million meals last year to help San Diegans make ends meet and keep food on the table. The Food Bank has a commitment to nutrition, and last year, 44% of all food distributed was fresh fruits and vegetables. The San Diego Food Bank administers federal food programs, such as the Emergency Food Assistance Program and the Commodity Supplemental Food Program. also known as CSFP or the Senior Food Program. The food bank also serves as San Diego's diaper bank, sponsors multiple school-based programs, and hosts a CalFresh outreach team. Hunger in San Diego is nearing levels last seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, when hunger was at its highest. As of December of 2025, more than one in four, 25% of San Diegans, experience nutrition insecurity or are unable to provide three nutritious meals a day for themselves and or their family. That's more than 840,000 people countywide, including nearly one in three children and more than one in four older adults. According to the San Diego Hunger Coalition, in December of 2025, 57% of the monthly food assistance meals provided in San Diego County were CalFresh supported. That's 15.7 million monthly meals that CalFresh provides to San Diego residents This combined with the meals distributed by the San Diego Food Bank and other hunger relief organizations and additional government programs totaled 27 million meals provided in December of 2025. The total amount of dollars issued to CalFresh EBT cards in San Diego County this past December was $73.3 million distributed to more than 378,000 people. Using the CalFresh multiplier of $1.79, the total local economic impact of CalFresh totaled over $131 million. Despite the millions of meals that came from food assistance in December, San Diego was still short by 6 million meals. Additional data from the Hunger Coalition estimates that 200,000 people are likely eligible for CalFresh but not yet enrolled, showing great potential to reduce the meal gap by increasing CalFresh participation in San Diego County. If all CalFresh eligible people enrolled, it would provide another 8.3 million meals monthly to the county, erasing the meal gap in most months and providing an additional $66 million in economic activity to our region. To help families obtain CalFresh, the Food Bank employs CalFresh application assisters. Last year alone, we helped nearly 600 people obtain CalFresh benefits, leading to 563,000 meals for those individuals. This brought in over $2.2 million in CalFresh benefits and resulted in over $4 million in local economic spending. Recently, our team spoke with food recipients at our largest senior food box program distribution site, where our CalFresh outreach team is also stationed. We met an elderly couple who live with their daughter. The husband's unable to work due to health issues and is ineligible for SSI, so he has no income. His wife works part-time but struggles to find steady work at her age and must travel long distances to work, spending a significant amount on gas. Their household receives just $55 a month in CalFresh benefits, barely $1.83 a day for two people. They rely on food bank programs to bridge their meal gap. The County of San Diego estimates that over 100,000 people are expected to be impacted by changes to CalFresh as a result of HR1. Specifically, new eligibility changes to lawfully present non-citizens will impact 13,000 CalFresh recipients, and expanded work requirements will impact 90,300 San Diegans currently on CalFresh. We estimate that due to these combined changes, the monthly meal gap will increase by 2.7 million meals. To put this into context, to meet an increased monthly meal gap of 2.7 million meals, the food bank would need an additional 3.2 million pounds of food monthly, which equals 38 million pounds of food annually, or approximately 73% more than our current annual output. Moreover, the food bank would have to host an additional 50 or more distributions a month. Additionally, these cuts come at a time when affordability is becoming more and more difficult for the community. At the end of last year, San Diego County's inflation rate was the second highest in the nation, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics final consumer price index report. With recent spikes to energy prices, the rising cost of living continues to impact our most vulnerable. Our partners are beginning to see those affected by HR1 showing up in food distribution lines. Right now, several of our nonprofit partners are reporting a 20 increase in demand compared to this time last year It a major jump in a very short period Our partners are ordering considerably more food to keep pace with the growing demand and ensure they have enough to serve everyone who needs assistance. We're getting requests for basic staples, milk, eggs, produce, even gas cards, as families try to stretch every dollar. To further help individuals and families enroll on CalFresh, the San Diego Food Bank works closely with the County of San Diego to provide ongoing, crucial feedback on its countywide food justice community action plan. We're recommending that the county's self-sufficiency department conduct an internal audit of CalFresh denial rates with recommendations on how to address identified patterns of avoidable denials, develop recommendations on how the county can increase CalFresh participation rates among eligible individuals, and to partner with organizations to develop a public charge awareness campaign. Additionally, we're also working with the county to become a resource for individuals subjected to the expanded work requirements to meet their required hours through volunteering with the San Diego Food Bank. While we work very closely with our county partners, we understand that state level investments and solutions continue to be crucial. Cal food funding has been essential in helping the food bank meet the need in our communities, enabling the purchase of rarely donated but highly requested items like eggs, meat, and fresh produce that reflects the diverse dietary and cultural needs of the community we serve. The San Diego Food Bank has been entrusted with serving as the sole Cal food distributor in San Diego County since the program's inception. Critically, the San Diego Food Bank uses 100% of Cal food funding to purchase food. We absorb the staffing and overhead costs rather than drawing on the 25% administrative allowance permitted by CDSS. This means that every dollar invested by the state goes directly into food for the community in San Diego County. Last year, CalFood provided seven million meals across San Diego County and supplemented 118 monthly San Diego Food Bank distributions. The legislators CalFood investments last year proved essential during the federal government shutdown when delays and disruptions to CalFresh significantly increased demand for food overnight. During this period, the Food Bank's GetFood GPS Locator Map webpage saw a 104% increase in visits. CalFood enabled us to quickly increase food inventory, launch emergency distributions, and support nonprofit partners to meet the surge in need. The San Diego Food Bank is calling on our state leaders to fund CalFood at $110 million this fiscal year. This proposed $110 million investment would increase the San Diego Food Bank's capacity to distribute an estimated 14 million meals to San Diego County residents. 14 million meals meets half the need we are expecting to potentially see if all HR1 impacted CalFresh recipients fall off the program. Therefore this $110 million request represents the minimum amount the state should be considering to quickly connect individuals who roll off CalFresh with emergency food to see them through their time of need safely and with dignity. Another solution that I wanna highlight is a budget request for $14 million for CalFresh outreach. Without additional funding, many of the existing 160 organizations who do CalFresh outreach will no longer be able to do so starting this October when the CalFresh administrative cost shift goes into effect. This network is vital to helping Californians learn about CalFresh, to navigate the application process, and to manage their benefits. This network helps those facing the greatest barriers to accessing CalFresh like older adults SSI recipients college students mixed status households and unhoused individuals Thank you for the opportunity to speak today Your strong support over the years of all food banks across California has been very impactful. We know that the path to meet this moment will require us, the food bank, and our elected partners, to continue to work together to protect California's most vulnerable communities from hunger. Thank you very much.

Yeah, I mentioned in my remarks that we, in effect, have two tiers of access to food programs in our state. And for those who don't qualify for federally funded benefits, now that that list of qualifying immigration statuses has been limited, we're finding more people in that tier. And, you know, there are several other programs that are still available to immigrant families, for example, with children, universal school meals, summer EBT are all programs that continue to serve immigrant families, WIC. But when we look at SNAP, which many of the speakers here have demonstrated, CalFresh as one of our most powerful anti-hunger programs, we're finding that now we're seeing segmentation of eligible household members. And even with the way that the legislature has designed the age-based phase and approach for the CFAP expansion that Food for All has led, starting with populations ages 55 and older, we have maintained has kind of created a similar problem. Having grown up in an immigrant household myself, It's just kind of counterintuitive to think that who belongs at the dinner table should be based off of some eligibility requirement, you know, based on age or your status. But in effect, that's what we're seeing. That's what we're going to see increase in mixed status families is that families will continue to put family values above their own needs and share what household resources are available if they can. but in effect those households that have mixed statuses will receive less benefits or perhaps choose not to enroll out of fear of protecting their family members' information or just having a lack of clear information or guidance, or even just the barriers of applying and getting over those hurdles administratively with language access. These are all things that create an invisible wall for immigrant families, and it's unfortunate that we're kind of seeing it as, you know, those who are born here and immigrants, when in fact the way California is, we're very blended in what happens to one of us impacts us all, And that's really evident with mixed status immigrant households. Just add for older adults, we all live together. We live together, we eat together. And an earlier speaker had touched on who doesn't eat a meal. And that's a decision no family should have to make. And that's a decision no family should have to make.

Yeah, so my understanding of how CFAP works is, as I mentioned, this program was created nearly 30 years ago. and it was created under an agreement with the federal government to provide state-funded food of benefits to folks directly impacted by welfare reform at the time. Since we've launched Food for All and have engaged in this conversation with the legislature, we've clarified that there are steps that the administration can take. One of them is creating our own payment system, like a state bank account that we can use to issue benefits. And once we have that online, it will unlock the door for using CFAP in a more flexible way. That's ultimately what we would need to go beyond its original eligibility requirements and provide, for example, to anyone regardless of status. So that's our understanding. We've been in conversations with CDSS about that. and in our legislative advocacy, I've been working with them to get clarity on those details. But really, once that work is completed, we believe the legislature will be much more empowered to begin appropriating and making additional expansions to CFAP. That seems to be a path that we are going to have to take our state-only approach in a couple of different areas around responses to HR1.

Because of the layoffs and the shortage of staff, that's going to put more burden on the staff that we have. And we're going to be learning to assist our clients with the new restrictions and work requirements. We're going to have their schedule requirements. We're going to have to refer them to workforce development. and right now we're only given in San Francisco County, I'm sorry, 3.5 hours to do tasks and 4.5 hours to do function. The function is on the phones or face-to-face. So we have people, an influx of calls and people coming in because their cases can't get processed because we're doing more function than task. So with the additional task, we're going to be really overwhelmed. And we need assistance with training and some kind of assistance with helping us transition.

Right now, you're seeing 50 to 100 clients a day. When at function. So remember, one day you can be at the service counter that's face-to-face, or you can be on the phones. And lately, with the thread of HR1, our lines are down blocks. and our doors stay open until 5 o'clock. So if you get in there at 4.59, we have to stay until every client's need has been met. And sometimes our rooms are still full. Thank you.

So I will start with the automation piece. Our CALSALS system is the most important tool our eligibility workers have. However, it's a tool, the conversation is with the customer. We also have our staff that throughout California, we have not had to ask questions regarding work activities or we just collect, so it changes the dynamic and the conversation that now we have to have with our customers So that increases the time And then it also our customers are accustomed especially if they are ongoing So the shift in questioning is also causes confusion because the customer does not understand, well, you didn't ask me this last April, right? The support that most of the counties need is in the administrative piece, because we are going to be having to educate both our staff and our customer base. We are expecting to see many appeals. Many of them will be because of misunderstanding of the new policies. The transaction or the action taken could be 100% accurate, but because our customers are not used to or they're not expecting that determination, they will follow an appeal. We will have the administrative burden of putting it through the process. we have to train not only our newly hired staff, but we have to retrain all of our existing staff for a program that has been on a waiver for 15 plus years. I will say, and I can only speak on San Diego, probably 90 to 95% of San Diego eligibility workers have never dealt with an ABOD. That also adds up to the, In January of 2027, when the working community engagement requirements for Medi-Cal, which we appreciate that both the HCS and CDSS are working in partnership, but the rules are different. So the confusion for our customers to receive a letter that says, congratulations, you've met work requirements for program A, you are being denied or discontinued for not meeting work requirements for program B. Our staff do multiple programs. So the workload is also keeping the right program when having that conversation and following the conversation with the customer. So to be specific, are we talking about CalFresh at this moment? Are we talking about Medi-Cal? And then having, you know, we don't expect our customers to understand their lingo. we don't expect them to be eligibility worker themselves is the clarity. So at this moment, the support, I think that many counties need is that support and for the backend for the training, for staffing resources to be able to do this work. For the first 12 months, regardless if we're talking about the citizenship changes that happened in April or the work requirements that are coming in June, all 58 counties will have the burden to touch that case,

My question was already asked by Assemblymember Bonte regards to really diving in a little bit more and into your workload but listening to the both of you speak right now miss Scott for your department how many eligibility workers would you say you have in your department

Okay. I'm just trying to gauge that because I know you said some are at the counter, some are on the phones.

how often are you at the counter or on the phones?

And would you be able to just dive in? Because I saw the impact it had on you hearing from some of your customers. And I wanted to just kind of hear a little bit more in regards to the impact on the mental health. Because as things change and your caseload increases, that's going to impact you and your ability to do your job and your mental health component. And that's something that we also have to consider as we're moving forward. I just wanted to know if you would be willing to share a little bit more on how this is also impacting your ability to do your work.

Thank you. I do have one more. In listening to the conversation about the ABOD, just correct me if I'm wrong, you were saying that as of right now, a lot of the eligibility workers do not have the experience of dealing with the ABOD?

I was asking that because in our hearing yesterday, for health hearing, it was something for one of the bills that was presented talking about MS. And the confusion that can possibly persist with that of identifying an ABOD person, meaning that some people, you know, for the neurological aspects of it, they may be misidentified. So I'm just wondering how that training is. So I'm hopeful that we can kind of talk about that a little bit further just to make sure that any training that is coming to folks with being able to identify those that are there, also including certain disabilities that may not appear the way, you know, typically some disabilities actually appear. But they do need some additional support and they could qualify, but they're overlooked because of the physical symptoms, you know what I mean, of that. So just wondering whether training includes that. But that was one of the questions that I had, but I'm going to turn it back over before we get to public comment. Yeah, I don't have any more questions. I want to appreciate all of you for coming to really just offer some insights into the day-to-day. And I know that we didn't get to dive more deeply into the realities of the food banks, but I really wanted to pull from what I heard you testify about around the fact that we actually need to be enrolling more people and having greater outreach to make sure that people who are eligible for CalFresh and all of our other social benefits actually have the ability to do that. I think we've been mostly in the mindset when we're hearing budget presentations around just the reduction of the number and trying to hold on to the bare minimum of people that should be receiving services. But the reality is that in order for our food banks and for our whole entire kind of food and nutrition security system to be able to work, we really need to be very aggressive and proactive in making sure that we can enroll as many people as possible and then obviously keep them enrolled. So I want to thank you all for the very insightful testimony that you offered and for traveling all this way to come up to Sacramento. And I want to thank my co-chair, Assemblymember Sharp Collins, for highlighting all of the assets that are in San Diego County, especially in the work that we have before us. And I'm trying to figure out how to not be sad, but the only thing that I can get to is mad. And at this point, I think we don't even have time for mad. And I very much looking forward to figuring out how to ensure that the state can position our frontline folks to be able to live up to the standard and the ideal that was set by one of our testifiers here today which is how can we be able to provide support with dignity, continuity of care, and recognizing the basic humanity that we all, as residents of California, have a right to. So I'm going to stay focused on that and really appreciate you all bringing to life what the current challenges are. Thank you. At this time, we're going to go ahead and move to public comment. Okay. You have one minute to provide public comment.

Appreciate that. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, Greg Herner on behalf of 211 San Diego. So thank you, co-chairs, but thank you particularly co-chair Sharp Collins for being a champion for 211 San Diego and CalFresh. We so much appreciate you and our communities down there. As noted today, I think if we can keep people on CalFresh, it's a 100% drawdown of federal funds. So the smartest thing for us to do is to make sure that we support the outreach network to keep all of those people as we can to draw down those federal funds. And so that why we co the requests with California Association of Food Banks for million to maintain that in H from the H cuts But you know we need to help those most vulnerable to stay on We work in 2-1-1 San Diego. We work with the county to make sure that we look across programs as well for all types of eligibility. So this not only helps with CalFresh, but it helps with everything else that those individuals may need as well. So we really support that. And we, of course, support the CalFood request for those that we're not going to be able to keep on CalFresh. Thank you.

Thank you Thank you. Thank you.