Local food bank sees rising demand

HAYWARD, Wis. (WBZH) – One local food bank is seeing a rise in demand due to the ongoing federal government shutdown.

The Northwoods Community Food Shelf is a non-profit food pantry in Hayward that has been open for five years, providing food to those in need through the Spider Lake Church. Executive Director Bill Hammer says that he has seen a significant change with the amount of people coming into the food pantry. 

“We’ve seen definitely a change in the amount of people that are coming out. We’re doing over 100 a week now, we already got 350 in for the month and I still got a day and a half to go so it’s possible we could hit 400. That’ll be a lot for our little pantry here,” said Hammer.

Hammer also says that he has been seeing larger families that have never been to Northwoods Community Food Shelf utilize the food pantry, and some seem hesitant to do so.

According to a memo from the USDA, The Trump administration has declined to use federal contingency funding to fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) next month. That would leave roughly 700,000 Wisconsinites who currently rely on food assistance cut off from it.

Hammer says that the Northwoods Community Food Shelf is expecting to see even more of a demand if the Wisconsin FoodShare program runs out of funds. “You know like I said I know the food stamps are supposed to be shut off on November 1, so we are preparing to get an onslaught of people over here and we’ll do the best we can with what we have coming in,” said Hammer. 

Earlier this week, Gov. Evers announced that Wisconsin has joined a multistate lawsuit suing the USDA to continue funds for FoodShare.

---