California hearing warns H.R.1 and recent shutdown threaten CalFresh access, county budgets and food banks

State lawmakers and dozens of witnesses told a Sacramento hearing that last month’s federal government shutdown and H.R.1’s policy changes have strained California’s nutrition safety net and could push hundreds of thousands of people off CalFresh.

“CalFresh is the largest anti-hunger program in the state,” Sen. Jesse Adegin, chair of the Senate Human Services Committee, said at the Nov. 1 informational hearing. He cited preliminary estimates of deep economic effects from H.R.1 and framed the hearing as a review of both the shutdown’s immediate harms and the longer-term effects of the federal changes.

The California Department of Social Services’ Chief Deputy Director David Swanson Hollinger told the committee that the department and counties moved quickly to notify recipients after federal Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) guidance produced uncertainty about November issuances. CDSS said it delivered multilingual direct messaging, issued all-county guidance to counties and coordinated with the state’s 49 major food banks and thousands of sub-agencies to route emergency assistance and deploy the California National Guard and volunteers where needed.

“We posted messages on our homepage, updated FAQs, and coordinated closely with counties, tribes and community partners,” Swanson Hollinger said, describing two waves of outreach and a newly established disaster operations center…