It’s 8:30 on a Friday morning and the Alameda Food Bank (AFB) Island Community Market doesn’t open for another two hours. Volunteers are loading food donations into the warehouse. Outside, clients who are mostly senior citizens, are chatting in small groups and waiting to shop.
Inside the warehouse is AFB Executive Director Teale Harden. She sat down with the Alameda Post to talk about the ways in which the Food Bank is being affected by the recently passed One Big Beautiful Bill. The bill is President Trump’s signature policy act which, among other actions, makes drastic cuts in federal funding for food stamps and aid.
The bill’s immediate impact on AFB and other food banks around the country is that it reduces federal grants and food given to aid organizations. AFB recently had a federal grant rescinded and has felt the effects of cuts to the USDA’s The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), which distributes food.
“We have seen a decrease in the amount of food that we’re receiving from those programs,” Harden tells the Post. The Food Bank has already “made programmatic changes to try to make sure that we are sourcing enough food” and is actively fundraising to “fill that void,” Harden explains.
On the client side, food stamps, formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or CalFresh in the state of California, are being cut. According to some estimates, 22.3 million families will lose some or all of their SNAP benefits due to changes in work requirements and eligibility based on legal status.
The bill also requires states to fund a higher percentage of SNAP benefits if there are error rates in eligibility and benefit payments. Many states currently have an error rate over 6%, which is the new threshold. As a result, states may reduce SNAP benefits or do away with them entirely if they cannot pay the higher rates.
This historical slashing of SNAP is estimated to cut funding by 20%. As of May 2025, over 100,000 households in Alameda County qualify for and use CalFresh benefits, according to the program’s Data Dashboard. That number is almost double the amount in 2018, when just over 50,000 families qualified for and used benefits.
The One Big Beautiful Bill “is impacting the equation on both sides,” Harden points out. “We’re having fewer resources from the federal government, but we’re also anticipating more need because of other actions being taken.”
For now, the cuts to CalFresh have not affected residents of Alameda, but the Food Bank is keeping watch and is aware that it will soon see an increase in clients.
The federal government is pushing the job of feeding hungry people onto local food banks and relying on them to step up and cover the loss of social safety nets. Many food banks, however, are already strained for resources and operating at their highest levels. Harden tells the Post, “We haven’t seen a reduction down from COVID back to pre-COVID amounts of service.”
Pre-COVID, AFB served 60 families a day out of a few trailers next to Jean Sweeney Open Space Park. During the pandemic, those numbers swelled to 500 to 700 families a day, and the Alameda Food Bank began operating out of their current warehouse space at Alameda Point. Today, that number still holds—500 to 700 families still come to get food each day.
As to why the number of clients has not gone back down to 60 families a day, Harden offers a few explanations. First is the increased cost of food. The second reason is that recovery from the pandemic or a recession can take a long time. “The recovery isn’t as drastic as the initial impact,” says Harden. “So people end up using the services as long as they continue to qualify for much longer than the end of the economic impact.”
Despite serving hundreds of families a day and knowing that AFB will have to look for more funding in order to serve even more families soon, Harden encourages people to access its services. “Don’t wait to come and visit us until you lose your job,” she says. “Don’t wait until your cupboards are bare, until you’ve drained your emergency savings. We encourage people to come as soon as they qualify.”
In the meantime, the Food Bank is searching for funding that does not rely on federal or state dollars. It also is turning to Alameda residents. “We are asking the Alameda community to help us fill the void,” states Harden. She also is asking for advocates.
“Talk to your friends, talk to your neighbors about what you’ve seen, what you’ve heard, if you volunteered at the Food Bank, if you got anything from us,” she urges “…Help strengthen that community safety net that we have. Help us raise awareness about the need in the community.”
Visit the Alameda Food Bank website to donate or volunteer.
Jean Chen is a contributing writer for the Alameda Post. Contact her via [email protected]. Her writing is collected at AlamedaPost.com/Jean-Chen.
