Flathead Food Bank Directors Anticipate Long-Term Needs Will Remain After Shutdown Exposes Food Insecurity

Maeve Kintzler is 20 years old, works part-time and attends school. She also has epilepsy, which can flare up and cause seizures in a stressful situation. That includes working too much, which can lead to burnout, Kintzler said.

To make ends meet and help her ability to take care of herself, Kintzler applied for benefits through the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. She said the application process consisted of a hefty amount of paperwork with a high burden to prove why benefits were necessary. After applying, Kintzler spent a month waiting for the Office of Public Assistance to approve her application.

Kintzler was one of more than 77,000 Montanans affected when SNAP benefits stalled at the beginning of November, during the recent government shutdown.

At the end of October, the Trump administration claimed it couldn’t legally tap into emergency funds to keep SNAP running. Dozens of states pushed back in a lawsuit, resulting in partial benefits going out to SNAP recipients after the first week of November.

Thirty-six states stepped in to fill the breach at the month’s start, either by handing out direct aid, providing funding to food banks or a combination. Montana was part of the 14 states that did neither, despite the Montana Food Bank Network urging Gov. Greg Gianforte to use state funds to maintain the program during the shutdown. The governor’s office said it couldn’t justify doling out benefits without an assurance the federal government would reimburse the state.

The shutdown ended last Wednesday. On Nov. 13, Montana’s Department of Public Health and Human Services announced it would dole out full benefits as soon as Nov. 15. Benefits distribution will return to its regular schedule starting in December.

Still, the situation marked a two-week period where low-income Montanans who rely on the program had to figure out how to fill the gap. Kintzler was able to get by using resources she had on-hand and partial benefits. But she worried for families trying to make ends meet for their children without benefits.

Local food bank directors said they were on the front lines of meeting those needs. Across the board, directors at the Flathead Food Bank, North Valley Food Bank and Bigfork Food Bank reported drastic increases in demand during the first two weeks of the month. Those reports were echoed by the co-director of FAST Blackfeet, a non-profit that runs a food pantry and focuses on food security and sovereignty on the Blackfeet Nation.  

And while the federal government restored SNAP benefits, those in the business of food access in the Flathead say the crisis was the latest in a string of challenges they’ve met in the past five years, from COVID, to rising inflation and now, the shutdown.

“We haven’t really had a ‘normal’ since COVID,” said Sophie Albert, the executive director of the North Valley Food Bank in Whitefish. “We’ve seen COVID and we have seen inflation, and it’s just continued to increase.”

They anticipate the needs exposed by the gap in benefits will continue even after benefits’ restoration. They’re bracing for some SNAP beneficiaries to permanently lose benefits once new work requirements from H.R. 1, or the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” are fully implemented.

Before the shutdown, Albert said the North Valley Food Bank serviced between 450 to 550 families per week — though 550 was on the rare side, typically at the end of longer months.

During the second week of the shutdown, the North Valley Food Bank served 725 families, a new record. More than 50 families who had never used the food bank’s services before signed up. For instance, a man from Eureka told the food bank he had never visited a food bank before. He had historically used SNAP benefits to get by, but he couldn’t do so without benefits in November. The North Valley Food Bank was the closest one to him. He drove all the way to Whitefish from Eureka to get food this month for the first time.

Chris Sidmore, executive director at the Flathead Food Bank, and Jamie Quinn, with the Bigfork Food Bank, told stories that struck similar notes. Sidmore estimated the food bank served between 40 to 50 extra people per day throughout the shutdown. In Bigfork, Quinn, the executive director, said during the second week of the month, the Bigfork Food Bank recorded the highest number of households it served in a single week during a non-holiday. Seventy-seven households used the food bank’s services.

“This week was filled with really great highs of the community taking great care of us, but those lows of new people coming to us,” Quinn said. “There were a lot of people crying and upset and obviously not wanting to be at a food bank. They wanted to utilize their benefits and take care of their family in the usual way.”

FAST Blackfeet, according to co-director Iris Sharp, saw 62 new families from October to November. The tribe declared a state of emergency over the gap in benefits. It culled three cows and 15 bison from its herd, along with authorizing an elk harvest to help meet people’s needs. Still, Sharp said the state of emergency declaration caused people to panic. Many flocked to the pantry FAST Blackfeet runs to prepare for the benefits gap.

“Since then, it’s continued to be lots of new faces, and people who’ve come to us before or who only come once in a while are coming in more often,” Sharp said. She added the tribe’s incident command also set up mass distribution for food boxes.

She also said FAST Blackfeet has talked throughout the shutdown about the history of food becoming a tool used against Native Americans. In the late 1800s, famine struck Indigenous communities as settlers and U.S. soldiers targeted bison. On the Blackfeet Reservation, the winter of 1883-1884 resulted in the death of 600 by starvation after the near extinction of bison, combined with the U.S. government’s supply system delaying the arrival of food Blackfeet leaders purchased to combat the hunger on the reservation.  

“It’s really putting a fire under us to touch into sovereignty, food sovereignty and how to kick that into gear,” Sharp said.

Land to Hand, a nonprofit that aims to foster “socially just ways of accessing food,” runs a backpack program to help dole out food to families on free and reduced lunch in the Columbia Falls School District over the weekends.

“Healthy kids in our community make a healthy community,” said Gretchen Boyer, Land to Hand’s executive director. “We need to make sure kids are fed.”

Boyer said the program typically gives out 375 backpacks per week. During the shutdown, it gave out 100 more per week. It plans to keep up with that increased need at least throughout the holiday season. Boyer said they’ll be handing out nearly 500 Christmas backpacks to families. Those backpacks contain two weeks’ worth of food. This year’s distribution will mark a record in terms of the number of backpacks given to families.

While the needs increased, food banks and nonprofits the Beacon spoke with reported meeting them across the board. In no small part, they did so thanks to increased monetary donations, volunteer turnout and one-time grant funding. Sidmore, with the Flathead Food Bank, called the donations and community support a “silver lining.”

“These are real people in need, and normally by the time they’re at the food bank, they’ve gone through quite a bit of stress and challenges,” Sidmore said. “But I have been super impressed with everything from business communities to foundations, to just the neighbor down the street.”

Quinn, with the Bigfork Food Bank, said thanks to community donations, they could hand out double helpings of milk, eggs and meat to visitors. Albert reported the North Valley Food Bank saw more than 40 new donors during the second week of November. Schools, Lions Clubs and more have hosted food drives or offered monetary donations. The Whitefish Community Foundation handed out $145,000 to 13 food banks or food access nonprofits in Glacier, Lincoln and Flathead counties. Local ranchers and producers have brought in donations to FAST Blackfeet, helping the organization fill the need. At Land to Hand, the community filled an online wish list of food, bringing in over 800 pounds the organization could then give to families.

Still, meeting the needs hasn’t gone perfectly. FAST Blackfeet, Sharp said, is over its annual food budget by $58,000. While the organization is continuing to buy and supply food to those who need it on the Blackfeet Nation, she said they “now have to scramble for fundraising, because we’re digging into next year’s food budget and need to pick up the pace.” Other organizations also said their fundraising needs have increased.

Albert and Quinn both said, while they felt lucky their organizations received plentiful donations, they worried for more rural food banks. Albert said the reason the North Valley Food Bank could meet the higher need was because of its staff. But, she explained, smaller food banks mostly run on bare-bones staffs or get by thanks to volunteers. She worried they might not have had the capacity to scale up their operations, and could experience longer impacts from trying to meet the needs post-shutdown.

Sidmore said the crisis underscored the importance of the food banks in the area.

“Whether the government is open or closed, we’re going to be here,” Sidmore said.

Looking to the future, food bank directors say the next hit to their services has already landed on their radars: work requirements from the One Big Beautiful Bill are set to fall into place within the next year.

Montana’s federal delegation universally voted in favor of H.R. 1. In an interview with the Beacon about the shutdown, U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke said it was harming people who needed a little help to get by, like those on SNAP. However, he also expressed his strong support for work requirements.

“Work is good,” Zinke said. “It provides purpose, it provides value, it provides health, worth.”

But food bank directors worry, with already-burdensome paperwork to qualify for the program and increased recertification checks, the new requirements could result in people losing their benefits entirely. They say people losing benefits permanently could create a continuation of the needs exposed when people lost out on benefits temporarily during the shutdown.

It’s opened our eyes to: how can we be more proactive instead of reactive?

Iris Sharp, co-director of FAST Blackfeet

Albert’s organization has been preparing for SNAP work requirements to take effect for the better part of the year. She and Quinn both said it’s a positive that hunger took center stage during the shutdown because it offered a chance to bring the issue to light ahead of the potential permanent loss in benefits.

“Most things don’t break through in this way,” Quinn said. “People don’t always catch what’s going on. Regardless of your beliefs, this is impactful and powerful, and a good reminder that whether SNAP is in place or not, this is happening year-round.”

Albert said she treated the shutdown as an opportunity to educate her community. The North Valley Food Bank has done so in individual phone calls with donors and volunteers. It also hosted an advocacy night, new volunteer orientation and has a community tour night planned for Nov. 19 at 6 p.m. She hopes people will continue engaging with their local food banks, even after the shutdown has ended.

Sharp, with FAST Blackfeet, said her organization isn’t anticipating a larger need continuing because of the work requirements. Tribal communities were left out of the new requirements in the One Big Beautiful Bill.

For Sharp and FAST Blackfeet, the bigger concern is that the government could shut back down, if a consensus fails to be reached when the continuing resolution that opened the government fails to be renewed at the end of January. The organization, which focuses on food sovereignty in addition to food security, has renewed its focus on strengthening the former part of its mission. It hopes to help Blackfeet tribal members and descendants gain sovereignty through activities like farming and ranching.

 “It’s opened our eyes to: how can we be more proactive instead of reactive?” Sharp said.

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