Assembly Standing Committee on Human Services

Good morning and welcome to the joint hearing of the Assembly Select Committee on CalFresh Enrollment and Nutrition and Assembly Human Services Committee's informational hearing on CalFresh and the federal shutdown. I'm honored to be co-chairing this hearing in my district, 8018, and in the city of Alameda, where I live.

As we open this discussion today, we must recognize that many families are struggling to put food on the table. This is especially true as we recover from the impacts of the recent Federal Government shutdowns. The nation just faced the longest Federal Government shutdown earlier this year, which started in October 2025—October 1st, 2025.

This shutdown furloughed workers and left vital programs and services, that Californians depend on, at risk. During the shutdown, the USDA notified states that available federal funds would be insufficient to fully issue November SNAP benefits, affecting roughly 5.5 million Californians who rely on CalFresh.

Benefit processing halted and on November 1st, 2025, the Federal Government failed to fund SNAP benefits for the first time in the program's 60-year history. A coalition of 23 states, including California, challenged the Federal Government's decision not to use the $5 billion in existing contingency funds.

Federal judges in Massachusetts and Rhode Island ruled that freezing SNAP benefits was unlawful and ordered the Federal Government to fund the program, either full or part—fully or partially.

The Trump Administration chose to use the SNAP contingency funds but only restored partial benefits, citing insufficient funds to cover the full $8 billion monthly cost and warning of delays and gaps for new applicants. A Rhode Island judge later ordered fully funding for November benefits, stating the Administration was defying early court orders.

The Administration appealed and after a temporary Supreme Court pause, the USDA directed states to stop issuing full benefits and instead provide partial payments equal to 65% of maximum allotments, though some states, including California, had already paid full benefits.

Unfortunately, the First Circuit upheld the requirement to fully fund SNAP or ultimately, the First Circuit upheld the requirement to fully fund SNAP, and on November 12, 2025, Congress passed a Continuing Appropriations Act, fully funding the program through September 2026.

During this crisis, Californians and local governments, including right here in Alameda County, acted quickly to fill the gap. The state launched Operation Feed California, mobilizing the National Guard and Service Corps and advancing up to $80 million in emergency support.

Counties and cities also stepped in, raising emergency funds, issuing gift cards, and expanding food bank operations to ensure families did not go hungry while federal support failed.

Here in Alameda County, we galvanized with the County Board of Supervisors under the leadership of Supervisor Nikki Fortunato Bass and Alyssa Marquez, issuing $10 million in emergency funds for SNAP benefits and raised an additional $1.5 million in philanthropic dollars to be able to support our community members during a time of great need around Thanksgiving.

This hearing will begin with an overview of food insecurity, a complex issue that ranges from limited access to nutritious food to chronic and severe deprivation. Food insecurity can lead to poor nutrition, reliance on low cost processed foods, and has severe consequences for fiscal—for physical—and mental health.

Food insecurity can also pose difficult tradeoffs between buying healthy food and meeting other basic needs like housing, transportation, utilities, and medicine. Despite California's strong agricultural output, food insecurity remains widespread. Data from the Food Security Supplement to the Census current population survey shows 13% of Californian households have experienced food insecurity at some point.

About 1 in 6, 17%, of households with children experience food hardship and there are deep disparities between Black and Latino households. Specifically, Black and Latino households 18% are more likely to experience food insecurity compared to White and Asian American households at 7%.

Rising costs, low wages, and limited access to healthy food in many neighborhoods continue to drive poor health outcomes and long-term instability. In our second panel, we will talk with about the state's primary defense against hunger and food insecurity, CalFresh. CalFresh is California's SNAP program.

CalFresh serves low-income working families, seniors, people with disabilities, and individuals facing employment barriers. Eligibility is based largely on income, household size, and allowable expenses with benefits delivered monthly via EBT cards and amounts determined by the USDA thrifty food plan.

CalFresh significantly reduces poverty and food insecurity and improves long-term health, educational, and economic outcomes, especially for children. Despite the lifeline that CalFresh provides, the program has its challenges. Participation in CalFresh remains below eligibility levels due to administrative barriers, stigma, lack of awareness, language, and technology challenges, and capacity constraints.

According to USDA data from 2022, California ranks 38th in SNAP participation with only 81% of eligible individuals enrolled in CalFresh. This is significantly lower than the national average of 88% and participation rates in other states, such as Alabama at 90%, Georgia at 92%, and Illinois at 100%. These challenges can result in high churn and missed benefits.

Increased participation and similar simplifying access could not only reduce hunger but also strengthen California's economy as CalFresh generates substantial economic activity and helps lower health costs.

Lastly, in our third panel, we will start to talk about the government shutdown and HR 1. HR 1, enacted in July 2025, makes major long-term changes to CalFresh by reducing eligibility, lowering benefits, and shifting costs from the Federal Government to states and counties.

The law is expected to cut the program's overall budget by about 20% and affects more than 97% of CalFresh households. Key changes include expanded work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents, loss of eligibility for immigrant community members, limits on future increases to the Thrifty Food Plan, and new caps on benefits for large households.

HR 1 also requires states to pay a share of benefit costs based on their payment error rate and increases state and county responsibility for administrative costs. In California, these changes could result in billions of dollars in new state costs, significant benefit losses for hundreds of thousands of residents, and reduced access to food assistance statewide.

This hearing will provide a forum for these very important discussions and I want to thank all of the panelists assembled here today. We have three excellent panels and I look forward to diving into this topic in this morning with you all.

With that, I would like to welcome Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens who is a member of our Select Committee and a neighboring, neighboring colleague down in Santa Clara County, and also recognize our Chair of Human Services, Assemblymember Alex Lee, who is joining and co-chairing this panel as well.

I will now turn it over to my colleague and Co-Chair of the Select Committee, Chair Sharp-Collins for any opening comments.

Thank you so much, Madam Co-Chair. Thank you for inviting us into your district for this very important conversation. As we were here today, the cuts to CalFresh, they are incredible.

The value of the proposed cuts to Medicaid, health coverage, and the food assistance under SNAP is 1.1 trillion through 2034, which is the exact cost of extending tax cuts for households with incomes in the top 1% of Americans.

So, as I've stated before, in what world is it moral, you know, and in what world is it ethical or even remotely humane to inflict cuts to programs utilized by the most vulnerable families who are struggling to pay bills and/or put food on the table, all in the name of giving an annual average tax cut of $62,000 to people making $743,000 or more a year.

So, in my personal opinion, we don't need to play politics with people's lives. We have to stop playing politics with people's lives.

So, food assistance is a lifesaving program that knows no race, and it knows no creed or political party. So, I truly, sincerely hope that by pushing back on cuts and are fighting to maintain existing benefits is something that the entire Legislature can actually agree on.

So, while we're here today and we will continue to have further conversations throughout the year, I look forward to our conversations not just to set a baseline of understanding of what hunger is and how and how it's operating here, but food access issues within the state, but to unpack the CalFresh program in details that has threatened cuts to so many.

So, thank you guys so much for being here. And then I look forward to these fruitful conversations. Turn it back over.

Thank you, Chair Sharp-Collins. I'll pass it over now to Chair Lee.

All right, thank you. Good morning. I really want to thank my co-chairs on the select—for the Select Committee—on CalFresh Enrollment and Nutrition for your leadership and collaboration in bringing us a select Committee hearing here in Alameda, the city of Alameda. So, I'm very thankful that we are doing this today.

I think, obviously, as much has been said from my colleagues, food insecurity remains one of the top challenges in the nation as well as affordability for all of our constituents in California.

And as we continue our focus on affordability, as our leadership has continued to focus and steer us in, we have to continue to make sure that all Californians, especially those most in need, have access to nutritious and—nutritious meals and food.

Especially as California is the nation's leading agricultural provider, far too many Californians struggle to reliably to access affordable nutritious food, particularly families with children, communities of color, seniors and low wage workers who are essential to our food ecosystem. Today's hearing is especially timely given the recent federal actions.

California's experienced unprecedented disruption during the Federal Government shutdown when SNAP benefits are delayed for the first time in the program's history. And even now, the Federal Government continues to threaten to claw back and take SNAP benefits.

And at the same time, the enactment of HR 1, the big BS bill, introduces a long-term changes that will restrict eligibility, reduce benefits, and shift significant costs to the state.

One such policy response I have in mind is introducing legislation that will create a fund to provide consistent, stable funding for food assistance programs, particularly as federal support becomes more uncertain.

Over the course of today's panels, we will hear directly about how these federal decisions are affecting families, counties, and community providers and what policy responses are needed to protect food access programs—program stability—in California. So, I look forward to the great discussion today that we hear from our panelists and from our Committee Members.

And again, I really appreciate the focus on such a basic need as food security from all my colleagues up here. Thank you.

Thank you. I'll pass it over now to Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens from AD 26, the heart of Silicon Valley.

Thank you so much. I want to thank—I want to thank Assemblymember Bonta for inviting me to come to her district and I want to appreciate, also, Assemblymember Lee, for all of your work on shedding light on CalFresh.

I know that you've made a lot of, you know, publicity and shed a lot of light on, whether it through your budget requests or through your bills, and you've been working on this since you've, since you came to the Legislature. I'll just quickly add that, you know, I agree with all of my colleagues. You're absolutely right.

We need to be working on affordability, but I want to make sure that as we come into the work and hear from testimony from the witnesses and the panels and we start our conversations in January that affordability, you know, for who? And it's a great buzzword. It pulls really well to focus on affordability.

But the devil's in the details. Who is, what, what are we—what type of California are we making it affordable for? For who? Is it affordable for the corporations? Is it affordable for Silicon Valley families? Is it affordable for folks in LA or Alameda or Milpitas?

And I think that we, as a Legislature, need to be drilling down on what exactly affordability means and to whom it means, and really doubling down on nutrition assistance, food programs, as a priority within the affordability conversation because we're going to talk a lot about affordability next year.

We've talked a lot about affordability this past year, and we're just not moving the needle. And a lot of that is the destructive cuts from the Federal Government. But we also need to be prioritizing what affordability means for us and our communities. And I absolutely agree.

I think this Select Committee can—to really take a leading role with the leadership of my colleagues here, and I just wanted to say that I would love to work with you all to see if we can shine light on prioritizing what affordability means.

And it means prioritizing people, getting food and nutritious food, and backfilling any cuts that we can see from the Federal Government. We've got to name it, and when we can name it, we can find solutions. Thank you.

Thank you, Assembly Member Ahrens and Chair Lee, for your comments as well. We will now move on to our first panel. Panel, please come forward if you can. This panel will provide an overview on food insecurity. Each panelist can introduce themselves briefly and then begin your remarks.

We'd appreciate tha. We request each of the panelists to stick to the allotted time so we can hear from everyone and have time for some dialogue.

And while they are getting situated, I will say that this is a very personal issue for me and many of the members of this Select Committee and Members of the—of Human Services as well.

I've personally had the experience of knowing that my mother was making a choice between putting food in the refrigerator or making sure that I could go to a doctor's office or paying the rent for the month. And that kind of food insecurity sticks with you. If you have that experience as a child—it is something still that I, in my 50s, remember, recall, and have to reckon with.

So, I want to thank our panelists here today. First up, we have Tess Thorman. They are Research Associate at the Public Policy Institute of California. Then we have Betzabel Estudillo, Chief Engagement Officer at Nourish California.

And lastly, we have Josh Wright, Director of Government Affairs at the California Association of Food Banks. Tess, welcome. Please begin. Tess, I think you have to press the green button.

Can you hear me now? Good. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Tess Thorman, they/them. I am a Senior Research Associate at the Public Policy Institute of California, an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit research institute dedicated to improving and informing public policy in California. Thanks for inviting me to provide testimony.

Today, I plan to discuss the prevalence of food insecurity in California, that is when households lack the resources to ensure that all members have enough to eat to support active, healthy lives.

I'll also discuss the impact of nutrition safety net programs on food insecurity and poverty and some of the big picture challenges that make it harder for these programs to achieve their goals, based on PPIC research and on my assessment of the broader research landscape.

Since 1995, one of the surveys from the U.S. Census Bureau has annually included a set of 18 questions developed by experts to measure food insecurity, on behalf of the USDA.

These questions have been the gold standard for understanding food insecurity in the US and in this type of large representative survey, which screens all respondents for food insecurity, they can capture substantial variation in experiences of food hardship.

For example, food insecurity can involve stretches of time during which some or all household members skip or cut down on the size of meals, shift to a lower quality or more limited diet, or both, and the frequency and duration of these insecure periods can, and do, vary.

Research finds that food insecurity is harmful to health for people of all ages and is particularly damaging to children's health and development. In 2023, nearly a quarter of all households in California either experienced food insecurity or were only marginally secure, meaning they could afford enough food but not enough for balanced meals, or they worried that food would run out.

Among the 13% of households, or 1.8 million who were food insecure, nearly 40% had very low food security, meaning they not only made changes to their diets because of their financial resources, but they also cut back on meals.

As I'll discuss later, 2023 is the latest year for which these data are currently available, since the release of 2024 data was delayed by the federal shutdown.

California's rate of food insecurity is near the national rate of almost 14%, and across states, the share of households experiencing food insecurity over the past year ranges from about 7 to 19%.

Some other large states, including New York, Florida, and Illinois, have braced the—are close to California's. The annual rate of food insecurity in California has varied over time, so as of 2023 it remained below the Great Recession peak of more than 15%.

The rate declined between 2011 and about 2017, when it reached a low of around 10% that held steady through the start of the pandemic. Then, food insecurity rates ticked up in 2022 and 2023 as inflation continued, and pandemic era safety net expansions expired.

As Co-Chair Bonta mentioned, households with children are more likely than those without to experience food insecurity at some point during the year, with about 1 in 6, or 17%, of households with children experiencing food hardship compared to about 1 in 10, or 11%, of those without.

White and Asian households are more likely than Californians overall to be food secure at 93%, while 18% or nearly one in five of Latino, black, and other households experience food insecurity. I'll just note that these available data allow us to examine food insecurity across these racial and ethnic categories, but they're broad.

They don't show the variation that may exist across smaller racial and ethnic groups. Now, going forward, California faces a challenge in measuring food insecurity because USDA has stopped collecting the comprehensive national data behind its long running official estimates, which I've drawn from today.

The release of data for 2024 remains delayed by the federal shutdown, and the survey questions on food insecurity will not be asked in 2025. In the future, other surveys may help fill this void, but the surveys ask smaller groups of people, they ask fewer or different questions, or they ask questions in single rather than repeated surveys.

These options provide valuable insight they don't fully replace the survey that is ending. Similarly, researchers may be able to estimate rates of food insecurity based on factors that often predict it, rather than using surveys that ask direct questions. This approach will be most accurate while there are still recent years of official estimates.

For California-only estimates, state policymakers may look to the California Health Interview Survey, a large representative survey of California households since 2011 has annually asked low-income respondents six of the 18 food insecurity questions from the national survey.

These data have less detail on child food food insecurity and on the full context of household economic circumstances, and they omit experiences of food insecurity among slightly higher income households. However, an advantage of using data from the survey is that you can look at food insecurity across smaller subgroups and geographies within California.

So, for example, the survey finds that in recent years, the San Joaquin Valley has, on average, had the state's highest rates of food hardship. Finally, snapshots from other representative surveys can also shed light on food hardship experienced in California, even if they don't capture the exact scope of food insecurity.

For example, according to PPIC's November 2025 statewide survey, 30% of California adults report that they or someone in their household reduced meals or cut back on food to save money in the last 12 months, up from 21% in 2021. So, to what extent does California's nutrition safety net reduce food insecurity and poverty?

More than 15 public programs in California aim to help individuals and families afford nutritious food, and research on the three largest CalFresh, known federally as SNAP, school meals, and WIC, indicates that they all reduce food insecurity, although estimates of exactly how much are not often comparable across programs. On the high end, SNAP may reduce food insecurity among participants nationwide by as much as 30%.

Beyond impacting food insecurity, the state's nutrition safety net also reduces poverty by making it easier to meet basic needs. According to the PPIC Stanford California Poverty Measure, about 6.4 million Californians, or 16.9% of the population, lived in poverty in 2023, absent CalFresh, school meals, and WIC, that group would have increased by 1.2 million.

Without CalFresh alone, 857,000 more people would have been in poverty. Absent school meals, the number would have increased by about 262,000, and without WIC food benefits, it would be 45,000 higher.

Notably, the mismatch between California's high cost of living and incomes, on one hand, and nationwide eligibility thresholds and benefit amounts on the other can mean that food insecure Californians are either ineligible for assistance or receive benefits that just don't last. Means-tested programs have a larger impact in the parts of California with relatively low costs.

So, absent CalFresh, school meals, and WIC, poverty would be at least 26% higher in the San Joaquin Valley, the Sierras, the Inland Empire, and the state's Northern region, compared to 19% higher statewide.

Now, some challenges to reducing poverty and food insecurity with the nutrition safety net. Since California primarily implements national nutrition programs, many decisions about support and eligibility happen at the federal level. The state typically can maximize program impacts by making the most of federal funding and ensuring eligible calories get enrolled.

It can also supplement and or seek modifications to programs. And as panelists today will discuss, recent Federal legislation has added new complexity to this work. Program reach is still foundational, so California's improved CalFresh participation over the past decade, but enrollment among likely eligible Californians remains lower than the national SNAP participation rate.

By contrast, WIC participation is higher in California than nationally. Participation is affected by many factors, including program awareness and understanding, the experience of applying for and keeping benefits, and potential stigma.

So, one example of the state working to address some of these factors is its effort to ease the CalFresh application experience by getting federal permission to test simpler applications for elderly and disabled Californians. Now, some residents have limited resources, but they're ineligible for federal SNAP benefits.

About 23% of Californians experiencing poverty and 33% of children in poverty live in households that include undocumented residents who are ineligible for CalFresh based on federal restrictions. U.S. citizens of these households can still enroll if they're eligible, and California plans to fund comparable benefits for undocumented older adults through the California Food Assistance program starting in 2027.

Meanwhile, recent federal legislation will, once implemented, make some lawfully present immigrants ineligible for federal SNAP benefits benefits. As others will discuss today, the recent changes in federal rules around SNAP pose new challenges to California's ability to reduce poverty and food insecurity with CalFresh benefits.

One major change effectively introduces work related time limits on assistance for many adults in California. Historically, the state's higher unemployment rates have made it eligible for waivers of these time limits, but following the new legislation, most counties are now ineligible for waivers.

We estimate that as many as 620,000 people need to document enough work, education or training, volunteering, or an exemption in order to keep CalFresh benefits, but are currently unable to do so and for more than half of this group, 56%, in any given month, CalFresh is their only recorded source of income.

So, to ensure that participants receive benefits for as long as they're eligible, counties will need to thoroughly and accurately screen participants for exemptions and document and track activities that impact their benefit status. Finally, others will also discuss the broader challenges introduced by how recent federal legislation has changed funding for CalFresh.

For now, I'll just note that federal funding is a cornerstone of California's nutrition safety net. As the Federal Government reduces the share of administrative and for the first time, benefit costs that it will cover, the Legislature has set aside funding to implement changes and investigate new approaches, but California may need to make additional investments to maintain CalFresh's role in reducing poverty and food insecurity. Thank you.

Thank you so much. We will move on now to our second panelist. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thank you so much. Good morning. Thank you to the Members of the Committee for this opportunity to be here and to speak on a timely and critical issue. I'm Betzabel Estudillo, Chief Engagement Officer of Nourish California.

Nourish California is a statewide anti-hunger policy organization that believes that every Californian should thrive and should have access to food, resources, and opportunity. I want to begin my remarks by stating clearly that food insecurity or hunger is a policy choice.

They have long disproportionately affected communities across California, but especially black immigrants—black indigenous people and immigrants—and were worsened by the pandemic and the rise in inflation and will now be exacerbated by HR 1, and with the federal shutdown, which delayed CalFresh benefits in November. My colleagues will speak more to HR 1.

But I do want to point that HR 1 will lead to reductions in food access for many communities, not only because of the sweeping changes in CalFresh eligibility, as my colleague Tess mentioned, but also because the Bill creates confusion and fear and its intended barriers, or intentional barriers, are simply too big to overcome for some families.

This uncertainty, compounded by continued federal efforts to undermine our safety net through data sharing requests, multiple data sharing requests, and proposing a new rule on public charge, will deter eligible households from applying for or maintaining their benefits when they need them the most. As my colleague mentioned before, in California, 1.8 billion—million—households faced food insecurity in 2023.

So, what this means is that families are being forced to make impossible choices about how much food they can afford, what they can buy, and whether they can skip a meal. Families with children are especially impacted. Children with—in—food insecure homes face higher risk of poor health and educational outcomes, with lasting impacts that can follow them for the rest of their lives.

The ongoing rise of food prices, housing costs, and current political climate are forcing parents to make impossible choices between paying rent or putting food on the table. But the good news is that California has demonstrated leadership and ensuring that people have access to food.

So, we've made some strides. From universal school meals to additional food benefits for CalFresh participants when they purchase fruits and vegetables, we are taking action to ensure that Californians don't go hungry, but there's so much more left to do so. This is why we, Nourish California, with many partners across the state, are advancing campaigns like Food for All, Thriving Transitions, and the CalFresh Fruit and Vegetable EBT Program. I'll start with Food for All.

Food for All is an effort to expand state funded food assistance program for immigrants, called CFAP for short, and we're looking to expand that program to all Californians, regardless of immigration status.

The state has already made an investment to expand CFAP to immigrants age 55 and older with the automation and planning set to begin in early 2026 and the expansion is set to go live October 2027. But due to HR 1, about 74,000 lawfully present humanitarian immigrants will lose access to federally funded snap.

And so, we and the Food for All Coalition look forward to working with the Legislature to restore these benefits as soon as possible, because we believe that access to food should not be based on where you are born. We will be introducing a budget ask for expanding the—to expand CFAP to this population.

We also have Thriving Transitions, which is an anti-hunger and reentry restorative justice effort that aims to ensure that peop—that people living in prisons and jails have access to food and other resources immediately upon release. Due to HR 1, formerly incarcerated people will be significantly impacted due to the federal CalFresh work requirements and time limits.

National data shows that formerly incarcerated people experience unemployment at around 27%. That's nearly five times the rate of the general US population, reflecting barriers they face upon reentry into our communities.

So, therefore, we are working on a proposal to capture the work history, the skills and the training individuals already engage when they are incarcerated, as a way to meet CalFresh work requirements and time limits.

And lastly, I want to take this opportunity to thank our Legislature and our Committee Member, Assemblymember Alex Lee, for championing and leading an effort that was successful this year with the Governor allocating 36 million in the state budget to restart the CalFresh fruit and vegetable EBT program after it ran out of funding in January because it was very popular.

The program provides CalFresh participants with a dollar-for-dollar match, up to $60 a month, when they purchase fresh fruits and vegetables at participating locations.

So, alongside with our partners and our legislative champions, we will advance a 100 million budget request to the program to allow the program to reach two times more families across many regions in California and operate uninterrupted for a full fiscal year.

In closing, food security is foundational to health, education, and economic stability and we look forward to working with the Legislature to advance state-funded solutions that will mitigate the harm of HR 1 and other federal action while also holding the Federal Government accountable for fully funding SNAP. Thank you for the opportunity to speak here today.

Thank you so much, and we'll move on to our third panelists from the California Association of Food Banks.

Hello, my name is Josh Wright, and I am the Director of Government Relations for the California Association of Food Banks. I want to start by thanking the Chairs and the committees for convening this hearing today. We are deeply appreciative of the Legislature's continued efforts to ensure that all Californians have access to essential nutrition.

The California Association of Food Banks represents 42 food banks that partner with nearly 6,000 agencies and nonprofits across the state, and our mission is to end hunger in California.

The latest data from the Census Household Post Survey indicates that approximately 22% of households in California are facing food insecurity, while nearly 27% of households are with children—are food insecure. I should note this is a little different from the data that PPIC uses, just a different source material.

These rates are similar to the peak pandemic levels of hunger we saw in 2022 and it's important to note that much higher levels of food insecurity are experienced by black and Latino households, with white Californians experiencing food insecurity at rates that are lower than the general population.

We worry that these rates of hunger will continue to rise if action is not taken. Our state currently faces a multi-pronged hunger crisis. Recent federal actions, including HR 1, the so called "one big, beautiful bill," are making more Californians hungry.

HR 1 includes the largest cuts to CalFresh and SNAP in US history with approximately 800,000 Californians expected to lose vital benefits and food banks have received 38% less food this year from the USDA's Emergency Food Assistance Program, TFAP, than the previous year.

The federally induced CalFresh crisis comes as Californians are already struggling to grapple with the rising cost of living. High food, housing, childcare, and healthcare costs, combined with wages that are too low are pushing many Californians into food insecurity.

The United Ways of California finds that 1 in 3 households in California do not have enough income to afford basic cost of living. A recent study by Politico published—Politico published this November—shows that groceries are the most common affordability concern among US adults.

And according to a study by the USDA's Economic Research Service, a one percentage point increase in the Consumer Price Index was associated with a 0.5 percentage point increase in food insecurity. Extrapolating from this, we can estimate that each percentage point increase in the CPI may lead to another 197,500 people becoming food insecure.

Regardless of cause, when people can't afford food, they have very limited options. Basic needs are, by definition, essential. Thanks to the PPIC, we know that around 30% of Californians report they or someone in their household has reduced meals or cut back on food to save money in the past year.

We are also seeing an increase in Americans taking on debt to pay for food, with the Urban Institute estimating that one in five Americans are having to do so. While the most significant impacts of HR 1 are still to come, our food banks and their partners are already serving millions of Californians per month.

For the past two years, our food banks have distributed over 900 million pounds of food a year and have served an average of 6 million people per month. This is a notable increase from the 4.5 million people we served during the height of the pandemic.

In November of this year, we surveyed our members and 92% of food banks reported that their average service numbers increased in the current quarter compared to the previous one. 55% of food banks also reported distributing more pounds of food this year compared to last year.

It's also important to note that some of the food banks that said that they did not distribute more food this year said that the reason for this was due to the decrease in TFAP foods, not a decrease in demand.

As the impact of HR 1 begins to ripple through our communities, federal uncertainty persists into the new year, and food prices remain high. With the economy seeming precarious, we anticipate an ongoing high need at California's food banks.

While our food banks play a crucial role in the fight against hunger, they are by no means the only resource that food insecure Californians rely on.

As I previously mentioned, hundreds of thousands of Californians are expected to lose our state's first line of defense against hunger CalFresh due to HR 1 and food banks cannot make up the difference for families that lose benefits.

For every meal that a food bank can provide, CalFresh provides five. Our state's work fighting hunger is an essential part of, of how we meet this moment. Maintaining California's legacy as the first state in the nation to implement universally free school meals ensures that all children continue to have access to two nutritious meals every day.

Because of California's leadership, nine states now offer school meals for all. School meals for all has led to a reduction in stigma, increased participation in school meals, eliminated unpaid family meal debt in our state, and has alleviated stress on California's families. This program is vital for student health and education.

Additionally, we are grateful for California's commitment to supporting the Sun Bucks Program which helps families with school age children buy groceries during the summer months when kids don't have school meals. Thanks to CDE and CDSS, over 5 million Sunbucks cards have been mailed as of October 2025, and over $368 million worth of food has been purchased.

Improving access to Sunbucks through a statewide online application should remain a top priority as families lose access to CalFresh, which will lead to more families having to apply rather than being automatically deemed eligible. All of these programs are indispensable and critical strategies for fighting hunger in our state.

The reality is that people that are experiencing hunger often need help from multiple sources. For example, national data shows that over one third of CalFresh recipients also visit food banks because CalFresh benefits just don't cover a whole month's worth of groceries. As we look ahead to this year, the state will need to fortify these programs.

This could include using state funds to mitigate harm to those impacted by the time limits and for humanitarian immigrants who are being cut off from benefits, as well as to sustain the critical CalFresh outreach network, which is affected by the administrative cost shifts in HR 1. Food—for food banks, our members continue to emphasize that the most important resource for us is additional food funding to buy more food to meet our community's needs.

While this is a time of great uncertainty, times of crisis also provide opportunities to reinforce existing programs and to work towards resilient systems for the future. We look forward to partnering with the Legislature this year to strengthen the state's nutrition safety net.

Thank you for your leadership and commitment to ensuring Californians have access to food on their tables.

Thank you so much. Now, we have an opportunity to take questions from our Committee Members here. I'll start off with just a couple—just to level set. California produces nearly half of the nation's fruits and vegetables, yet 13% of households are food insecure, and we know that even fewer have access to good food and vegetables or fruits and vegetables.

You actually talked about that a little bit in your opening remarks. Can you just share what that disconnect tells us?

I think it tells us that there is difficulty in accessing those fruits and vegetables in our state, even though that food is produced in our state. And whether that's, you know, difficulty where, you know, we as food banks struggle to access sometimes those fresh fruits and vegetables.

That's why things, programs like the Cal food program that allow us to purchase California—California grown and produced foods—really help us bridge that gap and bring more fresh produce to people. But obviously, there's a lot of difficulty in different communities even being able to receive and access those California-grown produce.

I mentioned the CalFresh fruit and vegetable EBT program as a way to address that challenge. I think we recognize that California is the largest producer of fruits, vegetables, and other foods, and yet people are not able to access them.

Fruits and vegetables can be really expensive in certain areas, especially if, you know, farmers markets are not always available or large grocery stores. And so, I think that this program is a way to be able to get people to give them more additional dollars so that they can purchase fruits and vegetables. It has been a very popular program.

In January, we ran out of money. We had expected that to go a little bit longer, but it was so popular, we ran out in a very short period of time.

And I think we recognize that people do want to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables and fresh fruit overall, but it's just the cost is, you know, they're often making choices between that or maybe, you know, store shelf produce that may be a little bit less expensive or other foods. Right?

That they're trying to really maximize their EBT dollars. So, we're hoping that this program can continue to address that gap and ensure people have access to fresh foods.

And...can you speak to the—you spoke a little bit about this in your opening remarks around the kind of the economic ecosystem that we really need to think about when we're looking at food insecurity. So, for both, and you mentioned particularly the impacts on more rural parts of the state of California as well.

Can you just break down a little bit what the cost of not feeding people is, just from a relative percentage y in terms of economic output for the state of California?

I think one, you know, one piece that I didn't talk about today is what we call the multiplier effect of SNAP benefits, and that for every dollar—some research shows that for every dollar of spending on those benefits, you see as much as $1.50 in local economic activity.

So, this is one of the kind of broader benefits of that federal investment. In terms of how this varies across regions, you know, one of the things that I wanted to underscore in my remarks is that the difference in, you know, we have a single eligibility threshold across the state for federal benefits because it's shared nationwide.

But in some parts of the state, particularly in rural parts, oftentimes incomes are lower and so, more people are eligible for those benefits, whereas in higher cost and higher income parts of the state, people may be experiencing the same amount of need but not be eligible for benefits or for substantial benefits.

So, you know, there's a large impact across the state of CalFresh. We know this is the state's largest poverty reducing program. Just access to the program can vary based on that federal eligibility threshold.

Can we extrapolate from your remarks the suggested policy change around the eligibility requirements or the level for at least for the portion that we can control, state only, in California?

To the extent that the state can control it, I know, you know, we often hear from, from Californians who are kind of near that eligibility threshold that they're aware that they're not eligible for those resources or they feel like it doesn't stretch as far. The challenge is always that these are set at the federal level.

And so, it depends on what the state is able to do in terms of changing that.

Thank you.

And then, just one more question from me from the California Association of Food Banks. I see Teale Harden here, Executive Director of Alameda Food Bank. Very thankful to have that resource here in the City of Alameda.

One of the conversations that we've been privy to is just the relative cost of provision of food because of tariffs, supply chain issues, inflation. Can you speak to the disparity or kind of the increase in the cost of provision of food relative to how much food is being requested or acquired?

Yeah, I think it'll obviously vary some because different regions are going to have different costs associated with food and different foods will cost differently in different regions. But I mean, I think this is the dilemma that food banks find themselves in this year and in the last few.

But as costs are increasing across the board for food, for us to procure food, the logistics to move food, which is I think, a part that doesn't always get talked about and yet is a very big and complicated part of food banks. As that increases, we're seeing decreases in federal dollars, decreases in donated foods.

And so, we're in this bind of serving more people than ever and needing and expecting to serve even more in the coming year as we see more impacts from HR 1 start to ripple through communities and we have less funding to do it, and the funding doesn't go as far.

And so, I think those layers are part of why we, you know, we're coming to the Legislature asking for additional funds for Cal food and for the other programs that support our food banks because we need everything we can to try and cover the increased costs and demand.

By wave percentages, do you have a sense of what the increased cost of food procurement?

I don't have like a—for across the board, our food banks. I can—I will follow up with your office though and get some data that is across the board and for different regions if I can find that.

Great, thank you. Any other questions from Committee Members? Chair Sharp-Collins.

Thank you. So, still going off of some of the information that was shared, I just wanted to highlight that this past legislative cycle I did have Assembly Bill 1211, which was to go and look back at CalFresh itself and look at the policy changes from what the state can do in regards to the eligibility index, but also backfilling.

So, we're going to take a little deeper dive into that when we get to panel number three, but know that this is still an ongoing conversation as we move forward to the next cycle.

But I did have a question for Tess and understanding that we're looking at the research as well and I do appreciate you highlighting the difficulties in getting data around hunger and also food insecurity, but I'm concerned about the Federal Administration threatening funding to research and how that will be collected, looking at DEIA data, and so, are you worried about future data collection not being disaggregated on racial, gender, age, or other critical groups that can help target our response efforts?

Is that something you guys have been talking about or is there any other type of strategies that you're coming up with now to implement knowing what the Federal Government is doing to keep us from doing that?

Well, I think that California does have a strong option in the California Health Interview Survey because it does over sample some of the smaller racial and ethnic groups that we already can't get as much detail on from federal sources.

In terms of what may happen in the future, I know that there have been some questions from the Administration about shifting the change in questions around race ethnicity in upcoming federal surveys. So, we might stay with the level of detail that we have now, as opposed to switching to a greater level of detail that had previously been decided would be better.

So, we may not see that in the future, but we haven't—I have not—heard about seeing fewer categories than we currently have or less detail. Yeah.

Thank You. So, when you were also speaking earlier, you were talking about still standing on the same thing as far as looking at things from prior to Covid and then of course, after Covid.

So, I just kind of want to take a little deeper dive into the actual prevalence of food insecurity, meaning just how it changed over time. So, if you can kind of just give me a little bit more insight in regards to how it was pre and post COVID-19 compared to where we are now.

So in, I think about 2011, during the Great Recession, food insecurity in California was at about 15%, and then we saw a decline down to 10% among households at the start of the pandemic.

There's some evidence from monthly data that monthly rates of food insecurity may even have declined at the start of the pandemic or in 2021, when we had kind of historic expansions in safety net programs and increasing wages. We also saw increasing prices during that time. And then since then, we've seen food insecurity increase.

So, now we're back up to this, about 13%, in California.

Okay, I know we have to wrap up. My only other question was just to the panel itself as we talk about the eligibility, knowing that there's a lot of administrative burden placed on so many people to apply. And in almost everyone's comments, you talked about people being eligible, but then the lack of enrollment.

So, I'm just wanting to hear some of your ideas and other thoughts on how we can better streamline the process of getting folks to actually sign up versus going through some of the barriers that exist with, you know, the application process being kind of complicated.

I know for us, one of the things we want to make sure, and we're going to be coming to the Legislature advocating for, is for CalFresh outreach to make sure that there's funding remaining for CalFresh outreach. CalFresh outreach—I think sometimes that that term would imply something that it's not. It's really—it's application assistance, it's translation services.

It's working with folks to help them navigate what is a very already, before HR 1, complex system to navigate. It's going to be even more vital as HR 1 hits to try and help people navigate if they're eligible for waivers and things like that. And these organizations are members of the communities that they serve.

And so, they're very dedicated people that really want to help the people they're working with to help them figure out the best ways to, to get access. And so, I think it's going to be an important thing to make sure that the state makes up the lost funding for those CalFresh outreach coordinators this coming year.

Yes, plus one on the CalFresh outreach. I would just say HR 1 also has significant—is going to make significant changes to Medi Cal as well.

So, I think there's a real opportunity to also partner with organizations that do work on Medi Cal, whether that's outreach or advocacy, because they're also going to be seeing work requirements for the first time. And so, there's a lot of opportunity to be able to—when we, I always say when we talk about CalFresh participants, we're also kind of talking about Medi Cal participants. Right?

And so, I think that we need to be able to come together and figure out how do we talk to community about the same thing so that they're not having to come in multiple times to get information because the changes coming are going to be complex.

They're going to be—you're going to have to sit down with folks and really kind of break things down.

The other thing that we're doing is we're actually doing a number of in person community convenings and we have a virtual convening in January where we're going to be talking to community members and local partners about, hey, what are you hearing about HR 1? What are your questions, what are your concerns, and who are your trusted sources?

Because right now, things have shifted so significantly with people who they trust, especially in the immigrant community. They've lost complete trust in our Federal Government and to some extent, I think other governments as well. And so, we want to know who do they trust, who do they listen to?

And so, how can we get that information to you in a way that is accessible, that's community centered, and it's breaking down and that it's cultural, linguistic appropriate. So, we look forward to sharing those learnings in a report late—early next year.

But that's a way for us to just talk to community and hear what they, what questions do they have for us.

Thank you for that. I think we—also chair the Health Committee and we've been on a bit of a tour to talk about the impacts of HR 1 on Medi Cal and this issue around making sure that there's collaboration and cross pollination between Medi Cal changes and changes to CalFresh and SNAP are on the table.

So, I'm glad that that's something you are already doing, and we can be supportive of. With that, I'm going to turn it on to Assemblymember Lee to moderate our second panel. Thank you so much for coming to visit with us today.

Yes, I really want to thank the first panel. Now, we're going to go on to our second panel, CalFresh program overview successes and challenges. So, if we can invite our panelists to come up, that'd be great.

And in the meantime, I do want to thank Chair Bonta for also highlighting the need for greater cross collaboration, cross pollination between departments. It's something I am going to bring up. So, if our representative from CDSS does want to talk about any collaborations they're doing with other departments, I think that is very relevant and very important.

But also, in your remarks about understanding that in the very food deserts that exist, especially in rural California, those are the people that live in stone's throw, from the same fields, export billions of dollars worth of produce to countries all over the world. And we have a strong advantage over, over even agricultural sectors in different countries.

And especially as President Trump continues to destroy the domestic agricultural industry, I think it's important that we bridge the gap more. I suppose we may be missing one panelist. Are we? But if that's in the meantime, how about we ask Alameda County Social Services to kick us off, if that's all right.

Can anyone hear me?

Oh, oh. We're on zoom. Okay. All right.

I'm on zoom. I'm sorry.

Okay, one second. Let's see if we can get the technical part too. Is it only, only audio? Oh, okay. Oh, all right. You're speaking from behind us, so. All right. If our representative from the California Department of Social Services, whenever you're ready, you may begin.

Great. And thank you for accommodating my request to attend virtually as I am in Sacramento today. My name is Alexis Fernandez Garcia and I'm the Deputy Director of the Family Engagement and Empowerment Division at the California Department of Social Services. Thank you for including us in today's hearing.

In this role, I oversee the administration of several safety net programs, including CalFresh, CalWorks, the Child and Adult Care Food Program, Sunbucks, and several other federal and state nutrition programs.

Today, I will focus my remarks on CalFresh and the California Food Assistance Program, which together make up the largest anti-hunger program in California, and as you've heard in the first panel, have been proven to support local Californians with greater economic mobility opportunities and because CalFresh frees up limited income for other purposes, increases their likelihood of being able to manage unexpected financial losses.

The California Food Assistance Program, or CFAP, provides state funded food benefits for noncitizens who do not qualify for federally funded CalFresh and the experience of getting CFAP aligns with that of getting CalFresh. The administrative processes for getting and keeping CFAP are integrated with CalFresh, and benefits are similarly delivered on an EBT card.

You heard earlier that in 2022, the Governor and the Legislature worked together to pass a budget that included funding to expand CFAP to serve all Californians age 55 years of age or older, regardless of their immigration status. This is scheduled to go into effect on October 1, 2027.

Several CalFresh affiliated programs offer additional services and support to eligible populations, including disaster CalFresh, CalFresh outreach, and our Employment and Training Program.

I'd be remiss not to start my remarks by noting that CalFresh, as you heard, is largely regarded as one of the most effective tools to combat poverty and food insecurity, routinely reducing food insecurity by 20 to 30%, with particularly significant impacts for Black households. In 2023 alone, CalFresh lifted 1.1 million Californians out of poverty.

CalFresh, getting into a few details about eligibility, is California's version of SNAP. It provides between $24 and $298 per person in monthly food benefits to eligible Californians with low income. A household's benefit amount depends on various factors such as income, expenses, and household size. Generally, households must have a gross income below 200% of the federal poverty level.

Currently, that's about $5,360 a month for a family of four. And they must have net income, so that's income after deductions below 100% of the federal poverty level, or about $2,680 a month for a family of four. Eligibility rules are established at the federal level, with limited flexibility to select certain policy options at the state level.

Historically, CalFresh has had the potential to reach more eligible Californians than the program has served. Recent caseload trends indicate that we are narrowing this participation gap, that is the gap between those people that are eligible and those who are enrolled in CalFresh. That is in part because of the historic investments the state has made in improving participation.

In February of this year, USDA released the newest federal participation rate for federal fiscal year 2022, and California's rate has increased to 81%, up from 67% in federal fiscal year 2020, a 20% increase over two years.

This is annual data that we anticipate will be updated in early 2026, at which point we'll have the participation rate for FFY '23. USDA's methodology is lagged. Primarily, it is designed to produce national and state level estimates and uses data only available to the Federal Food and Nutrition Service.

So, we have historically produced the Program Reach Index, which is available on our website to generate more timely estimates and county estimates, and we continue to refine our methodology to better understand this participation gap and improvements in reaching more eligible Californians.

Regardless of the methodology you use, though, all estimates show a large upward trend in closing the participation gap in the last decade, a trend that continues through and after the Pandemic. We estimate that since 2017, the state has closed the participation gap by nearly 50%.

CalFresh participation gaps mirror those we have identified and are working to address in other safety net programs as well. So, for example, the participation rate is higher for children than adults, and although California has closed some of the participation gap for adults in the last five years, particularly older adults.

Speakers of Spanish, Chinese, and Vietnamese have lower participation rates than the statewide average. Californians who identify as Asian American have lower participation rates than the statewide average. And in general, not surprisingly, the lower the household income, the higher the participation rate. While there is some variation by county, we have not observed explicit patterns by region or geography.

And now, I want to address some questions that you all asked about recent successes and some of our upcoming challenges. Increased CalFresh participation reflects our continued effort as well as the continued need for benefits, this mostly driven by really strong partnership and collaboration with stakeholders statewide.

It includes expanded outreach with campaigns focused on specific hard to reach population such as college students and non English speakers, and over time, state investments such as the expansion of CalFresh eligibility to recipients of Supplemental Security Income or SSI, policy changes intended to simplify rules and streamline operations, and various waivers and demonstration projects, like the Elderly Simplified Application Project and the Standard Medical Deduction, have also contributed to increased participation.

One timely example is the Minimum Nutrition Benefit Pilot, which tests the state's ability to provide a state funded supplement to increase the minimum benefit for a subset of CalFresh recipients who are older adults or people with disabilities.

The pilot successfully launched this month and will provide up to 12 months of food benefits that, when added with your regular CalFresh allotment, would total no less than $60.

Households eligible for the pilot are those who are part of the Elderly Simplified Application Project with two or more members, and so, these are households who include only older adults or people with disabilities and no earned income, so they are eligible to receive that supplemental benefit. We expect this is about 36,000 households statewide.

Their supplemental benefit through the pilot will be anywhere in the range of $1 to $59, but the most common amount will be $37 in additional benefits on top of their CalFresh.

The pilot will run until funding is exhausted. Another recent success, that was mentioned earlier, is the reactivation of the California Fruit and Veggie Pilot that resulted from the 36-million-dollar investment authorized in the recent state budget.

The pilot was reactivated on November 17th and as of December 3rd, which is the latest information we have available, $1.5 million in incentive funds have already been issued, which is really exciting to see and similarly, the pilot will run until funding is exhausted.

In terms of challenges, let me talk about the federal landscape in which we currently operate, and this was remarked on as well during the opening comments. First, I will confirm what many of us already know.

There is a high level of continued uncertainty even as the Federal Government shutdown has ended and as we work to implement changes under HR 1, or what is commonly known as the One Big Beautiful Bill. We continue to closely monitor the Federal Administration's actions to address potential impacts on the Californians we serve, and we remain steadfast in our commitment to ensure access among eligible people and mitigating harm to the extent that we can.

So, HR 1, also known as I mentioned as the one big, beautiful bill act, is federal legislation that was signed by the President on July 4th, and it includes historic changes to CalFresh as well as Medi Cal.

Practically, these changes will result in fewer Californians receiving benefits as well as...

Wrap up your remarks if that's possible, so we can allow a little bit more time to the other panelists. We will have more time for discussion, but if you could just wrap up a couple of the points too, that'd be great. Thank you.

Sure. So, I will just talk a little bit about our efforts to respond to HR 1. Working with our partners, including counties, CalSaws and as you all mentioned, other departments, the Department of Health Care Services in particular, to understand the key challenges ahead, we have launched a partner engagement series including monthly touchpoints with this range of partners.

In terms of our work with the Department of Healthcare Services, who are similarly going to be implementing work requirements, we partnered with them, along with the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency, for a joint work group that is focused on ensuring local connections to existing resources and supports that will help people not only keep benefits, but further their progress on a career pathway.

We've also made progress implementing the policy provisions of HR 1. I'd be happy to tell you all more about that in the question and answer section. And we're making progress toward addressing the potential for benefit cost sharing in the future through a multiyear accuracy improvement initiative.

So, I will just close by saying that in partnership with our network, including the Legislature, we've made some significant progress in the last decade to ensure access to services, and we're committed to continuing that work, even in light of the challenges we might face together. So, thank you for your time today and I'm available for any questions.

All right. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Sorry, I was very engrossed in all the updates because we usually do our quarterly kind of updates and I'm getting all this in this sphere. But to give some time to our other guests here, I'll ask Alameda County Social Services to begin your testimony to. Thank you.

Good morning. Thank you to the Committee for inviting Alameda County to this very important discussion that we're having today. As Alexis has already given us a very wonderful overview of the CalFresh program, I would like to focus a little bit more on some of the data that we can provide you here more locally within Alameda County.

My name is Roland Chao. I am with the Alameda County Social Services Agency. I am one of the Program Specialist for our CalFresh program that we administer. We serve as the safety net administering programs throughout the county, including CalFresh, but also Medi Cal, general assistance, CalWorks, Refugee Cash Assistance, and more.

Throughout Alameda County, we are comprised of approximate—or not approximately—comprised of 14 cities and nine unincorporated communities. As of the latest 2024 Census Bureau data, there's approximately 1.65 million residents in Alameda County. In terms of what that means for CalFresh, we serve currently 179,000 individuals. That's approximately one out of every ten Alameda County resident is participating in CalFresh.

A total of 111,000 households. At the monthly benefit allowance or monthly benefit issuance that we administer each month to the community, Alameda County issues out approximately $34 million in CalFresh benefits alone each month.

As stated in the previous panel, using the USDA's economic activity, if we use the $1 of CalFresh generating one $1.5 in local economic activity, that equates to approximately $51 million that we are generating in local economic activity. For our current CalFresh households, they are, on average, receiving about $308 a month in CalFresh benefits.

Other statistics that we have are the number of applications that we receive each month. So far, this federal—or this calendar year—in 2025, we receive an average of 7,300 applications each month.

Each month, our approval rates, they do vary slightly, but on average, we see about a 52% approval rate for the applications that we received. In terms of what this looks like a year ago, under the previous administration, we were receiving approximately 9,200 applications. So, we did see quite a substantial drop in about 26%.

This could be attributed to some of the fear and the concerns regarding the program, the uncertainty, as we have mentioned earlier with HR 1., but we'll also go into a little bit detail. First, I'd like to just go over some of the successes that we've had within our county.

As I mentioned, we do have a relatively high number of applications that we receive. While the number of applications did go down by 26%, our overall household—or our overall household numbers, individual numbers that are receiving CalFresh has not decreased. We are still consistent at 111,000 cases and approximately, 179,000 individuals.

As was mentioned earlier today, during the federal shutdown that occurred beginning October 1, CalFresh benefits were still issued for the month of October. However, the shutdown did extend into the month of November and as a result, CalFresh benefits were delayed.

One of the actions that the Alameda County Social Services took was to coordinate with the Alameda County Community Food Bank to offer food distribution sites at four of our agency office locations.

We staffed these with our county volunteers and we offered food distribution at each office two days a week between the hours of 10am to 2pm. We did not limit it to CalFresh recipients. Any individual that was in need of food could partake in these services. The households were offered boxes of fresh produce.

They were also offered bags of dried goods and also a carton of fresh eggs. And the amount of that was issued was dependent on the household size. In total from this effort, we serviced just across just over 4,000 households, about 14,000 individuals, and over 123,000 pounds of food were distributed during this time.

During this time during the shutdown, we also received about 7,000 applications and had a—we saw a higher approval rate of 62% for those 7,000 applications. Other successes that we have regarding the CalFresh program here in Alameda County, every May we host a CalFresh awareness month. This is an activity—or an awareness that is specific to our, our county here.

Although, the state does have their own CalFresh Awareness Month, we have our own specific theme that is tailored to the needs of our community. The past years, we have focused on elderly adults during the Social Security Administration, the SSI SSP expansion in 2019. We've also focused on students. We focused on families with young children.

The last two that we had we focused on, in 2024, we focused on dispelling myths and then, this past year, we focused on CalFresh as a way to supplement an individual or a household's food budget due to the rising costs of groceries.

Typically, during these outreach months, we partner with the Food Bank, but we also partner with community based organizations and they host their own outreach events to encourage applications, to encourage individuals and communities with questions to bring them forth and so that we can shed light and kind of resolve and help out their issues that they have problems with applying for applications for assistance.

We can offer that as well. Next, I'd want to speak to some of the challenges that we have seen. The first and the most important one is regarding HR 1, the one big, beautiful bill act. There are a number of impacts to both the county and to the recipients.

In terms of what we see as a county, of course it is with the benefit cost sharing that is something that is on the horizon given the state's high error rate.

We are at the highest bucket of 15% currently based on our error rates and one activity is that Alameda County Social Services we are working with our quality assurance and quality control teams to do targeted trainings to help lower our contribution to the error rate.

In terms of challenges to our clients with HR 1, the two biggest ones are regarding the work requirements implementation and the limitations or restrictions of non-system citizens.

Both of these groups of individuals we are expecting to see a very strong impact in reduction of our CalFresh recipient population, but also, a translation to the decrease in the number of applications we will receive.

And Roland, if I can ask you to wrap up as well. Thank you.

Yes, and certainly, and we'll be happy to take your questions after this as well too. But as overall, we would like to thank the Committee for highlighting the strong efforts that you guys all have for championing food security.

Thank you. Appreciate it. Now, let's move on to our third presenter.

All right, good morning, Chair and Members.

My name is Zoe Tanner and I use she/her pronouns and I'm a second year Master's in Public Health student at UC Berkeley studying food nutrition and public population health, as well as a CalFresh Ambassador at our Basic Needs Center on campus where I help students like myself apply for and maintain CalFresh.

The first time I ever applied for CalFresh, I had just transferred from my local community college here in California to UC Davis and was living away from home for the first time. I had heard about the program mostly through my own interest being in food access as well as working at the campus food pantry.

So, I thought money for food. If I qualify, sign me up. That sounds great. Pretty straightforward, right? The short answer is no. I was on hold for over three hours with my caseworker for my initial interview and I was lucky.

While I was and am a busy student, I happened to not have work or class that afternoon, so I had the flexibility to be able to sit by the phone and wait it out.

Most students, or anyone for that matter, this speaks to the hoops CalFresh participants are made to jump through just to afford groceries for the month.

Outside of that long wait, I had to turn over every identification about me that I had from where I lived, my Social Security, my place of employment, my birth date, passport, lease agreement, bank statements so I could explain the couple hundred dollars my grandma gave me each month to help me make rent.

The application process was confusing, frustrating, and frankly, dehumanizing. I couldn't understand how anyone ever got through this process when despite being fully aware of the program and how it worked, I still was fighting and advocating for myself at every step of the way. CalFresh is not a handout.

You are made to work for every dollar that you get for this program in the hours spent figuring out the application, finding the right documentation, on the phone with your caseworker, calling them again when an issue inevitably arises, filling out your SAR7. It's endless work.

Even now on CalFresh again as a grad student, I've had to push back when I was incorrectly told I don't meet student exemption requirements, something I only know to do because I'm a CalFresh ambassador myself. I don't blame the county or caseworkers for this. Make no mistake, it is our larger social safety net systems failing low-income people.

But we need to do and can do better. My experiences are not in isolation. Having now been a CalFresh Ambassador for over a year, I see it in the students that I work with who show up to appointments stressed and confused on how to proceed.

Half of my job is actually supporting students who applied on their own and now face issues like denials, unreachable caseworkers, or missed recertification deadlines, reminding me of the challenges I faced when I first applied as well. There have absolutely been improvements though, as been shared today.

I'm happy that most students get a call for their interview within a few days rather than weeks, that there are expanded exemptions for most grad students, collaborations with my Basic Needs Center and the Financial Aid Office to reach out to work study eligible students showing them that they're likely eligible for CalFresh if they take the chance to apply and that the newly updated benefits calcite is more integrated and user friendly.

However, even amidst these wins, the crisis we saw during the government shutdown only adds to the challenge. Without benefits, I worried how I would make ends meet, already juggling two jobs and loans on a very limited income.

I found myself strategizing ways I could make my benefits stretch and contemplating grabbing free food at campus events instead of having to buy groceries for dinner.

CalFresh is a lifeline for students facing impossible choices—pay tuition and rent or eat—and having it threatened right before finals were about to start was incredibly devastating.

It was also deeply distressing knowing that the over 8,000 Berkeley undergraduate and graduate students estimated to be on CalFresh were going to start looking to us, a team of 10, for support and answers, but knowing I had no way to help them. While our Basic Needs Center stepped in with longer pantry hours and emergency support, it should not be the sole responsibility of food banks, pantries, and basic needs hubs to further pick up the slack for failures in a federal nutrition program.

I know that this body does not set the rules when it comes to the eligibility requirements for CalFresh, but it is your job to know what it's like for the people you serve to access food today when they are low income and to do what it takes to ensure that food is a right to all people in California. We need you to be aware of and rectify the barriers to CalFresh participation.

Increasing funding for Basic Needs Centers like ours strengthens CalFresh outreach, something we've touched on today already, reduces stigma, and supports vulnerable populations like college students, which I've only heard slightly talked about today, but we are a strong CalFresh population, bringing people in rather than forcing them to navigate a complex system alone.

I know for certain that having an ambassador back when I first applied to walk me through this process would have made all the difference.

Lastly, we also need you to know that when one person is fed, we all get fed. When a student or anyone uses CalFresh, those dollars circulate back into the local economy and people are able to thrive, completing their degrees, building stable lives, and contributing meaningfully to their communities.

I stand here—or sit here—today not just for myself, but for the thousands of students across California who are doing everything right and still struggling to eat. Accessing food should not require hours on hold or fighting a system alone. California students from our local community colleges to the CSUs to the UCs deserve better. Thank you.

Thank you to our panelists and I think it was a great, Zoe, your great illustration of the friction that exists too much in our social safety net, frankly, is something I and many Committee Members and many of our Caucus Members are trying to do, is really to remove that kind of friction.

Because honestly, it is too labor intensive and bureaucratic to be poor sometimes, where you have to go through so many hoops and so many paperwork just to prove that you have no money and no resources is ridiculous. And of course, much of that is unfortunately dictated by the Federal Government.

But I do think panel today illustrated good from your individual to the macro at the state level. I want to open up to my colleagues if you have any questions for this panel first. Questions or commentary.

It is actually not a question, but I did want to say to Zoe, thank you so much for helping to continue to humanize the situation, highlighting the needs and the concerns of our college students.

I was a college professor at San Diego State for 16 years and having worked for our now Secretary of State and when she pushed that legislation to get food pantries on the college campuses, I mean, it was needed. You know, so many athletes and others are couch, couch surfing and, and other things.

So, I just wanted to thank you for bringing that up in this conversation because, too often, that's not an area that we do address so much when it comes to our college students. We, we talk about our seniors, and we talk about so many other avenues, but just for you to be here and to give and to share your story, I wanted to thank you for sharing your story. I really appreciate that.

Absolutely. Ditto. Any other questions? Oh, okay.

Thank you. I—just piggybacking off of what my colleague said, I think that, you know, so much of our conversations that we're having that particularly when it comes to our food insecure, hungry college students is very siloed.

You know, when I went to community college, there was hardly any or no food pantries on any of the 114, 116, community colleges that we have. And now we have—I think almost all of them do. And everyone's sort of trying to address the same problems. But I'm really encouraged by the testimony here and the genuine partnership.

I really feel like we can be having these broader conversations about how do we address the need without worrying about what jurisdiction it is. The same goes for when we're talking about our transportation policy, our healthcare policy. Some community colleges have very robust health care clinics.

Others have basically a shoebox or a closet-sized health center where they primarily pass out band aids and condoms to college students, and we're not providing robust, you know, preventative, medicine, preventative care to our community college students, many of whom are first in their families to go to college like I was.

And so, as we explore these conversations about how do we get access to resources to our communities, I think we should also be thinking about how can we, you know, better serve these populations without, you know, siloing our, you know, our solutions.

And so, I'm wondering if the panel has any comments about, you know, how can we do better as multiple layers of government who all try to address these issues, want to address these issues? The state cannot do it alone. The county certainly can't do it alone.

But have you seen any solutions out there where we are able to actually address these issues from a, you know, multi-layered government response that includes nonprofits and advocacy organizations and stakeholders that you have found successful?

Are other communities doing this, you know, better than others that we can perhaps replicate in other states or in certain counties that are doing it better? Would love to, to see if we can, you know, take best practices in what is used.

Every community is going to be different, but I also feel like our counties are not talking to each other enough to address this problem, and I would love to see if we can adopt best practices to see how we can serve these communities with dwindling, limited resources that we have.

I guess I can go first. Just speaking from a county perspective, we do have our advocates, our liaisons within the county that actually go and meet with institutions of higher education. That was part of a California legislative requirement. And so we do try to meet with them monthly to discuss some of the challenges.

As my fellow panelists here has mentioned, there are some unique nuances to students. They don't have quite the same level of availability as most applicants as they tend to have to navigate between classes. So we oftentimes when we try to do conduct an interview, we do miss them.

And we do find that it's very, it's very important that we get that initial contact with the individual because it's starts the process for, for CalFresh. I will say that for students, they are very unique group that have to meet an additional requirement in terms of CalFresh eligibility.

That means that they have to be participating in a local program that increases employability in lpi. Fortunately for us, CDSS does have a resource that all of our staff and and counties throughout the state utilize that list, every school and every ELPI that has been approved.

So we use that to help kind of check to make sure a student does meet the requirements. But I do agree that we do need more work to be done to kind of better assist our students.

Thank you for your indulgence to the Committee Members. Can we drill down on that a little bit more? So can you explain it in a little bit more detail? So we have eligible students who are eligible for these programs, but they're also asked to be required to. But their student, you know, they're already students.

They're already doing what we want them to do, which is go to school, getting a good education to better their, their lives and their family's lives. And we're requiring them to also be employed.

Correct. So typically for students, they do have to meet a work requirement 20 hours per week, an average of 80 hours if they don't meet that requirement. Similar to the abode, the work requirement for General CalFresh where they would have to be participating in certain programs or activities, receiving TANF funded CAL Grant A or B.

It is quite a lengthy handbook in terms of the different exemptions that students can qualify for, which I think that's just based on a federal, federal policy for some reason that creates this unnecessary hurdle.

And I'll just end my remarks to the Committee and thank you for that to just say that, you know, I've long felt this as a former EOPS student, as someone who's the first in their family to go to college.

As someone who's been the recipient of Section 8 and my local food pantries, we put poor people through so many hurdles and so many barriers to entry. And we think in Sacramento that these programs are game changing and life changing, and they're not. And the government already collects so much of this information already.

There's no reason why at least the state of California should require another layer of bureaucracy, another month delay to get benefits. It just seems like that in and of itself is not a solution. That's actually quite a big barrier when we think we're doing so much good for our needy students or needy Californians.

So it would be interesting to explore that in the coming year about how we talk about reducing the bureaucratic barriers. The government already has so much of this information anyway. We shouldn't be asking time and time again and create all of these layers for delay because that's only inviting misuse. It's inviting scrutiny.

It's inviting just more layers to navigate through. And it's ultimately just not being effective for people who would choose to criticize or they give up. And we have a whole other bureaucratic layer about why they give up and surveys about why they give up.

And if I have to read another survey about why a program isn't working or why they didn't apply for funding that they were qualified for, you know, I'm gonna lose it. Because we know why. We already know why. And yet we're not focusing on those solutions too.

And those are uncomfortable conversations because those are conversations that we should be having with our allies, with our, with our friends who agree with these goals. But we need to have those difficult conversations about making these programs more efficient as well. And so I probably said enough on my third cup of coffee. Thank you.

Well, I appreciate those comments. I think those are potent remarks, especially as we worry about the federal guidelines that really dictate so much. We do, which will be good for the next panel. But I have one question before we move on to the next panel.

I want to drill down on something from CDSS that Alexis, you talked about. So you talked about how from 2020, 2025 we, we expanded our participation rate of all eligible participants in CalFresh from 6.67% to 81%. So over the course of about five years, we, you know, got about 20%.

We got much closer to 20%, the remaining 19%. When we want to get full universal, everyone who is eligible, everyone to participate is a real gold standard we have to get to because especially as there's lots of federal changes that could shake out people or kick people out.

It's much easier for people to be all on the boat and for them to be, unfortunately it's harder for them to be shaken off than never be on the boat entirely.

So I think it's really important that we focus on that last 19% and not take five years to do that because every year we're seeing so many changes.

So I really want to ask, especially my ears perked up when you were talking about Alexis, that especially the API community, especially non English community, is some of the last bash and last frontier of folks hard to reach.

What are the strategies you're implementing right now with CCSS to get to that, that last 19% of folks to get them to sign up, especially now that time is of the essence. What are the strategies you're employing to get the last 19% of eligibility?

Yeah, so happy to answer that question. And let me start by clarifying that the 81% rate was achieved in FFY 2022. So a few years ago. That just happens to be the latest data. We are hopeful that we've seen additional gains over the last few years.

If we were, if we had real time data, we are hopeful that it's higher than 81% and that is due to some of the strategies that we have been employing.

I know we talked about outreach not being the only kind of strategy, but has been something where we've put a lot of effort into tailoring our messages, our community based partners to those harder to reach populations. We've done campaigns in non English languages, but that were kind of researched and focused in the non English languages.

So focus groups with Spanish speakers, Vietnamese speakers, instead of kind of doing something in English and then simply translating that, we've done a lot more placement in ethnic media and kind of other strategies to tailor the outreach to those harder to reach populations that make up the remaining folks that we're not reaching, whether it's 19% or less.

We've also over time looked at where we have federal flexibilities to increase access, streamline administrative barriers. So like on the topic of the student eligibility rule, which is a federal rule, lots of effort to maximize the exemptions and actually streamline that process.

So the local programs to increase employability, we've approved over 10,000 of those programs across the state. There's still more work to be done to make that even easier for folks to the extent we have flexibility at the federal level maximizing that. Other examples include some of our demonstration projects like The Elderly Simplified Application Project.

We are serving a historical high of older adults. That gain in serving older adults makes up a lot of the participation increases over the years. So we will continue to pursue those flexibilities.

And then to the extent we face some of the challenges of implementing these Federal changes under HR1, we are actively in conversation with counties with partners statewide. We convene all 58 counties and all of our advocate partners monthly together to talk about how we might mitigate some of the potential reduction in benefits or harm.

And so that will be a lot of our focus in the next few years is to make sure the remaining people who are eligible are served by our program.

Thank you. And I of course invite collaboration with the Legislature in achieving the 100% mark. And thank you for that clarification. I still do have seen estimates. We still are hovering in the 80s somewhere. I think that's the best estimates we have. But I definitely invite that kind of collaboration.

I'll turn it back over to my co-Chair to Assembly Member Dr. Lashae Sharp-Collins to kick off our third panel. I want to thank our second panel for being here and invite the third panel up. Thank you.

Thank you so much. So now we will move to panel three, highlighting the impact of Federal Government shutdown and the passage of HR1 on food access. As our four panelists are making their way, I just wanted to say, as I mentioned earlier, I introduced Assembly Bill 1211 last year to address CalFresh.

When I introduced this bill, HR1 cuts were threatened. But in working with the community partners, we wanted to make sure that we had a plan to backfill benefits so Californians in need of will not be left without resources. Unfortunately, that bill failed this year.

And so this served to me as a reminder that too often we are reactive in government when we can instead be proactive. So I'm failing to address CalFresh. Last year we left California as extremely vulnerable. So this is only something that has actually intensified the prolonged shutdown.

And that brings us to today where we're now going to really have a deeper dive into what's happening with HR1. And so I look forward to our continued conversations with my colleagues who address CalFresh this year. And I appreciate all of our panelists here for helping us better understand the scope of this problem.

And with that I will ask each panelist to introduce themselves as we move forward. But we have representatives here from Alameda County, from the Community Food Bank, County Welfare Directors Association, California Budget and Policy center, and in Child Poverty California, our first presenter is going to be the representative from Alameda County Community Food Bank.

Thank you Chairpersons and Members of the Select Committee. My name is Izer Pamantuwan, Senior Policy Advocate with Alameda County Community Food Bank. We are first and foremost an emergency response organization. We responded to the 2018 Federal Government shutdown, the wildfires of 2018 and the Covid 19 pandemic and recession.

And thanks to our community of supporters, we were equipped to undertake a quick and effective response to the most recent Federal Government shutdown. When the shutdown began on October 1, thousands of federal employees in Alameda County began working without pay.

Furthermore, as my co panelists will delve into more detail, SNAP benefits began to be disrupted on November 1st, affecting 176,133 of our neighbors on CalFresh. Almost immediately, our neighbors began turning to the food bank and our network of nearly 400 partner pantries and kitchens.

Call volume to our emergency food helpline more than doubled week over week, increasing from 63 calls a week in early October to more than 460 calls a week in late October. Around the same time frame, visits to our food resource website increased tenfold.

In order to fill some of the gap from the loss of SNAP benefits as mentioned earlier, we collaborated with Alameda County Social Services agency to offer four pop up pantries, three in Oakland and one in Hayward. About 60% to 70% of households served were CalFresh recipients.

Additionally, we partnered with additional social service agency offices in the Tri Valley and Tri Cities areas to distribute gift cards to households impacted by the SNAP delays. Furthermore, during the course of the shutdown, we conducted weekly food distributions to support the 400 TSA workers at Oakland International Airport.

Alameda County Community Food Bank's decisive response was only possible because of our community of supporters and our partnerships with state and local government were a critical piece. We are grateful to the state Legislature and Governor for passing $80 million in Cal food funding for fiscal year 26 and expediting its availability.

Our current year allocation from Cal Food is slightly more than $2.4 million. This allowed us to ramp up our food purchasing in the immediate term. For example, we use the flexibility to double deliveries of eggs from every other week to weekly.

Finally, we are grateful to work in a county where our local elected officials believe food is a basic human right. On October 28, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors approved a $10 million allocation from Measure W funds to support hunger relief efforts.

In light of federal impacts, $8.3 million of the allocation will come to ACCFB and our network partners. Of this, about half will be passed through to our network to support distribution and of the allocation ACCFB keeps, 100% will be dedicated to food procurement.

Alameda County is a leader in anti hunger work and we are grateful for the county's support and partnership. So what did we learn during our shutdown response and how will this inform our collective path forward? Food insecurity is getting worse and continued resources and collaboration remain essential.

Financial hardship and the impact on food security will continue for months for most people. More than half of individuals surveyed during our shutdown response reported that it will be a lot more challenging to make ends meet over the next couple of months.

Additionally, 21% of people we served during the shutdown were receiving help from the food bank for the very first time and we are still bracing for the anticipated impact of the HR1 snap cuts which will immediately impact tens of thousands in our county via expanded time limits.

In summary, ACCFB and our network partners continue to see longer lines and higher need throughout the county and we expect this trend to worsen due to lingering impacts of the government shutdown and the SNAP cuts contained in HR1. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. County Welfare Directors Association.

Good morning co-Chairs. Thank you so much for the invitation. First I will speak to the shutdown and our response to the crisis.

The chaos and the harm caused by the shutdown cannot be overstated, but the good news is that the coordinated response from counties, the state and CBOs is something we can all be proud of due to the staggered nature of how benefits are normally issued.

The during during the first 10 days of each month regularly, the hardest hit CalFresh recipients were the 60% of individuals who received benefits on a normal basis between November 1st and 6th. These 3.3 million CalFresh recipients were really the focus of our mitigation emergency response efforts. During this time.

Our agency directors worked with their CBO networks, boards of supervisors, food banks, sister agencies and filters philanthropic communities to ramp up the availability of basic food commodities through donations, food drives and mass food purchasing. They activated emergency response protocols to increase coordinating capacity against school districts, cities and counties alike.

And some counties directed and redirected county welfare funds to help stabilize families within the foster care and child welfare systems. All in all, statewide, before statewide issues, issuances of benefits resumed on November 6th.

At least 10 counties authorized or were prepared to authorize a total of $63 million in county funds to support mitigation efforts and raised an additional 17 million. So this whole of community response, anchored by several of our counties Cut across rural and urban Mono, Calusa, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, and LA to name a few.

These same partnerships in this infrastructure is what we must build upon to implement HR1 responsibly and to fully mitigate the potential drop off.

To be clear, we are going to need the legislature's bold and decisive leadership over the next year to authorize the funding and policy interventions necessary to support counties in continuing to serve as a backstop to unmitigated hunger.

Despite lacking 2:2 critical inputs during the shutdown time to plan and funding adequacy, we were able to mount a response that we can all be proud of. Imagine what's possible when we have a longer Runway to plan and if we actually had funding adequacy to put those guardrails in place.

Currently, as you know, the state estimates that we are at risk of potentially having 495,000 CalFresh recipients traffic drop off of benefits and that's about 81% of drop off rate. We believe counties believe we can do better. That magnitude of drop off would represent a 10% reduction in overall caseload, which is massive.

And so we look forward to updated program retention assumptions by the state at governor's budget. But a drop off of that magnitude would mean rolling back the SSI expansion, the asset test repeal, the CalFresh simplification reforms that we've implemented, the enhanced access that we've provided for college students. So we have to go upstream.

We know that downstream impacts of food insecurity have untold impacts on our healthcare system, our carceral system, our child welfare system. And we believe we can approach this problem through a much more cost effective funding scheme.

First, we can start by funding the work that it's going to take to implement a harm reduction strategy at the county level to maximize program retention. We think that there's really three tools counties have at our disposal to implement work requirements in the most responsible way possible. First is robust screening.

We think it will matter how many touch points workers are able to have with recipients of CalFresh who are having to comply with work requirements. It will matter the types of questions workers are able to ask and whether workers are appropriately trained to ask the right questions because ultimately exemptions are not obvious.

You know these, these exemptions are not always inherent in the intake process or the redetermination process and the nature of the exemption will matter.

So the exemption that actually allows the client the longest harm, sort of hold harmless period, so to speak, is the type of exemption that workers will want to apply in Order to do that, we're going to need to step up, we're going to need to train, and we're going to, you know, be really committed to continuous improvement.

That's going to take funding. The second tool we have at our disposal is community and workforce navigation. We're already talking with the state, with Health and Human Services, with labor and workforce Development to figure out how we break through those local silos.

How do we work with our workforce boards, how do we identify, you know, market challenges at the local, local level up front so that we can help our CalFresh recipients subject to work requirements, not fall off of the roles.

And then the third tool we have is we need to make sure that we can maximize county capacity to fully draw down state match dollars for CalFresh Administration. There were some sensible policies that we passed during the Covid pandemic and the Great Recession. It's called a match waiver.

We did it a bit differently each time, but ultimately alleviated counties from having to match at the higher percentage rate while still being able to draw down a state match and maximize federal participation.

We want to make sure we can keep as much money within the Administration in the system so that we can reduce error rates, improve program accuracy, but also, of course, to focus on program retention.

In closing, I will just say that of course we recognize you're going to have to make really tough policy choices in the face of an 18 million dollar billion dollar budget deficit.

But we do believe that the degree to which we're going to be able to reduce that initial estimate of 81% of drop off is going to hinge on whether we have the time, whether we have the adequate funding, whether we have the appropriate policy interventions to do so. So we look forward to your partnership.

All right, next we will have Monica from California Budget and Policy Center.

Hi, good morning. My name is Monica Saucedo. I'm a senior policy fellow at the California Budget and Policy Center, a nonpartisan research and analysis nonprofit. Thank you to the chairs for inviting me to speak today.

I'm going to use my time to provide a brief overview about the budget package, the federal budget package that was signed into law with a specific focus on SNAP or calfresh. I have slides behind you that may not be super accessible, but. oh, sure. Is this better?

Okay.

On July 4th, HR1, as the budget package is known, was signed into law. This package includes the most significant factor, federal cuts to health care, food assistance and education that we have ever seen. As you may be aware, federal funds account for over a third of California's budget.

Therefore, federal cuts of this magnitude will cost the state billions of dollars over the course of 10 years. At the national level, historic cuts to health care total about $1.1 trillion and 187 billion for Snap, which is about 20% of the entire program's budget.

All this while giving away tax breaks to the ultra wealthy that total about $1.4 trillion. The cuts included in HR1 are designed in ways that will disproportionately affect low income families, immigrants and communities of color.

Now, as you can see from this chart, in California, the poorest fifth of Californians stand to gain about a $100 tax cut while potentially losing access to their food assistance and health care. Essentially, this new law puts in place the largest resource transfer from low income families to the rich that we have seen in our lifetime.

Without action to mitigate harm, this new policy will likely push more people into poverty, deepen racial and economic despair disparities across California.

So while some of the biggest and most immediate impacts are to SNAP and Medicaid, HR1 also makes cuts to the child tax credit, including denying the credit to US Citizen children who don't have a parent with a Social Security number.

It provides billions of dollars to carry out the federal administration's deportation agenda and makes deep cuts to education programs that are designed to make education more affordable.

So before diving into the specific cuts that will impact CalFresh programs, I want to take a quick detour to put into perspective what California is up against on the Medi Cal side.

Earlier this year, the California Department of Healthcare Services estimated that about 3.4 million Californians could lose their Medi Cal coverage as a result of HR1, which translates to a loss of up to $30 billion per year in federal funds cover coming into the state.

This not only threatens the care for millions of Californians, but also threatens to destabilize the entire health care system.

I won't get into the specific cuts to Medi Cal, but I want to show in this slide that the program is facing both eligibility restrictions as well as state financing restrictions which will put direct pressure on the state budget. Please note that this very long list of Medi California cuts is not exhaustive.

There's so much more that I won't get into. But just to show how comprehensive these cuts are. Now shifting gears with all that background, I want to spend a couple of minutes providing a high level overview of how HR1 has and will continue to impact CalFresh.

So, based on research and statements from the Department of Social Services, we estimate that nearly every CalFresh household is poised to lose some or all of their food assistance as the various provisions of HR1 are implemented. This will cost the state somewhere between 2 and $4.5 billion annually in federal funding.

As with MEDI CAL, HR1 introduced various eligibility restrictions to CalFresh. The ones listed here, in essence were effective as soon as the Bill was signed into law, but to my knowledge have not yet been implemented.

Namely, HR1 blocks several categories of humanitarian immigrants from enrolling in SNAP and these are not the exact populations that are explicitly covered by the California Food assistance program or CFAP and would mean that about 74,000 refugees, asylees and other lawfully present immigrants would no longer be eligible for federally funded CalFresh.

It's expected that once this provision is implemented, people could lose their assistance at their next recertification.

Additionally, HR1 expands the CalFresh program's harsh time limits, which limit assistance to three months over a three year period unless a person is meeting work reporting requirements expands this to adults up to the age of 64, previously 54, and caregivers of children 14 years and older.

HR1 also explicitly removed the previous rule that exempted veterans, former foster youth, and people experiencing homelessness for meeting these time limits. Furthermore, HR1 now also limits the areas that can be exempted from applying to waivers to areas with unemployment rates over 10%.

Previously, the entire state had a waiver that recognized limited job availability and Therefore exempted all CalFresh participants from time limits. Now, only three counties in California have been deemed eligible for this waiver waiver.

This puts hundreds of thousands of Californians at risk of losing their food assistance as work reporting requirements have been shown to create red tape and reduce program uptake while having no impact on the labor market participation.

Now, in this slide, I've listed several other provisions from HR one that will have a more direct hit to the state budget, but I want to draw your attention to the first two.

So starting in October of 2027, California will be required to pay a portion of CalFresh benefits, and this is a major departure from how the program has been previously administered where benefits were 100% federally funded.

I also want to note that starting next October, October 2026, the state will also be on the hook for paying for the majority of CalFresh administrative costs, which was previously a shared cost of 50:50 with the Federal Government. And now California would be on the hook for 75% of costs, adding approximately $650 million to current administrative spending.

Other restrictions include freezing benefit levels, which will ultimately reduce every single household's monthly food assistance due to rising costs so quickly want to come back to the cost shift. So coming back to this, each state is responsible for will be responsible for paying for a portion of SNAP benefits to depending on something called the payment error rate.

So this is a measure of accuracy of each state's eligibility and benefit determination. It includes both overpayments and underpayments. I want to be clear that this is not a measure of fraud. Rather, these errors are often due to incomplete information on either the county or the client's side.

In fiscal year 24 federal fiscal year 24, California had a payment error rate of 10.98%, which is only slightly higher than the national average of 10.93.

The share of California the share of benefits that California will have to pay in fiscal year 28 will depend on the state's payment error rate from fiscal year 25 or fiscal year 26. And please note that we are already in Federal Fiscal Year 26.

So while the cost shift will not kick in for a couple of years, the time to impact this error rate is now to just quickly want to show this chart to put this all into perspective. You'll see in this chart what different payment error rates could mean in terms of the hit to the state budget.

Based on 2024 numbers and California's most recent payment error rate, the state would be on the hook for about $2 billion per year. And this is on top with all of the other costs associated with the other provisions I've mentioned.

For comparison, the state share could fund benefits from for over 800,000 Californians, demonstrating how paramount it is that the state take bold action to ensure no more Californians lose access to such valuable food assistance. I'll conclude here. Thank you.

Wow. Thank you. That's all I got right now is wow. Moving on to Yesenia from the End Child Poverty California. It's all yours.

Thank you so much. Chair and Members Again, my name is Yesenia Robancho and I am a Senior Policy Associate with end child poverty California. Powered by Grace as you've heard repeatedly today, CalFresh is California's most powerful tool to combat poverty and and food insecurity.

With more than 5.5 million Californians relying on CalFresh each month during the recent federal shutdown that meant nearly 3.3 million households across our state experienced the fear and instability of potentially losing food assistance. CalFresh is not just about hunger, it's also about economic stability.

As we've been hearing throughout today's hearing, we talked about the SNAP multiplier effect that generates up to 1.80 cents in economic activity. I'll also add that every 1 billion dollar in SNAP supports more than 130,000 jobs across the food economy. That includes our farm workers, our grocery clerk jobs, as well as our truck drivers.

When we disrupt or weaken CalFresh, we are not only harming families, but we are also harming California's economy. On the Federal Shutdown California should be proud that it was the first state to act quickly and comply with judge's order to resume issuing federally entitled food benefits.

That swift action mattered deeply for families like my sister who has a toddler and relies on CalFresh to make sure her household of two has food on the table. But moving quickly alone is not enough.

We know from the 2018-2019 shutdown that that even the briefest disruption in CalFresh has serious consequences because households are already living with severe basic needs insecurity. The UC Nutrition Policy Institute is currently examining the impacts of this most recent federal shutdown and I encourage this Committee to elevate that analysis once it is complete.

The key lesson from this shutdown is that California needs stronger state infrastructure. We must have the ability to issue state funded food benefits rapidly during future federal shutdowns. Now moving on to HR1 and some of the foundational threats that we are facing.

I appreciate that this conversation is happening now because we are facing both immediate risks from this federal shutdown and also unprecedented threats from HR1. These proposals do not simply trim around the edges as we've heard.

It fundamentally undermines the CalFresh program that matters because CalFresh is the platform that makes many other effective investments possible, including nutrition incentives and other state innovations. If the foundation is weakened, everything built on top is at risk.

We must therefore prioritize protecting the core structure of CalFresh to ensure equitable access and allow the program to reach its full potential.

I want to acknowledge the important step the Legislature and Administration have already taken by investing in our recent budget, particularly 20 million in General Fund Dollars for the CalFood Program in the September budget trailer bills to help mitigate the harm HR1 poses to our immigrant households.

However, humanitarian immigrants, including refugees, asylees and survivors of sex and labor trafficking still face significant gaps because they will soon not have access to targeted assistance like CalFresh. So we must provide. So we must prioritize them in the CFAP expansion and accelerate their access to food wherever most feasible.

Moving on to ABOM implementation, I want to commend the State's thoughtful approach to implementation. This is an extremely complex policy and getting it right is critical to minimizing the harm as Monica walked us through first, screening is essential.

Participants must accurately be screened for the general work requirement which is far more flexible than the rigid 20-hour-per-week rule and this allows states to use local minimum wage calculations. At the same time, some families will not be subject to multiple work requirements across the MediCal program, the CalFresh program and the CalWorks program.

We need as much program alignment as possible across these benefits along with a robust employment and training infrastructure for participants. And let's be clear, it will be tempting to fall under a compliance oriented program, but we must continue to make progress so that our safety net prioritizes family stability and well being.

First, that becomes feasible with initiatives like Alexis Fernandez talked about in terms of an interagency task force between CDSs and DHCS that is conducting a landscape analysis as well as the state's commitment to individualize not one size fits all compliance.

Second, as we heard, exemptions are going to be critical and HR1 eliminate key exemptions for veterans, former foster youth and people experiencing homelessness.

We need strong policy, clear guidance and consistent training so workers and participants can easily verify exemptions, including participants deemed quote unquote unfit for work and clear rules will reduce subjective bias and prevent unnecessary harm to CalFresh participants. Work training opportunities are also essential.

Students must be properly classified so they are not inclined incorrectly treated as ABODs and agencies must work together to maximize access to employment and training options.

Just two weeks ago I was at the CalWorks Training Academy and had the opportunity to be at a roundtable with parent advocates where they talked about their desire to do a pilot program such as a program navigation system for parents and these types of brilliant ideas really is an opportunity for us to listen to our participants and what wisdom they bring and innovation they bring to address our new work requirements.

The stakes could not be higher. Of the approximately 600,000 people subject to time limits, the state has warned that up to 500,000 could lose CalFresh without strong implementation. That is 1 in 11 participants statewide.

We must fully utilize existing budgeted funds and provide counties and, and frontline workers with the resources they need to keep people connected to food assistance. And I know my time is dwindling, so finally, I want to underscore the importance of protecting CalFresh administrative funding. The first cost shift under HR1 hits immediately in the current budget year.

And the LAO reported that HR1 increases safe costs by $1.3 billion across MediCal and CalFresh and includes an expected increase of 300 million for CalFresh alone in this upcoming fiscal year. The harmful economic effects of President Trump's Administration and the Republican led Congress continue to grow clearer.

Their ongoing efforts to intimidate immigrant families and implement illegal, irrational cuts to programs supporting millions of Californians while providing substantial tax benefits to wealthy individuals. Esther. And as Dr. Collins shared, have contributed significantly to the state's fiscal challenges. And we need the Legislature to put food on the table first.

And I know you will have tough challenges and decisions ahead, but we hope that you will prioritize, prioritize families experiencing food insecurity and poverty. Thank you.

Thank you. Wow. I mean, there was a lot of great information shared throughout the entire presentation across the board today from all, all three panels. And I just want to go back and just emphasize once again that we are facing $18 billion deficit and the possibilities of another shutdown in January.

So this is real, you know, and as I mentioned in the opening, we can't play politics with people's lives. And so when we're talking about HR1 cuts and how some of this is going to take effect in the midterms, which will compound the issues for CalFresh recipients.

One of the questions that I had was kind of already answered, but it's going back to easer and it's just looking at the fact of what have we learned from this. And when you were talking, you mentioned a couple of things, but because of time constraint you had to kind of condense it a little bit.

But when you're thinking about what we've learned from this process, I know you mentioned it's getting worse. Collaborations are going to be key, financial impact continue. But then you said more challenges to make ends meet.

And I'm just wondering if you can kind of talk a little bit more about some of these additional challenges, the barriers, inflation, I don't know if it's tariff, cost of living, or et cetera, but if you can kind of just take a minute.

I know I'm kind of tightening you in there, but a minute or so just to kind of give us a little bit more insight into what else we have have learned or should have learned from this shutdown.

Well, one of the things that we already knew but really got emphasized during the shutdown and the aftermath of HR1 is something which one of my colleagues mentioned earlier, which is that hunger is a policy choice.

To this day, we still hear the rhetoric that hunger and food insecurity is due to some sort of lack of resources or some sort of scarcity of food. And we know that that is not true, especially in the state of California.

And as you alluded to in the East Bay particularly, we have identified including housing, access to affordable housing as one of the leading causes of food insecurity. One of the mantras that we emphasize is that rent eats first.

Sometimes when we make those impossible choices, you can forego that meal, but you have to make sure that rent check is mailed on time. So finally, just to close real quick, we are already hearing in some corners of the media the post emergency environment quote, unquote, even after the pandemic.

We heard that and we're emphasizing that hunger is still an emergency. Hunger rates are still at the peak that we observed during the peak of the pandemic. And the folks who lost their paychecks had to put a lot of that into their credit cards, which is putting a burden on their households for months to come.

That's one of the things that we're seeing.

Thank you. And I wanted to also make sure I have time for my colleagues also to ask some other questions. Just wanted to ask Carlos, can you just state the numbers again? When you said for the drop off rate, I missed that mark.

I know it's 81% and 10% of caseload reduction, but can you give me that thousand number again?

So to be fair, CDSS in August, I believe, put out some projections, some impact projections that amount to an 81% drop off rate among those who would be subject to the work requirements within the CalFresh caseload. So among the 600, there are 5.5 million individuals who rely on CalFresh.

Among them, the projections accounted for 610,000 individuals being subject to work reporting requirements. And among them, projections that 495,000 of them would likely lose benefits as a consequence of work requirements. And what we are working through, continuing to investigate is whether we can do better.

Part of the challenge is we're essentially being asked to defy the evidence because we know that the evidence is very clear that work requirements serve to do one thing which is to kick people off of benefits. But at the same time, it's not clear if there's any compelling blue state work requirement model in the past either.

And so the question before us, I think, I think a very practical question and then ultimately goes to funding, is can we test the proposition about whether we can inject enough buffering activities and navigation supports to navigate folks through this process and achieve better outcomes than we've seen in any other state?

Okay. The only thing I haven't heard much of the really quick and I'm going turn it over to any of my colleagues from here on the dais who asked question was if there was anything left for us to look at the, the implications that it can have to the agricultural sector.

We haven't talked about the agricultural sector as it pertains to HR1 cuts. It's just, is there anything that anyone can speak to that aspect of the impact that it could have on that sector? Unless anyone here as well.

I think one thing we can talk about is again, going back to that multiplier effect and looking at how much revenue snap or CalFresh generates for the state's economy. When we mess with that revenue generation or that ability to gain access to that funding, we also disrupt our food economy, which includes our farm workers, includes our farms.

All of these programs will feel the impact, whether it's just direct or indirect.

Any questions?

Thank you. This was incredibly helpful to wrap our hearing with. I wanted to get at some of the things that are within California's control. And I really appreciated, Monica, your reminders to us that over 3 million Californian households are poised to lose some or all of their food assistance.

And it's going to cost the state of California between 2 billion to $4.5 billion annually in lost federal funding. And that's recognizing the fact that California is a donor seat to the Federal Government. That is appalling. We're going to move on from that and really focus on what we have the ability to do.

So just on those two points, I would like all of the panelists, if possible, to speak to what we can do to reduce our error rates. That's within our control in theory. And, and then the second is what we can do to ensure that those who could be eligible or should be eligible can be kept on CalFresh. Building on the question that Chair Lee asked of the prior panelists.

I can try to take that first. So I'm glad you asked the the question around program accuracy and program retention in the same vein because we do believe that those can be harmonized.

The state's approach right now to the implementation of HR1 we think is really thoughtful and in keeping with all of the literature on the consequences of implementing a bawd time limit policies and the dramatic increase in error rates when this has been done so with the stage is trying to do in conjunction with counties is to essentially take their time and get this right with a little bit of a longer Runway, which we think will contribute to a more accurate implementation of the ABOD time limit policy, which really includes making sure that we're accurately screening for exemptions.

And so remember, the error rate also includes over issuance of benefits and under issuances of benefits. So to the extent that we can improve program accuracy through the screening process, that's something that we're really invested in. And then finally, you know, I think there's a difference between sort of client-driven errors and agency-driven errors.

So some of the reforms that we've been really asking excited about that we've championed with advocates around calfresh simplification, we want to try to preserve those.

But we also want to be really honest with the Legislature that there is an inherent tension with some of the policy decisions we've made over the last few years with regard to enhancing access, making it easier, alleviating those administrative burdens and the potential of the consequences of the error rate contributing to the error rate rather.

I'll just jump in on the second point about what the state can do to ensure that those eligible can still maintain their benefits. We recognize that the cost of the cuts are astronomical and the position that the state budget is in, we may not be at a position to backfill those cuts.

So we definitely urge legislators to explore all bold solutions, including raising revenue to make sure that California can step up and ensure that any person who is hungry can access food in the fourth largest economy in the world. Thank you.

Yes, yes, plus one to that. But first I want to acknowledge and applaud cdss in conducting an extensive root cause analysis with workers and participants in and trying to figure out how we can avoid that $2 billion penalty under HR1.

And so I just want to acknowledge that our Department is moving as quickly as possible to get ahead of this. I think for the Legislature, it must demand accountability while also recognizing that improvement will require a sustained investment. Right.

As I mentioned in my talking points, our participants will likely be subject to now three work requirements under the MediCal, CalFresh, and CalWorks program. That means that we really need to ensure that there is alignment in how our participants are being walked through what exemptions that they will be eligible for. Right.

And it will vary across different programs. So again, reiterating Carlos's point about our workers, our counties, needing that sufficient funding to do this work and in recognition that it's all happening all at once.

And so where there are discrepancies happening in our systems, the more we can do to support our workers, to alleviate that burden, to facilitate access to our beneficiaries. I think now is an opportunity for us to be innovative about that.

And wherever there is flexibility as a state to provide exemptions, I think we should really consider those strongly. And lastly, I just want to also recognize the fact that some of our participants have already been thinking about ways to improve our apprenticeship programs. Right. Access to employment and training services.

These are resources that they desire, they are always consistently asking their caseworkers for. And so we need to make sure that we are providing sufficient funding to expand access to those resources that will allow them to again receive exemptions where needed on the work requirements especially.

Thank you, Chairperson Bonta. I have nothing more to add other than we concur with Monica's suggestion that the state find opportunities to raise revenue.

And that we are doing, no doubt. I'll just like to thank everyone for their. Their testimony and I really want to appreciate my colleagues for shedding light on this. I know that many of you have worked with our offices to support legislation that seek to address a lot of the concerns presented today.

And it really just seems like we should all pass my Bill, the California Earned Income Tax Credit that would give everyone making $30,000 and below $300 back in their earned income. That would help this problem. So shameless plug there to my colleagues.

Well, thank you. I think that concludes this panel. I want to thank all of the panelists for a very rich discussion, discussion on the impacts of HR1.

And also think forward to some of the solutions that we should be thinking about as a state in order to be able to mitigate the harm that we know is going to be coming in very short order. I want to thank everyone for participating.

We are now, because this is a hearing, formal hearing, we are going to now open up the space for public comment. Anybody who wants to make public comment to the hearing room. Please go ahead and come up to the mic. We will allow for one to two minutes for public. Anyone offering public comment? Yes.

Thank you all. It's interesting. My name is Salah Elbakri. I'm with Support Life foundation. We run about 42 food banks between here and I just actually came from our distribution right now just down the street at the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California at Madison and 14th.

And I just want to reiterate and support the testimony that came here on Fridays, which were 38 centers of ours, distribute food on that day. We received. We used to get two to three requests for food or to register or how do I show up and which place is open from 2 to 3 that day to.

We've been averaging about 60 calls every Friday morning. And that is just one organization. May God bless you for holding this. I'm so proud of all of you. I know many of you. May God bless you, continue to bless you for doing this hard work.

I really salute you for the effort and I salute all the people who talked here. But really, this is much more scary than I thought it would be.

The state that we're in and given that the losses have not yet to occur and we don't know what's happening, happening in January, February, March, and all these distributions to these people, to our people through CalFresh, I urge you all to really.

And I add my voice to everybody else who talked about to find solutions for our people we cannot afford.

And maybe the solution could be through partnering with private venture, the government, with all these larger corporations that the Bay Area hosts to contribute to resolving this, especially with the major budget cut that you're going to have because of HR1. May God continue to bless you.

I just wanted to thank you for this work and for this hearing and it's actually heartwarming and I like to. I have a seminar coming up and I'd like to host some of our friends here at the Alameda County Food Bank and Alameda County. May God continue to bless you. Thank you.

Thank you. I think that closes our public comments. Very appreciative of that. And with that, I will now hand it back over to my colleagues for any closing thoughts or comments. And I will begin with Assembly Member Ahrens.

Thank you.

Assembly Member Lee.

I'll just say again, thank you to our colleagues for hosting this today and shining a strong light on CalFresh. This is a saga that will play out, of course, in parallel with other HR1, including medical changes as well.

But this is a reoccurring theme of where the Federal Government with the power of their purse is forcing us to basically kick people off of services.

But the very real challenge we have to communicate to our colleagues is even though we have a structural budget deficit, we have so many burdens that are thrust upon us to spend more of our money just to comply with the hostile Federal Government. I just wanted to highlight something for Assemblymember.

Sharpe Collins, when you're talking about even compliance with HR1, is at the very end of session, we rushed over multimillion dollars just to comply with HR1 and the error rates. And the Administration was very, I think, validly worried about the error rates and how it could cost us down the line.

But when we tried to also push saying, yes, error rates are important, but we should also think about all the people that are left behind, the real people who will be left behind, not just our state spreadsheet that was not received as warmly.

So we still have to do our work to continue to, yes, balance the budget, but also balance the real lives that are going to be impacted very negatively. And so we face a really uphill struggle with balancing the budget and be responsible for everyone, but also be responsible for everyone's livelihoods.

And I think it is going to be a big case for us to continue to push for stronger revenue solutions to fulfill all of our responsibilities fiscal and socially. So again, I appreciate having this hearing and I want to thank the chairs, thank you.

Dr. Sharp Collins.

Thank you guys again so much. As I stated earlier, for taking the opportunity to humanize the situation and also highlight some key points to all of us. We already know over and over again where we are as far as the budget deficit.

And we know that with this deficit we're going to have to make some hard fought decisions. From what my colleague was just saying. And this was not a typical start of a year, you know, this has been one hell of a year about that, you know, and he's right.

We're going to have to now go back and make sure that the decisions that we're making is going to hopefully have a positive impact on real people's lives and just on real lives and just the reality of things. And we, you're right, we can't look at spreadsheets all the time.

We have to start going into making the firm decisions of the impact that it's going to have on these people across the entire state. But also keep in mind of the most vulnerable population that these cuts are going to be hitting.

And so through our work as the co chairs of this particular Committee, but also through policy and research, we will continue to highlight the issues and, or concerns and impacts to make sure that we are holding the state accountable and holding ourselves accountable for things that have been implemented.

But planning ahead, as I mentioned before, being, instead of being reactive, being proactive as we continue to move forward, not knowing, not really clear on the certainty and where our government is going to be. So what they say, stay ready, you don't have to get ready.

And I think that we're, we're at that point of making sure that we're going to stay ready and make sure that your voices are being elevated throughout this entire process. I think one of my staff Members said that when you say stuff like that, you go like this.

So I'm making sure that we're like, yes, we are sealing that into our efforts, making sure that we all know that we're going to stay ready. So we're going to have to get ready and make sure all of our voices are, are elevated.

We're going to do everything we can to make the right decisions moving forward, continue to make the right decisions moving forward as we address our food insecurity, our food banks and our, our marginalized communities in this effort. So thank you so much, co chair, for hosting here and I look forward to our continued work on this Committee.

Thank you so much. And I want to thank you all for coming today.

Our panelists and our stakeholders provided a lot of critical, critical information and insights for us to consider as we think about what legislatively we need to do going into this year, but also how we need to consider the budget allocations and quite frankly, the budget oversight that we need to do.

I've spent a lot of time over this session thinking about the role of government. We are in a moment right now where the Federal Government, at least this Trump Administration somehow has forgotten the role of government is first do no harm to our populace.

And that is quite the opposite way that California thinks about how we operate in government. California cares deeply about every single member of our community.

California cares deeply to ensure that we are providing our critical services and programs to everyone in the state of California, whether you are in a rural setting, an urban setting or any part of this great state of California.

I think now is the time when we need to think about the humans that power the numbers, the economy, the social service safety net that we have built here and the people who are just the fabric of every single aspect of what makes California great.

We need to think about our friends and neighbors we need to hold close to the fact that these loss of benefits, particularly for undocumented community Members, are something that has caused us to wonder about how we take care of ourselves. I know that California is deeply poised and ready to be poised to meet this moment.

We will do that with grace, we will do that with creativity, and we will do that with recognizing that government's first and foremost role is to make sure that we are being efficient, productive and meeting the moment and being responsive, being a responsive government. That's going to cause us to have to operate with some urgency.

It's going to cause us to have to make sure that we are situating not only our state agencies, but our county counterparts to be able to be nimble in the way that they need to to meet this moment. That is not lost on me.

We've spent some time looking at what what is happening on the medical front across the state. We hosted sessions in Santa Clara County with Assemblymember Ahrens in San Diego, which is a part of Assemblymember Dr. Sharp Collins district as well.

We know that it's most important that we have that kind of critical cross collaboration and crossover now across not only our nutrition assistance to every individual in the state of California, because that is health as well as our medical response. Food is love, food is grace, food is sustenance.

And food is the central feature that powers every single person to be able to take a step to learn, to work and to contribute to our community. So I'm very thankful to my colleagues for coming today, for hearing such a robust conversation around how we need to proceed around CalFresh.

And I want to also just recognize and thank Assembly Member, our Speaker Robert Rivas for establishing this Select Committee on CalFresh Enrollment and Nutrition as part of the affordability package and focus of the State Assembly. It's my honor to serve as co chair with Dr. Sharp Collins in this work and to participate with incredible standing Committee Members.

On the budget side we have Dr. Corey Jackson, who is the budget sub chair for Human Services. And on the policy side, get to work with wonderful Assembly Member Alex Lee, making sure that we have a collective response to this moment. I will do this as well. We're going to clock it.

We're going to clock it to say that we are poised, we are listening and we are very thankful for their thoughtful and creative solutions that our stakeholders and experts across the state of California have offered to us to make sure that we do right by California. With that, we can adjourn our hearing.