Immediate impacts:

• Preble Street chefs, Food Security Hub staff, and volunteers are working to double the daily number of nutritious meals ready to eat from our kitchen. We will be ramping up to cook 2,400-2,600 meals SEVEN DAYS A WEEK to help more of our neighbors have food on the table.
• Most of the individuals living in our permanent supportive housing programs that we operate in partnership with Avesta Housing receive SNAP and other emergency food benefits. We will be sending prepared meals and expanding the number of grocery boxes delivered directly to those facilities to ensure tenants, all of whom have disabilities and the long-term effects of chronic homelessness, have enough to eat.
• Preble Street helped more than 500 Veterans, youth in transitional housing, survivors of trafficking, families and more secure housing this year. They are all at increased risk of hunger without the restoration of SNAP benefits by the White House. Food Programs is partnering with our caseworkers to ensure that these individuals and families receive additional prepared meals and grocery boxes to meet their needs during this crisis.
• Alongside the Hunger Free Maine coalition and others, we are advocating relentlessly for the USDA to immediately release the $5 billion in SNAP contingency funds to avoid children, older adults, Veterans, and families going hungry without their November benefits.

Short-term plans:

• We’ve already received several requests from current partners to expand food access to the people they serve, including older adults, children, and people living in affordable housing developments. We will do our best to ensure that we make the most impact with the resources we have.

Longer-term plans:

• The Food Security Hub Kitchen is fully equipped to make up to 10,000 meals every day, and our freezer can store up to 50,000 meals. We hope that this current crisis will resolve before we need to scale up to this level, but we are working to reach these numbers much sooner than we envisioned.