During the 2022 Legislative Session, Hunger Free Colorado will advocate for policies that strengthen an equitable food system and ensure all Coloradans can access the nutrition they need in their communities. While we will be supporting our partners as they work on legislation to address Coloradans’ basic needs and well-being through cash assistance, housing reform, and more, our main focus this session will be on three key anti-hunger policies:

1. Create a Path to Healthy School Meals for All Colorado Children

Children need nutritious food to focus in school, stay healthy and support their well-being. Currently, all schools are temporarily able to provide school meals to any child who needs them as part of COVID-19 federal aid. Colorado should make this temporary option permanent and help thousands of children access the food they need learn, grow and thrive every day at school. Investing in healthy school meals for all is an investment in strengthening communities, reducing administrative costs, eliminating lunch debt, removing shame and stigma from the lunchroom, freeing up resources for schools and staff and supporting student well-being. Want to join us to pass and fund a community-informed policy to create school meals for all children in Colorado public schools? Sign up to join our coalition!

2. Extend the Food Pantry Assistance Grant Program for five years

The Food Pantry Assistance Grant Program has provided a lifeline to food pantries, food banks, and Colorado producers throughout the pandemic. The grants go to direct emergency food providers like food pantries and food banks to allow them to purchase products from local producers. Furthermore, up to 20 percent of the grants can be used by pantries to invest in other needs including fridges and transportation. These funds help pantries provide foods that their communities most want and need but that can be hard for these operations to supply, like fresh produce, dairy, and proteins. Hunger Free Colorado is working with a coalition of food pantries, food banks, growers, and food systems navigators to extend and strengthen this program for another five years. The proposed legislation this session will extend the program for five years using federal and state funds and support local procurement through technical assistance and better aligning grant cycles with the growing season. This will help Colorado community-based organizations to continue their response to the historic hunger crisis caused by COVID-19, while also fostering relationships between food pantries and local agriculture for years to come, fueling health for Colorado families relying on pantries for nutrition, and supporting a more equitable food system. Join the Food Pantry Assistance Grant Legislation coalition and sign onto the bill fact sheet by filling out this form!

3. Sustainably Fund the SNAP Outreach Program in the state budget

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) provides grocery EBT benefits to low-income households and serves as the first line of defense against hunger for many families facing financial crisis. Colorado’s SNAP Outreach Program works with more than 50 community-based organizations to connect eligible households to food assistance, provide education and information on SNAP, and assist with enrollment. This is crucial, as about 40 percent of low-income Coloradans do not access the program due to barriers to enrollment that outreach can help mitigate. SNAP outreach also makes good financial sense. What the state invests in SNAP outreach services is matched dollar for dollar by the federal government. SNAP outreach also fuels economic recovery as families connected to SNAP receive federal money for food that they quickly spend in their local communities. By our estimates, in Federal Fiscal Year 2020 every state dollar invested in SNAP outreach brought $14 to Colorado families in the form of federal food benefits to help purchase groceries, with an economic stimulus impact of $21! We must fund SNAP outreach in the state budget at $1.5 million to continue the important support the program provides as COVID-19 continues to disproportionately impact low-income families and communities of color. This increase of $500,000 will maintain current funding levels since the program has experienced a recent loss of private dollars. Complete this form to add your organization as a supporter of the SNAP Outreach funding request!

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You can help us pass these crucial policies! Sign up for our email advocacy list for legislative updates and to learn when there are opportunities to weigh in on these and other policies that impact Coloradans facing hunger.

Right now, Congress and the Trump Administration are working to cut food stamps and to impose new barriers to access nutritious food. Most recently, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has requested comments from the public that make it appear the Administration wants to impose stricter rules on a key public investment and the largest food assistance program in our country, making it harder for Americans who have lost their jobs to access food stamps, federally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

Not only is the USDA looking at tougher rules for individuals, they are considering the elimination of important flexibilities that counties and states have to ensure federal rules make sense at the local level.  These changes could be costly to local governments while letting Washington call the shots, rather than Colorado.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:
Tell the Administration that it is unacceptable to cut food assistance for people who have lost their jobs.

Submit your comment online to the USDA; individual comments are most effective, so recruit a friend or neighbor to do the same. A sample comment is provided below, and we encourage you to personalize it. The deadline for submitting comments is 9:59 p.m. MST on Monday, April 9.

Sample copy for comments:
I am writing to oppose stricter time limits to food stamps, federally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). There are already strict rules for people who don’t have children or dependents (able-bodied adults without dependents – ABAWD) to get food assistance through SNAP. We should not make the existing harsh rules even worse by taking away state flexibility or exposing more people to time-limited benefits. Increasing the ability of USDA to deny state waivers for easing SNAP time limits and imposing these strict rules on more individuals will only increase the number of people facing hunger in Colorado and our country.

In the last six months, the Hunger Free Hotline has fielded 4,738 calls, which is 1,200 more calls than this time last year. Additionally, through ongoing partnerships with local hospitals and clinics, doctors have referred more than 2,200 people to Hunger Free Colorado who may not always know when or where they will get their next meal.

Thanks to our great team of Food Assistance Navigators and many partners for connecting Coloradans to the fuel needed to thrive!