St. Cloud’s Catholic Charities: Meeting Rising Food Needs

ST. CLOUD (WJON News) — As the federal government shutdown drags on, recipients of the SNAP program are in jeopardy of temporarily losing those benefits.

Stacy Lund is the Director of Food Access for Catholic Charities in St. Cloud. She says, so far this year, they’ve seen an increase of seven percent over last year in usage. In 2024, they served more than 2.4 million pounds of food to 17,000 people from the St. Cloud food shelf.

Lund says they rely on their food rescue partnerships in the community to help keep their shelves stocked.

Our local grocers and our retailers are donating food to us every day.  We make more than seven trips a day to Sam’s Club, Coborn’s, and the different grocers in the area who help us stock our shelves.  Sixty-seven percent of the food we distribute comes from our food rescue partnerships.

Lund says they also rely on donations from the community, and they buy items from Second Harvest Heartland.

She says, if they do see an influx of people who have temporarily lost their SNAP benefits, they may need to stretch their inventory by decreasing the amount of food to individuals and families.

For people who need to use the food shelf, there are some financial guidelines, and they do prefer that you make an appointment ahead of time. The Catholic Charities Food Shelf is open Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. On Tuesdays, they are open for seniors.

Catholic Charities also offers a mobile food shelf, which delivers to nine low-income housing units once a month.  They also recently stopped at the St. Cloud Public Library Parking lot.

For residents age 60 and older, Senior Dining at Whitney is also an option.  And, Lund says, they offer Senior Frozen Meals that they distribute from the food shelf that people can take home.

House Democrats, including U.S. Representative Angie Craig, have sent a letter to the Trump Administration demanding that the Secretary of Agriculture authorize the SNAP contingency fund to provide food assistance for November. This is in response to the government shutdown. All 214 House Democrats signed the letter addressed to Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, demanding she use the roughly $5 billion contingency fund so 42 million American seniors, veterans, and families with children at risk can put food on their tables. The government shutdown is approaching its second month.