Homeless food program in San Jose set to lose funding, may shut down

By Len Ramirez

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    SAN JOSE, California (KPIX) — A scramble is underway to keep a program going that brings hot food to the homeless in San Jose, as pandemic funding is expected to run out in weeks.

The hardship of living on the streets is made just a bit more bearable when volunteers come into the camps to deliver hot, freshly prepared meals.

“Today we have meatballs, rice egg and mixed vegetables,” said Cindy Nguyen of the Hello Angels Foundation.

Nguyen and her son Steven picked up food prepared by Team San Jose and spent Friday afternoon giving it away.

“It is very important for the unhoused people get his food from this program right here because right now everything is very high for us, especially food,” Nguyen said.

But Nguyen’s group and another called the Unhoused Response Group, which use the program, just found out that funding for it runs out at the end of June. It was part of the federal CARES Act that is now winding down.

“It’s federal money that was for the pandemic, during the emergency. But homelessness was the original emergency. And somebody somewhere let this happen, without warning us. Without saying, ‘Hey, we need to find another source of money,'” said Shaunn Cartwright, co-founder of the Unhoused Response Group.

Cartwright said the looming cut-off gives advocates little time to find donors to pick up the slack. She hopes the city and/or county can step in to keep the program going, which costs less than $1 million a year to feed thousands of people.

“There have been times when I haven’t eaten for three or four days. And then when somebody drops some food off, I say thank God,” said Louise, an unhoused resident of San Jose.

“I may not always like what’s in there, but I eat it because I’m starving,” she said.

Distributing food also gives advocates an opportunity to help the unhoused in other ways, such as monitoring their health care. They hope to keep the program going because for some, there’s no such thing as regular meals.

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