ASHEVILLE – “It’s kind of jolting,” David Wright said of the pause in federal food assistance slated to go into effect Nov. 1, when he and 1.4 million other North Carolina residents won’t receive their monthly benefit from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, because of the ongoing government shutdown, now in its fifth week.
Especially so, coming on the heels of Tropical Storm Helene, which hit Asheville particularly hard last September, leaving Wright and other residents of Vanderbilt Apartments, a low-income apartment building for older adults in downtown, without running water and food in the storm’s immediate aftermath.
But Wright, 68, considers himself lucky…