Read more from The Alligator’s “Ripple Effects” special section here.
Alachua County’s hunger-relief network is being forced into a test it hasn’t faced in years: whether community charities can absorb the fallout of shrinking federal support.
Nearly 10,000 households in Alachua County receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits as of 2023, of which a little over one-third have children, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. Those recipients have been at risk of losing critical food aid since Nov. 1, when funding for SNAP lapsed amid the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history…