Growing up in Albany, Caitlin Sly couldn’t avoid discussions of food insecurity at family functions. Her father was a food bank executive director, and two of her aunts and one uncle were also proud food bankers.
“So, it kind of gets ingrained in you,” she said. “I just knew I wanted to go into anti-hunger work. It’s just something that has always bothered me that we live in such a rich country, in such a rich area of a rich country. And yet we have people who are worried about where their next meal is going to come from.”
Sly, who has spent her career in anti-hunger nonprofits, was named the president and CEO of the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano in March. Sly previously worked at the food bank from 2008 through 2020, serving as a coordinator for Farms 2 Kids, a partnership with low-income schools to provide fresh produce, and more recently as the food bank’s director of programs. From soon before the beginning of the pandemic in 2020 until early this year, she led Meals on Wheels Diablo Region as executive director.
FREE FOOD ON OFFER IN RICHMOND
Through mobile pantry distribution, families and individuals in Richmond can pick up free fresh produce, proteins, dairy and a variety of nonperishable food twice a month. Visit Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano for details.
Now, Sly returns to the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano during a period where pandemic-era benefits have ended, and more residents are turning to food banks to avoid going hungry. In April 2023, the federal government drastically reduced benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), known in the Golden State as CalFresh. The need has not gone away. At the start of the pandemic, the food bank served roughly 176,000 people a month, and that number has since jumped by roughly 127%.
The Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano helps keep food on the table, serving more than 37,000 clients in Richmond a month and partnering with more than 60 different sites in Richmond to provide food in the community.
Sly’s father, Larry Sly, started as a truck driver at the food bank and became its executive director in 1976, serving in that role for more than four decades. The food bank was started by workers using a borrowed trailer from Safeway and a chest freezer, and now provides roughly 2,708,000 meals every month.
Decades later, Sly aims to continue the organization’s mission while advocating for long-term policy solutions. Richmondside spoke with Sly on her last day before going on maternity leave through October. She discussed her long history with anti-hunger work and what it will take to tackle food insecurity in Richmond and throughout the state. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
When you took on this role a few months ago, what was your sense of the challenge ahead and what you specifically wanted to bring to the organization?
The main challenge ahead is how do we continue to keep up with the need, given the reduction in government funding. Even when we see inflation starting to wane a bit, it’s not waning in food. That’s the one metric where it’s still really high.
We look at the root causes as well. We can keep providing food, more food, and more food and more food. But that’s not really going to solve the problem.
How can we advocate for more people to be able to utilize benefits? How do we partner with workforce development and different partners in the community that can help people so that they don’t need to come to us as much?
How has the end of pandemic-era funding impacted your services? Have you been able to find other ways to meet the need?
We have to be more creative and efficient with what we’re providing. We can’t purchase as much food. We’re having to rely more on USDA commodities, which come in at no cost, so that we can still provide healthy staple items. We don’t have the luxury of being able to buy eggs and fresh protein and those kinds of things as much anymore.
Many people who are eligible for CalFresh benefits are not enrolled to receive those benefits. What can be done to address that and how big of a problem is that?
It is a big problem, California has one of the lower participation rates out of the country. Those are all federal dollars we could be bringing into the state to generate economic activity here within our state. I think there are a lot of reasons for it. There’s a lot of stigma. People don’t want to ask for help, especially from the government. They’re more comfortable coming to us for a bag of food.
There’s also a lot of barriers. The amount of paperwork you have to do, and then have an interview, and if something goes wrong you have to call the 1-800 number. It’s just a burdensome system.
We see about 15% of the CalFresh applications that we help with come from Richmond, and about 58% of those are people where English is not their first language. You’re going through this already complicated process that would frustrate any of us in our native language, much less in a language that’s not what you’re most comfortable with.
What we do is twofold: one is to send people out to do CalFresh outreach, and literally hand-hold people through that process so they don’t fall through the cracks, and advocate for policies to make applying and getting on benefits easier and also dealing with benefit advocacy.
What we see is seniors and people with disabilities get the minimum benefit, which is $23 a month. People have to see that it’s worth it to go through all that paperwork and apply, and if they think they’re only going to get $23 bucks, it can be challenging.
What’s the solution to that?
Ideally, it would be solved by the feds. But the state can step in. We were hopeful that there is a minimum benefit pilot project that the state is looking to move from $23 to $50, at least for older adults and people with disabilities. But with the budget deficit, you know, we don’t know where that’s going to land—if that will actually happen.
And what are your plans for the next few months?
I like to take on everything at once, apparently. I knew coming in I was going to have two months here before going on maternity leave. It was helpful that I had worked here before, although so much has changed over the pandemic. But it’s been really good to be here for a couple of months to get the lay of the land and make a plan for my maternity leave.
We have a really good team of folks. They’ve weathered the global pandemic. And so I have no doubt in my mind they’re going to do a great job while I’m gone.
One of the pieces of legislation you’re pushing for is the End Hunger in California Act of 2024, which could create a state task force to strategize ways to address access to healthy and culturally relevant food. Why do you think this would make a difference?
I’m excited to see a statewide coordinated plan to put together a task force to really tackle hunger on a statewide level. It brings in stakeholders and community members. When I was at Meals on Wheels Diablo Region, I got to see from afar the immense success of the state’s Master Plan on Aging.
The Master Plan on Aging brought together all of the players. And I think that this proposal could do the same for ending hunger. Whether it’s urban farmers, food banks and pantries, and policy advocates and all of those groups, we really need to work together to figure out how to end hunger.
When it comes to the food bank’s goal to end hunger, there’s clearly still a long way to go. What do you think about when you reflect on some of the issues that led to this food bank starting in the 1970s to what we’re seeing today?
Our team was looking at some statistics between now and the 70s when the food bank was started. The last time food prices increased at this rate was in the 70s. We’re in a hugely different atmosphere. The food bank really started to be an emergency stopgap: “Here’s a bag of groceries to hold you over.” In the 70s, food stamp benefits really did meet the needs of a lot of people. And those have been slashed over the years.
How can we better connect people with other services so that they’re able to get job training or more affordable childcare or, you know, more affordable housing? All of those other factors eat up into people’s budgets and then leave nothing left over for food.
Welcome Caitlin! I appreciate your compassion and philosophy.