DURING THE LAST 10 DAYS of every month, Julia pulls together whatever scant meals she can with produce from food banks and canned items until her food benefits renew.

The 28-year-old, who didn’t provide her last name for privacy reasons, receives about $600 a month in food stamps to feed herself and three children. She uses that money to stock up on meat, enough to last about three weeks, and goes to the food bank for fruits and vegetables weekly. The produce usually lasts a couple days before going bad, she said.

Hunger — and planning for her family’s next meals — are things that habitually consume her life.

“Sometimes at the end of the month, we come down to the last couple days, and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, six more days until we get food stamps. What am I gonna do?’” Julia told San José Spotlight. “It feels like crap, not knowing if (I’m) going to be able to feed them next week.”

Julia isn’t alone in her experience. Many families in Santa Clara County continue to struggle with food insecurity even after food assistance, according to a recent study by Santa Clara University.

Study maps hunger across Santa Clara County

The study was conducted in 2023-24 and examined food insecurity across 55 ZIP codes in the county. It found that neighborhoods in East San Jose, including Mayfair and Alum Rock, have the highest level of food insecurity, where about 30% of people struggle even after food assistance. Areas of downtown San Jose also showed a high risk, at 23.5%. Los Altos had the least amount of predicted food insecurity in the county, at 11.7%. Other cities such as Gilroy are estimated to experience 22.6% food insecurity.

Andrew Starbird, a Santa Clara University information systems professor who led the study, said the high level of food insecurity surprised him despite available food assistance from nonprofit organizations such as Martha’s Kitchen and Second Harvest of Silicon Valley.

“Accessing food assistance can be difficult in some neighborhoods,” Starbird told San José Spotlight. “We need more distribution sites in the communities with the highest risk.”

Julia relies on public transportation to get to food banks and community centers, after a car accident last year left her without a vehicle and six broken ribs. It’s put the single mom out of work for the past year, and it’s the first time she’s had to rely on food assistance.

“Accessing food assistance can be difficult in some neighborhoods. We need more distribution sites in the communities with the highest risk.”
Andrew Starbird, Santa Clara University information systems professor

Catching a bus isn’t always easy when carrying bags of produce with three children, she said. And waking up late and missing the bus could mean not being able to get food for that day or week.

“It’s always easier to get junk food, and that sucks, because then you face health problems (like) obesity,” Julia said. “I have diabetes. It runs like in our family.”

Mayfair, the area with one of the highest risks of food insecurity in the county, also grapples with a high level of poverty. As the cost of living continues to rise, it forces families into a difficult choice between paying for a roof over their heads, medication, food and other necessities, Jose Murillo, director of place-based initiatives for nonprofit Amigos de Guadalupe, said.

“Our community has very little money left over to be able to absorb those extra costs,” Murillo told San José Spotlight. “So I think that (puts) us in a much more precarious situation.”

Rising costs deepen strain on families

The Latino-dominant neighborhood has historically been underinvested, from poor infrastructure that led to frequent flooding to federal redlining policies that indiscriminately marked Mayfair as a “hazardous” area to invest in, Murillo said.

Some of the divestment stems from people in the community not having a seat at the table and being underpaid, he added.

“We have built Silicon Valley in a way that has been dependent on the low cost labor of our folks,” Murillo said. “We need to make sure that we invest in opportunities for folks to earn more money, which means making sure folks are paid a living wage. Until we do that, we’re not going to be able to change how things are in East San Jose.”

Bill Lee, executive director for Martha’s Kitchen which was a sponsor for the study, said the findings show where the greatest need is in the county. Martha’s Kitchen provides home cooked meals for the community every Tuesday and Wednesday at its Story Road location. It is also one of the main meal providers for homeless shelters across Santa Clara County and produces meals for about 8,000 people daily.

“We were more interested in where the gaps (are), because that’s where we want to put our energy,” Lee told San José Spotlight.

The study was conducted before President Donald Trump took office and began slashing federal funding for food assistance programs.

“What this shows is that with all the work that we’ve all been doing over the last number of years, there were still a lot of people struggling to not starve,” Lee said. “Now you add to it the (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) cuts and all the other things that are going on, I can’t imagine in another two years what this report’s going to look like. These percentages will indubitably go up.”

Contact Joyce Chu at joyce@sanjosespotlight.com or @joyce_speaks on X.

This story originally appeared in San Jose Spotlight.