Before she applied for food assistance through the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Santa Clara University student Kaylee Jensen remembers the anxiety she felt when thinking about how she was going to juggle paying for her rent with affording her next meal — all while studying miles from home.

But when a staff member from her college’s basic needs program helped her apply for CalFresh, California’s version of SNAP, Jensen said, “it was like ‘night and day’ difference.”

“I could eat so much better,” Jensen, now 20, said. As a supplementary program, CalFresh is “not something you can really rely on fully, but it honestly changed so much for me,” she said.

And when it came to finally being able to afford certain kinds of fresh food, CalFresh “really just unlocked a whole

See Full Page