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Betzabel Estudillo, Chief Engagement Officer, testified before a Joint Hearing, Assembly Human Services Committee and Select Committee on CalFresh Enrollment and Nutrition on December 17, 2025 at Alameda City Hall. 

Read Betzabel’s remarks: 

Thank you Members of the Committee for the opportunity to be here today and for your attention to a timely and critical issue. I’m Betzabel Estudillo, Chief Engagement Officer of Nourish California. Nourish California is a statewide anti-hunger policy organization that believes that every Californian should thrive and have access to food, resources, and opportunity. 

I want to begin my remarks by stating clearly: hunger is a policy choice. It has long disproportionately affected communities across California, particularly Black, Indigenous, and immigrant communities, and worsened by the pandemic and rising inflation - and will be exacerbated by HR 1 and the recent federal shutdown, which delayed CalFresh benefits in November.

HR 1 will lead to reductions in food access for many communities, not only because of sweeping changes to CalFresh eligibility, but also because the bill creates confusion and fear. The barriers it imposes will simply be too great for many families to overcome. This uncertainty, compounded by continued federal efforts to undermine our public benefits system through data-sharing requests and proposing a new rule on public charge, will deter eligible households from applying for or maintaining benefits when they need them most.

As previously mentioned by my colleague Tess, in California, 1.8M households faced food insecurity in 2023. 

What this means is that families are being forced to make impossible choices about how much food they can afford, what they buy, and whether they skip meals. Families with children are especially impacted. Children in food insecure homes face higher risks of poor health and educational outcomes with lasting impacts that can follow them for the rest of their lives. The ongoing rise of food prices, housing costs, and current political climate are forcing parents to make impossible choices between paying rent or putting food on the table.

The good news is that California has demonstrated leadership in ensuring people have access to food. From state investments in school meals to additional food benefits for CalFresh participants – we are taking bold action to ensure Californians don’t go hungry. 

But there is so much more left to do. This is why we are advancing campaigns like Food4All, Thriving Transitions, and the CalFresh Fruit and Vegetable EBT Program. 

Food4All is an effort to expand our state-funded food assistance program for immigrants, called CFAP, to all Californians, regardless of immigration status. The state has already made investments to expand CFAP to immigrants aged 55 and older, with automation and planning set to begin in early 2026 and the expansion going live in October 2027.

Due to HR 1, 74,000 lawfully present humanitarian immigrants will lose access to federally funded SNAP, so we and the Food4All coalition look forward to working with the Legislature to restore these benefits as soon as possible - because access to food should not be based on where you were born.

Thriving Transitions is an anti-hunger and reentry restorative justice effort that aims to ensure people leaving prisons and jails have access to food and other resources immediately upon release. 

Due to HR 1, formerly incarcerated people will be significantly impacted due to the new federal CalFresh work requirements and time-limits. National data shows that formerly incarcerated people experience unemployment at around 27%, nearly 5X the rate of the general U.S. population, reflecting barriers they face upon reentry. Therefore, we are working on a proposal to capture the work history, skills, and training individuals engage in when they are incarcerated as a way to meet the new CalFresh work requirements and time-limits.

I also want to take this opportunity to thank the Legislature and Governor for allocating $36 million in the state budget to restart the CalFresh Fruit and Vegetable EBT Program after it ran out of funding in January. The program provides CalFresh participants with a dollar-for-dollar match of up to $60 per month when purchasing fresh fruits and vegetables at participating locations. Alongside our partners and legislative champions, we will advance a budget request to allow the program to reach 2.5 times more families across more regions of California and operate uninterrupted for the full fiscal year.  

In closing, food security is foundational to health, education, and economic stability and we look forward to working with the Legislature to advance state-funded solutions that mitigate the harm of HR 1 and other federal actions, while also holding the federal government accountable for fully funding SNAP. 

Thank you for the opportunity to speak here today.