Waltham food pantry seeks new location as need increases
WALTHAM - A Waltham food pantry is just weeks from closing shop, but they may have a new home in sight. Their desperate search for a place comes as extra COVID Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits come and go in Massachusetts.
Healthy Waltham currently feeds 900 families in the city. Just weeks ago, they were feeding 700. The boom comes after extra COVID SNAP benefits ending in early March. The organization joined in a campaign to get legislators to extend the benefits. Governor Maura Healey recently signed a $130 million SNAP extension into a supplemental budget. Those went into effect on April 7.
"It gives you three months only as an extension, which I think for right now it will help obviously," explains Healthy Waltham Executive Director Myriam Michel. "Still these high prices of food, inflation, everything, job loss, these are real matters, so it's only a band aid to a problem."
While that is some relief for families, the pantry must be out of their current space by the end of the month. Their operation works out of the gym in the old Fitch School. They are planning a request for proposal asking the city to take over a vacant building on Felton Street. The building has sat in disarray for a long time and needs significant investment to make it usable. Per the proposal, Healthy Waltham would only be allowed to use the first floor.
"It's prime location because it is in the community of the people we serve, and the train station is here, the bus is nearby," explained Michel. "Although it is a lease, everything will fall on the tenant's responsibility. Electrical, structural engineering assessments, phase 1 studies which we have asked for, all fall on the tenant. It could need, and will need, a significant amount for even electricity. Right now, it's 100 amp. That would burn out many things. We would have to redo all the wiring in there, and we would need to go to the city council and committee to ask for that."
Even if the city were to approve their proposal, Healthy Waltham knows they wouldn't be able to get in this year. It may take hundreds of thousands of dollars to get the space into working order. In the meantime, families will still need food.