San Diego service members, veterans, and their families across the county are feeling the effects of the government shutdown, which began last Wednesday.

Until it is resolved, paychecks will be paused for active duty military and some veteran benefits will be limited.

Five local organizations gathered last week just hours after the shutdown began to announce an official collaboration to provide food, financial assistance, and emotional support to San Diego’s military community.

The emergency action group includes San Diego Military Advisory Council, Feeding San Diego, Armed Services YMCA, Zero8Hundred, and the Support The Enlisted Project.

“It’s scary when you’re not getting paid,” said Tracy Owens, senior programs manager for STEP. “It could be next week — hopefully they resolve it quickly — but it could be months down the road.

“So if you have a family who was already facing financial challenges, that’s daunting. It can cause stress, anxiety — panic, even — and that’s not something we want our families to have to go through.”

According to Owens, most employees of STEP and the three other military-affiliated organizations have personal ties, and use these ties to inform their resources.

“We need our service members to be able to concentrate on their mission and not be worried about their families back home,” Owens said. “By bringing these resources together, we help provide a safety net. They know that their families have places to go, and they know that they’re going to get the services that they need while they’re gone.

“I’m also prior military retired, and it is tough to be deployed and to know that there’s problems going on back home and you can’t do anything about it, but you still have a job to do.”

David Boone, president and chief executive officer at SDMAC, said the coalition began planning for the shutdown three weeks ago and used their prior experience from the 2019 shutdown to inform their approach.

“We knew it was coming,” Boone said. “We anticipated the shutdown to happen given the political dynamics in our country, and so when we got together, we talked about, ‘What was the last shutdown like? What kinds of support and services do we need to have ready?’”

According to Robert Kamensky, chief executive of Feeding San Diego, the organization has already seen an increase in the number of families using food distribution services even before the shutdown, with highest numbers in September.

“We have already seen surges in numbers of people coming to get services provided to them, but that’s been something occurring incrementally since April,” Kamensky said. “Now, is there going to be a step increase that’s going to not so much overwhelm, but seriously stress the resources that we have.”

Other organizations are also feeling this strain.

“Our social workers have ramped up. They’re standing by for an increase in cases,” Owens said, adding that STEP has also seen an increase in financial need over the last few months.

“In addition to our primary program of financial assistance, we also offer food distributions, warehouse visits and partner with these organizations behind us to make sure that all the families who need our assistance are aware [of] the resources that are available to them.”

Boone attributed this growing need to budget issues and urged Washington to end the shutdown.

“It’s important to note that this shutdown is tied to a series of continuing resolutions that go back a year,” Boone said.

“We’re actually working with a 2024 budget from September of a year ago that the continuing resolution pushed into 2025. And so, if they don’t resolve this, we’re actually going to take a 2024 budget and use it for 2026. What that means is, no factors of inflation are in place, no new programs are in place. As you can imagine … that presents a lot of problems for leaders in our military.”

However, the five organizations hope that the formation of a coalition will allow them to meet the increased support and resource needs of the community following the shutdown.

“By coming together as a coalition, we can pull on each other’s strengths and we can support each other,” Owens said. “Five people, six people, is much better than one. One of my favorite things about this job and about San Diego is the collaboration. The way the community comes together for San Diego military, there’s nothing like it.

“I couldn’t have picked a better place to retire in the world.”