Ahead of Christmas, the number of kids in Orange County struggling to get fed and have a place to sleep continued growing.
Orange County’s 31st annual Condition of Children report found more kids are homeless, with over 30,000 students in OC without a reliable place to live – the highest that statistic has been in over a decade.
“The high mobility, trauma and poverty associated with homelessness and insecure housing create educational barriers, low school attendance, and developmental, physical and emotional problems for students,” reads the report.
“A homeless student or one living in a crowded environment may experience a greater tendency for stress and anxiety not knowing where they are going to sleep each night nor having a consistent, quiet, permanent place to study or do their homework.”
The increase comes as food bank leaders warn that hunger will only get worse in OC without legislative intervention to reverse cuts and changes on the horizon to federal food assistance and health care programs that will in turn impact school meal programs.
[Read: Orange County Families Confront Hunger & Financial Woes This Holiday Season]
Mark Lowry, OC Food Bank Director, said that hungry children struggle in the classroom.
“It’s hard to imagine how we as a society benefit by removing food from children,” he said in an interview earlier this month. “With CalFresh cuts it’s reasonable to think that if a hungry child can’t learn, that a hungry adult can’t effectively work or parent or thrive.”
Sandra Velasquez, a community relations supervisor for the OC Social Services Agency, said that she hasn’t heard any concerns from food banks.
“So far, we directly have not heard any concerns from the food banks. They’re still actively participating,” Velasquez said in a Wednesday interview.
In a statement the next morning, Social Services spokesperson Chi Pham clarified they had heard some concerns from food banks.
“At an agency level, we are aware of the concerns from food banks about impacts to funding, as we do work with organizations like OC Hunger Alliance,” Pham wrote in a Thursday statement.” As we saw with the delay in CalFresh benefits last month, residents relied heavily on the food banks to support them.”
Now, over 55% of Orange County children qualify for free or reduced price meals at their schools, up from around 46% in 2022.
That means around 236,000 kids enrolled in county schools qualify for the program according to the report.
To read the 31st Annual Conditions of Children Report, click here.
In some schools throughout Orange County, as much as 80% of children in places like Santa Ana, Anaheim and Garden Grove qualify for free lunches, according to data from the California Department of Education.
Last week, the report was accepted by Orange County Supervisors without much discussion.
Many of Orange County’s children aren’t only struggling with hunger, but also a stable place to live.
More kids in Orange County are homeless, living in motels, shelters, parks or doubling up with other families in one home, according to the report.
About 30,000 students in the 2023-24 school year were homeless, up by 6,000 students since the 2020-21 school year, according to the report.
That same year, about 19% of students in the Santa Ana Unified School district and 27% of students in the Magnolia School District were housing insecure.
There were roughly 5,000 students that year in the Magnolia School District which covers preschool to 6th grade students in West Anaheim and parts of Stanton.
The report comes after a prolonged federal government shutdown this fall that interrupted the CalFresh food assistance program that hundreds of thousands of Orange County residents rely on to help put food on the table and keep the bills paid.
In the wake of those interruptions, OC Social Services Agency and food bank leaders are warning of deep cuts and changes to the program under President Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill or H.R.1. signed into law earlier this year.
The cuts and changes mean fewer kids in Orange County could automatically qualify for school meal programs and will result in less federal reimbursements to fund those programs potentially putting a greater burden on school budgets.
But when asked about what those cuts could look like, Velasquez wasn’t sure.
“We’ll see what we’ll see right?” Velasquez said. “There are changes coming. How that’s impacting folks, it just means a little bit of a difference on who could be eligible and who might not be eligible.”
She also noted the jump for kids enrolled in the program was more because of the county’s robust outreach efforts rather than an increase in kids without food.
“It’s not necessarily a bad thing. It really just speaks to all the efforts that we’ve been really putting out there,” Velasquez said. “Big picture, the bottom line is, people are learning more about CalFresh.”
Over 96,000 kids under 18 received CalFresh benefits in the 2023-24 school year, up from over 89,000 kids in the 2021-22 school year, according to the conditions of children report.
In Santa Ana, about 30% of kids received CalFresh food stamps the 2023-24 school year while about 21% of kids in Westminster got those benefits, according to the new report.
Food assistance isn’t the only program getting cuts under the “Big Beautiful Bill.”
CalOptima and social services leaders are also warning of a trillion dollar cuts to the federal health care program – one that 900,000 Orange County residents are enrolled in.
[Read: OC’s Poorest Brace For Cuts to Food Stamps and Health Insurance This Thanksgiving]
According to the latest conditions of children report, about one out of 10 children in OC face barriers to health care access.
Over 23,000 kids under 18 were uninsured in 2023 up from 21,000 in 2022, according to the report.
This is also the second year in a row that more kids have been signed up for the CalWorks program, with over 24,000 children enrolled this year according to the report.
That’s down from 42,000 kids in the program in 2015.
Last week, County Supervisors Vicente Sarmiento and Katrina Foley pointed to improving trends the report highlighted like greater access to prenatal care while contending there was still room for improvement like addressing child homelessness.
“We know that kids who are not healthy can’t learn, kids who are hungry can’t learn, kids who don’t have a home have a real difficult time learning so all these pressures are on us to make sure that we provide a good runway for students to be successful academically,” Sarmiento said.
Both Sarmiento and Foley also said the report will serve as a tool to continue to improve the quality of life for children in the region but neither spoke to how they would look to address food insecurity for kids.
None of the other supervisors commented on the findings.
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org.
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.