RALEIGH, N.C. — Beginning today, extra Food and Nutrition Services benefits distributed during the pandemic will end. 

The emergency allotments started in March 2020. 

According to NCDHHS, families receiving those funds were receiving at least an extra $95 per month. 

With the benefits ending, many food banks are gearing up for more people in need of assistance. 

“Our hair has been on fire for three years. So honestly, every day we're just trying to try to figure out how to continue to grow and to be able to feed the people we're feeding without overextending ourselves,” said Nick Robertson, program director of Hunger and Nutrition at Urban Ministries in Raleigh. 

Monday through Thursday, the nonprofit gives out a week’s worth of groceries. It currently feeds 85 families each day. 

“Before COVID, we will serve an average of 32 families a day, and I think we never went over 50 families, maybe like three or four times in the three years I was here before COVID," Robertson said. 

Robertson, a Raleigh native, says it’s been a perfect storm post-pandemic. 

“The city is currently being gentrified as we speak. We lost our largest mental health facility a few years ago, and the effects of that are bubbling through right now. We are in the middle of one of the biggest housing crisis in the country. And it's all coming at the same time. So that has created a gulf of poverty, a wave of poverty,” Robertson said. 

Project Pivot is the initiative launched to identify the individuals and families who need help. 

He’s hoping a collaborative effort with city and county leaders will help them move the dial when it comes to meeting the great need. 

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“This is an emergency. Like this is the stuff I lose sleep over,” Robertson said. 

North Carolina DHHS reports an average of 900,000 households received the emergency allotments that will end as of today