Chicago food pantries see surge in needs as government shutdown cuts benefits

CHICAGO — People who rely on food assistance, and pantries that provide meals to those less fortunate, are dealing with the negative affects of the government shutdown.

Food pantries like Care for Real in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood are seeing major increases over the last several weeks. Many of those have never used a pantry before. Some of them are recently laid off. Others have used federally funded benefits to shop at a store.

Those benefits are now being cut because of the shutdown. 

Care for Real’s Executive Director Gregory Gross says they’ve seen a 400 percent increase in clients over the last several years and double digit increases in just the past few weeks, since the most recent government shut down began. 

“It’s our neighbors, it’s not always folks you might expect,” he said. “These are folks who have had government jobs and not getting a paycheck right now and so they’re needing to come to the food pantry for the first time.”

Adding to the numbers, he says, are those on SNAP benefits. Nearly 42 million Americans are part of the supplemental nutrition assistance program, funded entirely by the federal government.

Find your local foodbank at https://www.feedingamerica.org/find-your-local-foodbank

Sandra Hanan is one of the nearly two million in Illinois who’ve been told to expect the money she uses on food at the store to go away on November 1, if the shutdown continues.

“The SNAP benefits, they make my life so much easier,” she said. “SNAP covers my food for the month. My other money can go further for bills, rent, for medication things like that. … I feel like myself and a large group of people are being attacked here and we haven’t done anything to anybody. … It’s wrong.”

Dion Dawson’s organization Dion’s Chicago Dream knows the need for food is up in Chicago.

“This news does not come lightly. It’s making a heavy time heavier,” she said. “We’ve seen it in our numbers. We’ve seen our weekly organic enrollment triple over the last two years. Imagine what that’s going to do now. Imagine if those two million people have even less access.”

Chicago-based Feeding America says for every one meal provided by a pantry, SNAP benefits provide nine times that. It’s a gap pantries say they’re not equipped to fill alone.

“We need all of our leaders on one accord and find a way to get this done for the people who matter most,” Dawson said.

“It’s scary to think about not having enough food because as human beings, we need food to survive. And it also makes me angry because it’s happening and its shouldn’t be happening,” Hanan said.

https://www.feedingamerica.org/find-your-local-foodbank