November is normally peak season for food banks and pantries. This year, the demand is far beyond normal: with SNAP benefits lapsed for roughly 42 million Americans, community food programs are being overwhelmed.
At the ABCD Allston/Brighton Neighborhood Opportunity Center Food Pantry in Boston, staff describe scenes of constant lines, frantic sorting and volunteers stepping into every role. “Welcome to the madness,” says operations manager Elaina Schreckenberger, as workers hand out scores of frozen turkeys for Thanksgiving. Some families are so stretched that recipients say they may need to eat their holiday meal before the holiday arrives. “Maybe,” said one parent, Yenifer Burgos, who is supporting four children. Wanda Concepcion, who cannot work because of a disability, said bluntly, “I don’t know how to survive. I don’t know how I’m going to do it.”
The pantry has already started telling people there may be a two-week wait for help — a situation client advocate Juliet Smith called painful and unprecedented for the program.
The surge in need is layered on top of other recent hits to the charitable food system. Earlier this year the U.S. Department of Agriculture halted about $500 million in food deliveries to food banks. A federal government shutdown last month also increased demand, as many unpaid federal workers sought assistance. The lapse in SNAP benefits this month has pushed many households to the breaking point.
Small, local pantries are reporting record distribution days. Andrea Cook, executive director of the Johnston Partnership near Des Moines, says food moves out as fast as it arrives. “We’ve broken records every day we’ve been open so far in November,” she said. To cope, her organization is leaning on volunteers and board members to unload donations, sort food, answer phones and make deliveries — tasks staff no longer have time for.
Project Bread, a Massachusetts anti-hunger organization that runs the FoodSource Hotline, reports a fourfold increase in calls seeking referrals to free food. Its president and CEO, Erin McAleer, warned that “the whole system is on the brink.” In some cases, pantries have told referral lines to slow new referrals because they simply cannot take more people.
State and local governments have moved to plug gaps. New York declared a state of emergency and is sending $65 million to food banks and pantries; California committed $80 million and National Guard resources to help with distribution. Private donations have also risen, according to David Finke, CEO of Jewish Family and Career Services in Louisville, Kentucky. But those gifts, he emphasizes, are nowhere near a substitute for SNAP: the federal program provides roughly nine times the volume of food assistance delivered by the nation’s nonprofit food bank network.
Finke offered a stark example: on one recent Monday his agency received nearly 600 pounds of donated food but gave out almost 1,000 pounds. He knows of three nonprofits that expect they may soon be unable to make payroll. Diverting so much organizational capacity to emergency food distribution also risks cutting back other services — job placement, counseling and family support — that local nonprofits provide.
Some nonprofit leaders say the situation is reaching a limit. Judith Ingram, director of NW Community Food in Washington, D.C., said community organizations cannot be expected to replace what is fundamentally a government program. “At some point, when the rubber meets the road, how much longer can a private nonprofit fill this need?” she asked. Sarah Saadian of the National Council of Nonprofits put it bluntly: “Food banks are part of the puzzle, but they couldn’t possibly make up for the failure of the federal government.”
For families already balancing rent, utilities and childcare, the interruptions to SNAP create immediate, hard choices. Pantries that once provided supplemental support are now a primary source of food for many. As the holiday season continues, food banks and pantries say they will keep operating and tapping volunteers and public and private funding where possible — but leaders warn the patchwork response is fragile and the need far outstrips capacity unless federal assistance resumes or additional long-term resources are provided.